Chinese Theater and Strategic Missile Force Modernization and its Implications for the United States

The People's Republic of China (PRC), no longer content with its longstanding ‘minimalist’ nuclear posture and strategy, is enhancing the striking power and survivability of its theater and strategic missile forces and rethinking its nuclear doctrine in ways that may pose serious challenges for the United States. Although the modernization of Chinese nuclear and missile forces may ultimately result in greater strategic deterrence stability, this change will not come about immediately or automatically. Indeed, it is entirely possible that China's growing missile capabilities could decrease crisis stability under certain circumstances, especially in the event of a US–China conflict over Taiwan.     

Economic Competition and Nuclear Cooperation

The number of bilateral nuclear cooperation agreements surged during the “nuclear renaissance” of the past decade. This proliferation is only partially explained by the prevailing approaches that focus on strategic imperatives. To supplement these explanations, this study draws on neoliberal models of economic competition to posit that bilateral agreement negotiations also exhibit conditions of “uncoordinated interdependence” and maneuvering to gain market share. Case evidence suggests the contours of supplier state bids for civilian assistance are determined at least as much by considerations about economic competition as they are by positive strategic goals. In addition, this study identifies several cases of cooperation where there appears to be little or no strategic motive for export agreements. The study concludes that patterns of economic competition and the influence of peers in defined competitive spaces alter material payoffs and impact policies. It also identifies a surprising role for principled restraint in dampening strategic and economic competition in some dyads.     

The Demand for Military Spending in Egypt

Egypt plays a pivotal role in the security of the Middle East as the doorway to Europe and its military expenditure reflects its involvement in the machinations of such an unstable region, showing considerable variation over the last 40?years. These characteristics make it a particularly interesting case study of the determinants of military spending. This paper specifies and estimates an econometric model of the Egyptian demand for military spending, taking into account important strategic and political factors. Both economic and strategic factors are found to play a role in determining military burden/spending, with clear positive effects of lagged military burden, suggesting some sort of institutional inertia, plus negative output and net exports effects. The strategic effect as a result of the impact of Israel’s military burden is mostly positive and significant, though its impact is reduced when the impact of important strategic events are taken into account. The military spending of Egypt’s allies Jordan and Syria generally seems to have had no effect on Egypt’s spending. These results are consistent over a range of econometric techniques.     

A branch and bound algorithm for solving a class of nonlinear integer programming problems

This article presents a branch and bound method for solving the problem of minimizing a separable concave function over a convex polyhedral set where the variables are restricted to be integer valued. Computational results are reported.     

Warranty design under buyer and seller risk aversion

This paper provides a framework in which warranty policies for non-repairable items can be evaluated according to risk preferences of both buyers and sellers. In particular, a warranty price schedule is established such that sellers are indifferent among the policies. Given this schedule, a buyer's response is expressed by selecting the price-warranty combination that minimizes disutility. Within this framework, a warranty can be viewed as an instrumet of risk management that can induce more sales and greater profitability. For given utility functions, analytical results for the development of a price schedule are developed. Numerical results illustrate the substitution effects between warranty terms, prices, and risk parameters.     

Successive approximation in separable programming: An improved procedure for convex separable programs

We implement a solution procedure for general convex separable programs where a series of relatively small piecewise linear programs are solved as opposed to a single large one, and where, based on bound calculations developed in [13] and [14], the ranges of linearization are systematically reduced for successive programs. The procedure inherits ε-convergence to the global optimum in a finite number of steps, but perhaps its most distinct feature is the rigorous way in which ranges containing an optimal solution are reduced from iteration to iteration. This paper describes the procedure, called successive approximation, discusses its convergence, tightness of the bounds, bound-calculation overhead, and its robustness. It presents a computer implementation to demonstrate its effectiveness for general problems and compares it (1) with the more standard separable programming approach and (2) with one of the recent augmented Lagrangian methods [10] included in a comprehensive study of nonlinear programming codes [12]. It seems clear from over 130 cases resulting from 80 distinct problems studied here that significant savings in terms of computational effort can be realized by a judicious use of the procedure, and the ease with which it can be used is appreciably increased by the robustness it shows. Moreover, for most of these problems, the advantage increases as the size, nonlinearity, and the degree of desired accuracy increase. Other important benefits include significantly smaller storage requirements, the ability to estimate the error in the current solution, and to terminate the algorithm as soon as the acceptable level of accuracy has been achieved. Problems requiring up to about 10,000 nonzero elements in their specification and about 45,000 nonzero elements in the generated separable programs resulting from up to 70 original nonlinear variables and 70 nonlinear constraints are included in the computations.     

The interactive fixed charge linear programming problem

In many decision-making situations, each activity that can be undertaken may have associated with it both a fixed and a variable cost. Recently, we have encountered serveral practical problems in which the fixed cost of undertaking an activity depends upon which other activities are also undertaken. To our knowledge, no existing optimization model can accomodate such a fixed cost structure. To do so, we have therefore developed a new model called the interactive fixed charge linear programming problem (IFCLP). In this paper we present and motivate problem (IFCLP), study some of its characteristics, and present a finite branch and bound algorithm for solving it. We also discuss the main properties of this algorithm.     

Book reviews

Managing International Conflict, From Theory to Practice: a Teaching Tool Using CASCON by Lincoln P. Bloomfield and Allen Moulton, New York: St Martin's Press, 1997, ISBN 0-312-13675-7 (pbk), £18.99.

The American Century: the Rise and Decline of the United States as a World Power by Donald W. White, London: Yale University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-300-05721-0 (hbk), £25.

Humanitarian Intervention in Contemporary Conflict by Oliver Ramsbotham and Tom Woodhouse, Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996.

The US Military/NGO Relationship in Humanitarian Interventions by Chris Seiple, Peacekeeping Institute, Center for Strategic Leadership, US Army War College, 1996.

Uncivil Wars: International Security and the New Internal Conflicts by Donald M. Snow, London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996, ISBN 1-55587-655-2 (pbk), £15.50, ISBN 1-55587-648-X (hbk), £33.50.

Intelligence Power in Peace and War by Michael Herman, Royal Institute for International Affairs, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-521-56231-7 (hbk), £50, ISBN 0-521-56636 (pbk), £16.95.

UK Eyes Alpha: Inside British Intelligence by Mark Urban, London: Faber and Faber, 1996, ISBN 0-571-17689-5 (hbk), £16.99.

New Cloak, Old Dagger by Michael Smith, London: Victor Gollancz, 1996, ISBN 0-575-06150-2 (hbk), £20.

Conversion Survey 1997: Global Disarmament and Disposal of Surplus Weapons by Bonn International Center for Conversion, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996: World Inventories, Capabilities and Policies by David Albright, Frans Berkhout and William Walker, Oxford: SIPRI and Oxford University Press, 1997.

The Wars of Eduard Shevardnadze by Carolyn McGiffert Ekedahl and Melvin A. Goodman, University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1997.     

纳米级定位的简单化设计——采用滚珠球轴承的扭轮摩擦传动

作者在前面的文章中报导了扭轮摩擦传动能实现亚纳米级的定位分辨率。然而,这套装置在结构上的复杂之处就是在于采用了静压轴承支撑扭轮。本文指出了扭轮摩擦传动在结构上如何可以简化为采用球轴承支撑扭轮。在简化之后,实验表明定位分辨率小于1纳米。本文得出结论,采用球轴承的扭轮摩擦传动对于在洁净环境下要求实现纳米级定位的制造过程变得更为方便,而且可以取代滚珠丝杠以及常规摩擦传动方式。