Landmarks in defense literature

If Germany Attacks: the Battle in Depth in the West. By Captain Graeme C. Wynne. Faber & Faber, London (1940) [reprinted by Greenwood Press, Westport, CT (1976)]     

The Botswana Defence Force and the War against Poachers in Southern Africa

‘Semper aliquid novi Africa affert’ (out of Africa this is always something new) wrote the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder, and that has been all too true of catastrophe and misery in modern times. Yet despite Africa's problems, the continent also offers many examples of humankind's most commendable achievements. This is one such story. It is the account of the successful struggle by a small but well disciplined and well led African army to protect a vital national resource, a role performed with dedication and consistent success since 1987. The fight against poaching in Botswana is a peculiar form of low-intensity conflict that poses significant political, operational and technical challenges. This article identifies some of those challenges and notes how the Botswana Defence Force overcame them, providing an example that may profitably be emulated elsewhere. The article also calls attention to evolution of military roles and missions in reaction to the novel threats of post the Cold War world.     

What we know about HIV and AIDS in the armed forces in Southern Africa

This paper is a summary of some of the key findings of an eighteen-month MilAIDS research project that focused on how militaries in the Southern African countries of Botswana, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe had coped with the impact of the HIV epidemic since it had been identified amongst the ranks in the 1980s. As a result, there is a single major source for citation, which is ‘The enemy within: Southern African militaries' quarter-century battle with HIV and AIDS’. The summary does, however, contain other information related to developments that have emerged since the completion of the larger study, bringing us up to date with the contemporary discourse in the field.

The purpose of highlighting some of the elements in the larger study is twofold: to distil its main findings for easier consumption and to draw our attention to salient factors that are considered worthy of replication. A second objective of this brief paper is of course to whet readers' appetite to read the more detailed work referred to above.     

HARNESSING GLOBAL TRADE DATA FOR BIOLOGICAL ARMS CONTROL

Unlike treaties dealing with nuclear and chemical weapons, the Biological Weapons Convention still lacks formal verification measures, 31 years after entering into force. Here we propose a global export-import monitoring system of biological dual-use items as an additional measure for a web of biological arms controls that could complement traditional export controls. We suggest that such a measure may help to guide consultation or verification processes in the biological area.     

“GOOD COP/BAD COP” AS A MODEL FOR NONPROLIFERATION DIPLOMACY TOWARD NORTH KOREA AND IRAN

Scholarly and popular literature in the recent past has framed nonproliferation diplomacy toward both Iran and North Korea as an example of “good cop/bad cop,” a social-psychological strategy borrowed from law enforcement to describe a process for forcing a confession by subjecting a target to stressful emotional contrast. This article examines those two cases, roughly covering the period since 2003, when the most recent attempts to deal with the Iranian and North Korean proliferation threats began, in light of criteria for employment of the good cop/bad cop strategy. There is some evidence that within the framework of the six-party talks with North Korea and within the framework of the EU-3-U.S. diplomacy toward Iran, the players seeking nonproliferation have adopted good cop/bad cop roles to that end. The article concludes, however, that while there are similarities to the interrogation room technique, the complexity of the international political environment as compared to the interrogation room has prevented the states involved from successfully adopting or effectively exploiting good and bad cop roles. Substantial and exploitable differences of interest among them, and the availability of alternative “escape routes” for the target state, raise serious questions about the applicability of the good cop/bad cop strategy to these two nonproliferation cases, and even about its applicability in future nonproliferation challenges.