Re-thinking the Unthinkable: Arms Control in the Twenty-First Century

ABSTRACT

Since the end of the Cold War, arms control proponents tried to make the case for deep nuclear reductions and other forms of security cooperation as necessary for strategic stability. While different versions of strategic stability analysis did sometimes produce innovative proposals, constructive negotiations, and successful ratification campaigns in the past, this analytical framework has become more of a hindrance than a help. Treating arms control as a predominantly technical way to make deterrence more stable by changing force structure characteristics, military operations, relative numbers of weapons on either side, or total number of nuclear weapons gives short shrift to political factors, including the fundamental assumptions about world politics that inform different arms control logics, the quality of political relations among leading states, and the political processes that affect negotiation, ratification, and implementation. This article compares two logics for arms control as a means to enhance strategic stability, one developed by the Cambridge community in the 1960s and one used by the Reagan administration and its successors, with current perspectives on strategic stability in which flexibility and freedom of action are preferable to predictability and arms control. It also contrasts what the Barack Obama administration has tried to achieve through strategic stability dialogues with Russia and China with how they envision security cooperation. It then presents an approach developed during the Cold War by Hedley Bull for thinking about both the technical and the political dimensions of arms control, and suggests that the logic of Cooperative Security (which shares important features with Bull's approach) is a more appropriate and productive way to think about arms control in the twenty-first century than strategic stability analysis is.     

IF YOU WANT IT DONE RIGHT,DO IT YOURSELF

Some have argued that the transatlantic rancor over the Iraq war made cooperation, especially on nonproliferation, unlikely. In contrast, this article, documents post-invasion instances of nonproliferation cooperation, with particular emphasis on the Proliferation Security Initiative and the EU-3 Initiative—the British, French, and German negotiations with Iran over its suspected nuclear activities. In addition to documenting French and British participation in these initiatives, the article analyzes why they have chosen to participate and argues that France and Britain have participated in both efforts because they are committed to avoiding future Iraq-like preventive wars.     

Computational complexity of finding Pareto efficient outcomes for biobjective lot‐sizing models

In this article, we study a biobjective economic lot‐sizing problem with applications, among others, in green logistics. The first objective aims to minimize the total lot‐sizing costs including production and inventory holding costs, whereas the second one minimizes the maximum production and inventory block expenditure. We derive (almost) tight complexity results for the Pareto efficient outcome problem under nonspeculative lot‐sizing costs. First, we identify nontrivial problem classes for which this problem is polynomially solvable. Second, if we relax any of the parameter assumptions, we show that (except for one case) finding a single Pareto efficient outcome is an ‐hard task in general. Finally, we shed some light on the task of describing the Pareto frontier. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 386–402, 2014     

Exact algorithms for integrated facility location and production planning problems

We consider a class of facility location problems with a time dimension, which requires assigning every customer to a supply facility in each of a finite number of periods. Each facility must meet all assigned customer demand in every period at a minimum cost via its production and inventory decisions. We provide exact branch‐and‐price algorithms for this class of problems and several important variants. The corresponding pricing problem takes the form of an interesting class of production planning and order selection problems. This problem class requires selecting a set of orders that maximizes profit, defined as the revenue from selected orders minus production‐planning‐related costs incurred in fulfilling the selected orders. We provide polynomial‐time dynamic programming algorithms for this class of pricing problems, as well as for generalizations thereof. Computational testing indicates the advantage of our branch‐and‐price algorithm over various approaches that use commercial software packages. These tests also highlight the significant cost savings possible from integrating location with production and inventory decisions and demonstrate that the problem is rather insensitive to forecast errors associated with the demand streams. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2011     

海战场态势评估问题的研究

对海战场综合态势进行态势评估和威胁分析是信息融合系统的最高层级,态势评估结果将对指挥员的指挥决策起到非常重要的作用。根据海军作战理论分析了海战场态势的表示方法,并基于模板方法设计了一种战场当前态势与模板数据库中态势进行匹配的算法。该算法特别适用于高层推理如态势或威胁评估。     

The campaign of the lost footsteps: the pacification of Burma, 1885-95

ABSTRACT

What Rudyard Kipling called the ‘campaign of lost footsteps’ was the longest campaign fought by the Victorian army. The conquest of Upper Burma, an area of 140,000 sq. miles with a population of four million, took only three weeks in November 1885 and was accomplished with minimum cost. However, the removal and deportation of the Burmese King and dismantling of all traditional authority dismantled led to growing resistance to British rule leading to an increasingly difficult guerrilla war. Though the Burmese guerrillas were characterised by the British as mere bandits or dacoits, many were former soldiers along with Buddhist monks. The extremely difficult nature of campaigning in the terrain and climate of Burma was not sufficiently appreciated by the War Office, who viewed the conflict as a ‘subaltern’s war’ and ‘police’ work. Intended regime change was also not accompanied by any consideration of the likely implications. Prolonged insurgency necessitated deploying a force far larger than originally intended; though order was finally secured by 1895, the campaign proved destructive of Burmese society while British recruitment of hill tribes into the police and armed forces sowed the seeds for future divisions.     

United States defence contractors and the future of military operations

ABSTRACT

The United States’ global strategic outlook has shifted markedly since the end of major combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the United States’ strategic posture shifts, the nature of military operations is simultaneously changing rapidly. Many analysts predict that cyber-operations, autonomous weapons systems, artificial intelligence, and clandestine special forces operations will be central features in future conflicts. Although often overlooked by scholars and policy analysts, defence contractors are integral to the development and implementation of these emerging categories of warfare. This inquiry examines the evolving nature of the American defence industry and the roles corporations play in current theatres of conflict. Surprisingly, rather than becoming less reliant on defence contractors after their much-maligned performance in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, American military and intelligence agencies have become more dependent on the private sector as technology becomes increasingly central to warfare.     

Systems failure: the US way of irregular warfare

ABSTRACT

Since 9/11, the United States has achieved notable gains against al Qaeda, and also Islamic State (IS), all while avoiding another mass-casualty attack at home. Yet, institutionally, culturally, and in its capabilities, the US government remains seriously ill-equipped for the task of countering irregular threats. Partly as a result, Islamist extremism shows no sign of being defeated, having instead metastasized since 9/11 and spread. Why, given the importance accorded to counterterrorism, has the US approach remained inadequate? What is impeding more fundamental reforms? The article evaluates the United States’ way of irregular warfare: its troubled engagement with counterinsurgency and its problematic search for lower cost and lower risk ways of combating terrorism. It suggests needed reforms but acknowledges also the unlikelihood of change.