The European community's recognition of new states in Yugoslavia: The strategic implications

The EC's recognition of new states in former Yugoslavia is considered by most analysts to have seriously aggravated the conflict in the region. This article challenges the conventional wisdom and argues that the strategic effects of recognition have been largely overstated. The prospect of recognition played no significant role in the Slovene determination to sustain their campaign for independence and therefore bears little responsibility for the first phase of the war. In Croatia, recognition ‐ together with the deployment of UN peacekeepers ‐ may even have had a mitigating effect. Only in Bosnia is there any correlation between recognition and an intensification of hostilities but it is doubtful whether non‐recognition would have prevented the eruption of violence since Bosnian Serb aspirations for an ethnically homogeneous state entity could not be realised without resort to war. The real relevance of recognition lies with the opportunities for more effective international action which it created. It was the failure to seize these opportunities, rather than the strategic effects of recognition, which better explains the tragic events that ensued.     

Book reviews

John Lawrence Tone, The Fatal Knot: The Guerrilla War in Navarre and the Defeat of Napoleon in Spain. Chapel Hill and London; The University of North Carolina Press 1994. Pp.vii + 239, 1 map, biblio., index. $34.95 (cloth). ISBN 0–8078–2169–1.

Robert Holland (ed), Emergencies and Disorder in the European Empires after 1945. London: Frank Cass, 1994. Pp.x + 256; index. £32 (cloth); £15 (paper). ISBN 0–7146–4516–8 and 4109 X

Deborah L. Norden, Military Rebellion in Argentina: Between Coups and Consolidation. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. Pp.242, index, $35/$17.50 (paper). ISBN 0–8032–8369–5.

William M. Minter, Apartheid's Contras: An Inquiry into the Roots of War in Angola and Mozambique. London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books Ltd; Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994. Pp. xii +308, 3 maps, biblio., index. $69.95/£39.95 (cloth); $29.95/£16.95(paper). ISBN 1–85649–266–4 and 266–4.     

Command and Control of India's Nuclear Forces

The Indian government has not made a public comment about the status of its nuclear weapon program since approving a nuclear doctrine in 2003. However, there is now enough information in the public domain to determine that the command-and-control system for the nuclear program has steadily matured in accordance with the intent of the approved nuclear doctrine. The Indian government has successfully mitigated many of the issues that plague the conventional military. The result is a basic command-and-control system that is focused only on the delivery, if ordered by the prime minister, of nuclear weapons. The system is not as robust as those of the United States and Russia, but is in place and ready as new Indian nuclear weapons enter into operation. The command-and-control system is developing to meet India's needs and political compulsions, but not necessarily as part of a more assertive nuclear policy.     

A lagrangean relaxation algorithm for the constrained matrix problem

We present variants of a convergent Lagrangean relaxation algorithm for minimizing a strictly convex separable quadratic function over a transportation polytope. The algorithm alternately solves two “subproblems,” each of which has an objective function that is defined by using Lagrange multipliers derived from the other. Motivated by the natural separation of the subproblems into independent and very easily solved “subsubproblems,” the algorithm can be interpreted as the cyclic coordinate ascent method applied to the dual problem. We exhibit our computational results for different implementations of the algorithm applied to a set of large constrained matrix problems.     

The proper balancing of repair and preventive maintenance activities in the determination of coordinated shipboard allowance lists

The determination as to the cost-effective number of spares for given types of items or equipment to be carried on board various types of ships is studied. This spare pool, known as the ship's COSAL, must provide prespecified levels of protection against stockouts for all uses of that item on board the given ship. This article derives and illustrates the methodology for optimally trading off the reduction in the ship's COSAL that can be gained by improving repair/resupply capabilities or by lowering the failure rate of the equipment through more or different types of preventive maintenance. A flexible class of preventive maintenance/repair response functions to cost is studied which are nonlinear and exhibit realistic diminishing returns. Two different types of assumptions are possible regarding the interdependencies of the resupply times across different ship types. A tractable budget allocation method is presented which can be used in a multiitem, multiship, multiechelon repair environment where there is one budget to cover all spares, all repair/resupply, and preventive maintenance activities. The technique incorporates different criticalities of shortages by type of ship and item. It can be used either in a budget building mode or a budget execution mode.     

Armed services recruiting research: Issues,findings, and needs

Manning the nation's armed services will continue to be a crucial issue for the remainder of the 1980s. With the projected growth of the services during this decade, the downturn in the 17–21-year-old male population, and the possible upturn in the economy, the ability of the services to meet their respective quality and quantity recruiting goals becomes of central concern. The accurate estimation of the supply for various types of recruits becomes especially important when one views the nearly $1 billion budgeted annually for recruiting and the impact that any military pay raises can have on the DOD's manpower costs of over $40 billion annually. In addition, perceived difficulties in recruiting can impact on weapon systems design decisions, authorized manning levels, and exacerbate the debate concerning the draft; hence, it is clear that few issues today warrant more attention than improving the efficiency and effectiveness of military recruiting. This article provides an introduction and review of some of the key issues involved in modeling and estimating the supply of military recruits. It summarizes and compares the findings of selected econometric models, all of which are based on enlistment experience since the introduction of the All-Volunteer Force in 1973. It also presents some new insights and directions for research dealing with simultaneity, validation, generation of rigorous confidence intervals, and data base selection. It concludes by listing some of the research needs to be addressed in the future.     

Bounds on the availability function

This paper gives bounds on the availability function for an alternating renewal process with exponential failure and general repair times. A bound on the error is also given. Several of the bounds with greatest practical consequence are worked out and illustrated. Repair distributions for which a lower bound on availability is easily computed are gamma (integer shape parameter), log normal, and Weibull. Finally, some simulation results for log normal repair versus gamma repair are given.     

An algorithm for separable piecewise convex programming problems

We present a branch and bound algorithm to solve mathematical programming problems of the form: Find x =|(x₁,…x_n) to minimize Σ?_i0(x₁) subject to x?G, l≦x≦L and Σ?_i0(x₁)≦0, j=1,…,m. With l=(l₁,…,l_n) and L=(L₁,…,L_n), each ?_ij is assumed to be lower aemicontinuous and piecewise convex on the finite interval [l_i.L_i]. G is assumed to be a closed convex set. The algorithm solves a finite sequence of convex programming problems; these correspond to successive partitions of the set C={x|l ≦ x ≦L} on the bahis of the piecewise convexity of the problem functions ?_ij. Computational considerations are discussed, and an illustrative example is presented.