Economic Development and Military Effectiveness

Abstract

What makes some states more militarily powerful than others? A growing body of research suggests that certain ‘non-material’ factors significantly affect a country's ability to translate resources into fighting power. In particular, recent studies claim that democracy, Western culture, high levels of human capital, and amicable civil-military relations enhance military effectiveness. If these studies are correct, then military power is not solely or even primarily determined by material resources, and a large chunk of international relations scholarship has been based on a flawed metric. The major finding of this article, however, suggests that this is not the case. In hundreds of battles between 1898 and 1987, the more economically developed side consistently outfought the poorer side on a soldier-for-soldier basis. This is not surprising. What is surprising is that many of the non-material factors posited to affect military capability seem to be irrelevant: when economic development is taken into account, culture and human capital become insignificant and democracy actually seems to degrade warfighting capability. In short, the conventional military dominance of Western democracies stems from superior economic development, not societal pathologies or political institutions. Therefore, a conception of military power that takes into account both the quantity of a state's resources and its level of economic development provides a sound basis for defense planning and international relations scholarship.     

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.     

Grammar but No Logic: Technique is Not Enough – A Response to Nagl and Burton

Abstract

In issue 33/1 of The Journal of Strategic Studies, John Nagl and Brian Burton were provided with the opportunity to respond to the observations we made in our article, ‘Whose Hearts and Whose Minds? The Curious Case of Global Counter-Insurgency’, which appeared in the same issue. Nagl and Burton's reply, however, did not overtly address the points raised in our article, but instead offered a re-statement of the precepts of classical counter-insurgency (COIN). While we certainly recognise the value of counter-insurgency methods in conflicts such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan, Nagl and Burton's reply overlooks our original concerns about the limited utility of neo-counter-insurgency thinking outside these environments and the dangerous political implications it contains. They further ignore our core contention that a narrow preoccupation with theatre-specific technique has profound limitations when offered as a universal panacea to address complex transnational threats.     

List of contributors

This article examines Edward Lansdale's return to South Vietnam during the Johnson administration. Lansdale offered a persuasive critique of the mistakes the American policy in Vietnam, but his potential influence was severely limited by a combination of bureaucratic infighting in Saigon and a general indifference to the political aspects of the conflict in Washington. While Lansdale was unable to signiflcantly influence the policies of the Johnson administration, his experience in Saigon during 1965–68 offers historians a unique perspective on many facets of American and South Vietnamese policymaking during a crucial period of the Vietnam War.     

Insurgency online: Elements for a theory of anti‐government Internet communications

The article takes the cases of Peru's Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) as the pont of departure to discuss how a insurgent political movement uses the Internet and World Wide Web (WWW). During the 1996–97 Japanese Embassy hostage incident in Lima, Peru, MRTA supporters in Japan, Europe and North America used online technology to relay the group's message to a global public. The resulting direct media access provided the MRTA with an unprecendented level of global publicity. Through referring to the ‘MRTA Solidarity Page’, the types of message transmitted, the forms of transmission (text, video, audio, e‐mail or other), and target publics (national, global, political elites, media), the article outlines the issues and theoretical challenges raised by electronic anti‐government information provision. The Internet and WWW do not alone constitute the threat to state power as some analysts suggest but does in some sense dramatically alter political communication. New media will probably co‐exist with other forms of political communication for some time.     

师范类专业学生信息素养现状及对策研究——以石河子大学为例

信息素养是信息时代社会成员的必备素质,也是大学生毕业后生存与发展不可缺少的基本能力。本文在问卷调查的基础上,通过个别访谈,以石河子大学为例,对师范类专业学生的信息素养现状进行了调查研究,提出一些有针对性的建议。