Decision costs in the intelligence cycle

John Terraine, The Smoke and the Fire: Myths and Anti‐Myths of War 1861–1945. London: Sidgwick &; Jackson, 1980. Pp. 240; £8.95.

Stephen Roskill, Admiral of the Fleet: Earl Beatty. London: Collins,1980. Pp. 430; £12.95.

Peter and Leni Gillman, ’Collar the Lot’. How Britain Interned and Expelled its Wartime Refugees. London: Quartet Books, 1980. Pp. 314; £8.95.

Frederic A. Bergerson, The Army Gels An Air Force: Tactics of Insurgent Bureaucratic Politics. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. Pp. xiii + 216; £8.50.

Christoph Bertram (ed), Prospects of Soviet Power in the 1980s. London: Macmillan, and IISS, 1980. Pp. 126; £15.

James M. Roherty (ed.), Defense Policy Formulation: Towards Comparative Analysis. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1980. Pp. 315; $14.95.

Franklyn Griffiths and John C. Dolanyi, The Dangers of Nuclear War. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979. $15.00.

Kenneth Mackenzie, Turkey under the Generals. London: Institute for the Study of Conflict, Conflict Studies. Number 126, January 1981. Pp. 31.     

Reviews

Douglas S. Derrer, We Are All the Target: A Handbook of Terrorism Avoidance and Hostage Survival. Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press, 1992. Pp. x+135, notes, index. $14.95. ISBN 01–55750–150–5

Ian Knight, Zulu: Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift, 22–23 January 1879. London: Windrow & Greene, 1992. Pp.136, 150 illus., incl 8 colour plates, maps, biblio. £35. ISBN 1–872004–23–7

Ian Knight, By the Orders of the Great White Queen: Campaigning in Zululand through the Eyes of the British Soldiers, 1879. London: Greenhill Books and Novato: Presidio Press, 1992. Pp. 272, 17 illus., 1 map. £18.95. ISBN 1–85367–122–3

Manfried Rauchensteiner and Erwin A. Schmidl (eds.), Formen des Krieges: vom Mittelalter zum ‘Low‐intensity’ Conflict’. Graz : Verlag Styria, 1991. Pp.208. DM35. ISBN 3–22–12139–7

Harold J. Kearsley, Maritime Power and the Twenty‐First Century. Dartmouth: Dartmouth Publishing Company, Limited, 1992. Pp.xv + 203, 13 diagrams, index. £32.50. ISBN 1–85521–288–9     

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.     

Combining restorative justice and social justice: Prospects of child soldiering transitional justice

ABSTRACT

The most critical challenges faced by war-affected communities where children have allegedly perpetrated atrocities include: finding transitional justice practices that address the needs of former belligerent children and those of victims and their communities; and helping to reintegrate child soldiers into society and avoid returning to hostilities. This paper demonstrates that these challenges can be overcome by taking a holistic approach to child soldiering transitional justice, which assimilates restorative justice and social justice. Such an approach simultaneously addresses child soldiers’ criminal accountability and pursues their psychosocial wellbeing. The findings are based on a selective scholarship supported by fieldwork that was conducted in the Democratic Republic of Congo between May and December 2014 in North Kivu province. Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and survey questionnaires based on a randomised sample of 282 participants. These included self-demobilised child soldiers, members of war-affected communities, students/learners, educators, local traditional leaders, government officials, child protection lawyers and members of non-governmental organisations.     

ZERO NUCLEAR WEAPONS

The current nuclear nonproliferation order is no longer sustainable. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) has weakened considerably over the years, with nuclear have-nots displaying increased dissatisfaction with the status quo. Meanwhile, demands for civilian nuclear technology have led to increased proliferation risks in the form of dual-use technologies. Arms control as we currently understand it—piecemeal treaties and agreements—is no longer sufficient to address the growing threat of proliferation and the frailty of the NPT. This article calls for a bolder nonproliferation agenda pursuing multilateral nuclear disarmament. Disarmament is, in fact, technologically achievable; a lack of political will stands as the only remaining roadblock to a world free of nuclear weapons. A better understanding of the technological feasibility of disarmament, as well as recognition of the diminishing strategic value of nuclear weapons, will help to erode this political reluctance.     

A stochastic assignment problem

There are n boxes with box i having a quota value Balls arrive sequentially, with each ball having a binary vector attached to it, with the interpretation being that if X_i = 1 then that ball is eligible to be put in box i. A ball's vector is revealed when it arrives and the ball can be put in any alive box for which it is eligible, where a box is said to be alive if it has not yet met its quota. Assuming that the components of a vector are independent, we are interested in the policy that minimizes, either stochastically or in expectation, the number of balls that need arrive until all boxes have met their quotas. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 62:23–31, 2015