Keeping an eye on South Asian skies: America’s pivotal deterrence in nuclearized India–Pakistan crises

Since declaring their nuclear weapons capabilities in 1998, India and Pakistan have engaged in three major crises that each threatened to escalate into war. In each crisis, the USA engaged in active diplomacy to dissuade the South Asian rivals from taking escalatory actions. Previous literature on the crises has described the American role, but has not theorized third-party involvement in a nuclearized regional rivalry. We apply Timothy Crawford’s pivotal deterrence theory to the nuclearized India–Pakistan conflict, and extend the original theory to cover the novel condition of a non-superpower nuclear dyad, in the context of a single-superpower international system. We find that America’s pivotal deterrence generally enhanced stability in the India–Pakistan crises, and unlike in pre-nuclear South Asia, other great powers supported American diplomacy. However, we suggest that future regional crises between nuclear rivals, in South Asia or elsewhere, may present greater challenges for pivotal deterrence.     

The ambivalent coalition: doing the least one can do against the Islamic state

The effort to degrade and defeat the Islamic State is like many other multilateral military efforts – characterized by widely varying contributions to the effort. This article seeks to understand the patterns of contributions. Three sets of explanations are applied: the lessons of Afghanistan and Libya, variations in how potential contributors feel the threat posed by the Islamic State, and domestic political dynamics. While there may be some political processes that overlap with the big lessons and with the threat of the Islamic State, the patterns of contributions thus far suggest that the key drivers of reactions to the Islamic State are the desire not to repeat Afghanistan combined with some impetus provided by Islamic State attacks in the various homelands. The conclusion suggests some policy implications as well as some ideas for future research.     

Growth recovery after civil conflict: a fractional integration approach

Using recent econometric techniques based on fractional integration, we find that developing countries recover their economic growth faster than developed countries in response to a shock. Following this methodology, we find that longer civil conflicts are associated with a faster recovery process. We further investigate this issue by exploring correlations with components of GDP, military spending, institutions and aid and find heterogeneous effects of these channels by duration of conflict. Higher government spending is correlated with faster recoveries post longer conflicts, and higher consumption spending is linked to faster recoveries following shorter conflicts. Military spending appears to be driving the government expenditure that makes countries recover from longer conflicts. More democratic institutions are associated with faster recoveries post short wars but slower recoveries following long wars.     

The lobbies’ network at the EU policy level: the case of security and defense

Lobbyists may not share the same interests, but they usually agree to form a link in a network which could eventually be used to spread information, to search for potential partners, to speak with one voice to decision makers. In other words, social links represent value for lobbyists because they may ultimately facilitate access. In this article, we explore the network of the Security and Defense lobbies in the EU and we describe its structure.     

Security sector reform,ethnic representation and perceptions of safety: evidence from Kosovo

This article explores the relationship between ethnic representation in security sector institutions and perceptions of safety. While most studies on post-conflict institutional reform focus on national institutions and outcomes, this article argues that a more nuanced view on ethnic representation is fruitful in order to account for the everyday perceptions of local people. Drawing on post-conflict Kosovo, the article analyzes how the representation of ethnic minorities in security institutions affects perceptions of safety among individuals across Kosovo’s municipalities. It also analyzes original interview data collected in the Pristina and Mitrovica municipalities that are typical cases of our sample. Both approaches validate that those municipalities that have ethnically representative security institutions also have higher levels of perceived safety.     

Reserve forces and the transformation of British military organisation: soldiers,citizens and society

In recent years, there has been a sharp growth in political and sociological interest in the British military. Set against the backdrop of the armed forces’ increasing presence in everyday life, alongside the organizations’ ongoing restructuring, the current paper focuses on the MoD’s problematic attempts to recruit 30,000 reservists by 2020; what has become known as the Future Reserves 2020 programme (FR2020). We argue that these changes are driven in part by the need to cut costs in defence. However, we also suggest that they are a reflection of the changing nature of modern military organisation, and the manner in which armed forces engage with the societies of which they are a part, and with the citizens that make up that society. We locate FR2020 programme in the context of a wider narrative about the changing nature of military organisation in contemporary western democracies, identifying structural, circumstantial and normative reasons for change. We also examine the specific challenges of implementing FR2020 in practice, including issues of recruitment and retention, integration and support, and relations with families and employers, drawing on the experience of comparator countries to do so. We conclude by considering the implications of these changes, both for the future of UK armed forces, and for the evolving nature of military-society relations in Britain.     

Tipping the scales: short-term interventions and counterinsurgency

Particularly in African operations, United Nations (UN) peacekeeping forces have faced significant problems in restoring stability. In at least a few situations, unilateral national military interventions have been launched in the same countries. In the cases of Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire, the British and French interventions respectively played a significant role in re-establishing stability. Lessons from these operations suggest that if effective coordination and liaison channels are established, such hybrid unilateral-UN missions can in fact be more successful than “pure” peace operations.     

A linear-programming-based method for determining whether or not n demand points are on a hemisphere

Whenever n demand points are located on a hemisphere, spherical location problems can be solved easily using geometrical methods or mathematical programming. A method based on a linear programming formulation with four constraints is presented to determine whether n demand points are on a hemisphere. The formulation is derived from a modified minimax spherical location problem whose Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions are the constraints of the linear program. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.