De-Constructing the French Wars: Napoleon as Anti-Strategist

The Emperor Napoleon I is regarded as one of the greatest generals of all time and, as such, he has attracted an immense bibliography. In spite of this, there have been few studies of him as a strategist: instead, it is simply assumed that it was enough for the Emperor to have conducted an operation for it to have had a logical strategic goal. In this article, however, Napoleon is shown to have been primarily an opportunist, who was frequently guided by the needs of the moment and swayed from his course by circumstance, while it is further suggested that, even considered on their own merits, many of his decisions were faulty in the extreme.     

International Involvement in Restructuring and Creating Security Forces: The Case of Haiti

The controversy over banning landmines in the past decade has removed matters of military technical expertise to the purview of civilian interest groups. According to a Huntingtonian perspective, this could be an indicator of unhealthy civil-military relations. Evidence of this includes political leaders' disregard of senior military advice and the initiation of a program to develop landmine alternatives after having already committed to banning them. The desire to ban landmines may represent a pragmatic revision of pacifist attempts to ban warfare altogether. Because of the development of self-destructing or deactivating mines, the landmine ban movement intrudes on technical military matters without redeeming humanitarian value. This intrusion may have further ramifications for civil-military relations.     

Traitor or patriot? Andrey Vlasov and the Russian liberation movement 1942–45

Catherine Andreyev, Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement: Soviet Reality and Emigre Theories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Pp.251; $34.50.

Sergej Froehlich, General Wlassow: Russen und Deutsche zwischen Hitler und Stalin (revised and edited by Edel von Freier). Koeln: Markus Verlag, 1987. Pp.403; DM.39.80.

Joachim Hoffmann, Die Geschichte der Wlassow‐Armes. Freiburg: Verlag Rombach, 1986. Pp.468; DM32.     

Comprehensive Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons: An Emerging International Norm?

ABSTRACT

There have been calls for the abolition of nuclear weapons from the day they were invented. Over the last fifteen years, some indications can be found that such calls have been getting louder, among them Barack Obama's famous 2009 speech in Prague. In this article, we investigate if support for a comprehensive norm that would prohibit development, possession, and use of nuclear weapons is really growing. To assess the current status of that norm, we use the model of a “norm life cycle,” developed by Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink. We then analyze 6,545 diplomatic statements from the review process of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as well as from the UN General Assembly First Committee on Disarmament and International Security, covering the years 2000 to 2013. The evidence shows that a comprehensive prohibition can be considered an emerging international norm that finds growing support among states without nuclear weapons and nuclear weapon states alike. Only a core group of states invoke the norm consistently, however. This leads us to conclude that the “tipping point” of the life cycle, at which adherence to a new norm starts to spread rapidly, has yet to be reached.