Decommissioning and paramilitary strategy in Northern Ireland: A problem compared

This study examines the problems of paramilitary decommissioning in Northern Ireland. It analyses why decommissioning has become so contentious in the Northern Ireland peace process. Decommissioning, though, is not a unique or intrinsically insurmountable problem. This is demonstrated by highlighting the issue in international context. Three examples of decommissioning in conflict resolution processes are assessed: the Lebanon, El Salvador and Mozambique. These varied examples do supply some limited lessons for Northern Ireland. This study argues that the explanation for the intractability of decommissioning in Northern Ireland resides, to a greater extent, in the tactical and strategic reasoning of the main paramilitary groupings in Northern Ireland. The factors that condition their thinking, however, can be found in the nature of the peace process itself which provides the paramilitiaries with every incentive to retain possession of their weapons.     

In the right place at the right time: US signals intelligence relations with Scandinavia,1945–1960

This paper demonstrates that US–Scandinavian intelligence relations in general, and Signals Intelligence (Sigint) relations in particular, during the period 1945 through 1960 were more extensive and complicated than had previously been believed. Bilateral US intelligence liaison relations with nominally neutral Sweden were of particular importance in the early years of the Cold War given its geographic location adjacent to the northwestern portion of the USSR. Moreover, the importance of Sigint received from the three principal Scandinavian countries covered by this paper (Norway, Denmark, and Sweden) proved to be quite important to the US intelligence community during the early years of the Cold War, when the US Sigint infrastructure was relatively weak and stretched thin by commitments in Asia and elsewhere. This paper covers the quantity, quality, and types of intelligence information provided to the US by each of the Scandinavian nations, demonstrating that the nature of US intelligence relations with these countries changed substantially as time went by.     

Gas and the North‐West Frontier

John Terraine, Business in Great Waters: The U Boat Wars 1916 ‐1945. London: Leo Cooper, 1989. Pp.xx + 841; £19.50.

Peter Simkins, Kitchener's Armies: The Raising of the New Armies, 1914–16. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988. Pp.xvi + 359; index; illustrations. £37.50 (hardback).

Keith Grieves, Sir Eric Geddes: Business and Government in War and Peace. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1989. Pp.xiv + 188; £35.

Jeffrey Grey, The Commonwealth Armies and the Korean War: An Alliance Study. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988. Pp.xii + 244; £12.95.

Rajan Menon and Daniel N. Nelson (eds.), Limits to Soviet Power. Lexington, MA/Toronto: Lexington Books, 1989. Pp.vii + 231; $35.

Michael Leifer, ASEAN and the Security of South‐East Asia. London and New York: Routledge, 1989. Pp.x + 198; £30.

Grant Wardlaw, Political Terrorism: Theory, Tactics and Counter‐measures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, second edn. 1989. Pp.xv + 248; £27.50 (hardback); £10.95 (paperback).

John F. Murphy, Punishing International Terrorists: The Legal Framework for Policy Initiatives. Totowa, NJ: Rowman &; Allanheld 1985. Pp.x + 142; $25.95.

Hanns Maull and Otto Pick (eds.), The Gulf War. London: Pinter Publishers, 1989. Pp.193; £30.

Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies and Brassey's Defence Yearbook 1989. London: Brassey's Defence Publishers, 1989. Pp.xxviii + 361; £35.

Virginia Gamba‐Stonehouse, Strategy in the Southern Oceans: A South American View. London: Pinter Publishers, 1989. Pp.xiii + 155; £30.

Ola Tunander, Cold Water Politics: The Maritime Strategy and Geopolitics of the Northern Front. London: Sage Publications for the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, 1989. Pp.194; £25.

Richard Fieldhouse and Shunji Taoka, Superpowers at Sea: An Assessment of the Naval Arms Race. Oxford: Oxford University Press for SIPRI, 1989. Pp.183; £19.50.

Kenneth E. Boulding, Conflict and Defense: A General Theory. University Press of America, 1988. Pp.xiv + 347; $16.75 (paperback). (First Published, 1962).     

Whose Hearts and Whose Minds? The Curious Case of Global Counter-Insurgency

Traditionally regarded as a secondary activity in military thinking and practice, the notion of counter-insurgency (COIN) has undergone a remarkable renaissance. This analysis traces the origins of this renaissance to two distinctive schools: a neo-classical school and a global insurgency school. The global insurgency school critiques neo-classical thought and presents itself as a more sophisticated appreciation of current security problems. An examination of the evolution of these two schools of counter-insurgency reveals how the interplay between them ultimately leaves us with a confused and contradictory understanding of the phenomenon of insurgency and the policies and strategies necessary to combat it.     

Bayesian selling problem with partial information

We introduce an optimal stopping problem for selling an asset when the fixed but unknown distribution of successive offers is from one of n possible distributions. The initial probabilities as to which is the true distribution are given and updated in a Bayesian manner as the successive offers are observed. After receiving an offer, the seller has to decide whether to accept the offer or continue to observe the next offer. Each time an offer is observed a fixed cost is incurred. We consider both the cases where recalling a past offer is allowed and where it is not allowed. For each case, a dynamic programming model and some heuristic policies are presented. Using simulation, the performances of the heuristic methods are evaluated and upper bounds on the optimal expected return are obtained. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2013