Safety in international security: a view point from the practice of accident investigation

While security points to a deliberate harming of humans and/or the environment, safety refers to unintended damage. In this view point, I will analyse how the distinction between safety and security matters in the practice of accident investigation and I will argue that the division between the fields is problematic for the assessment of security-related safety risks. Drawing on the case of the our accident investigation into the downing of flight MH17 above Ukraine in 2014, I highlight key dilemmas the Dutch Safety Board dealt with.     

Resilience in peacebuilding: Contesting uncertainty,ambiguity, and complexity

With the failure of liberal peace strategies in the Global South, resilience has recently become the risk management strategy par excellence in peacebuilding. Since it is not possible to predict when the next crisis will take place, peacebuilders must invest in bottom-up adaptive capacities to cope with external shocks. This article moves away from governmentality accounts of resilience which are overtly deterministic and depoliticizing. Instead, it posits that the uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity associated with resilience mean that we should expect opportunities for contestation and institutional agency. This argument will be illustrated by drawing upon the European Union’s adoption of the resilience approach in its peacebuilding and security policies. The article argues that while uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity constitute the ontological conditions that underpin the rise of resilience in peacebuilding, they are also likely to lead to its potential demise.     

The 22 September 1979 Vela Incident: Radionuclide and Hydroacoustic Evidence for a Nuclear Explosion

This article offers a new analysis of radionuclide and hydroacoustic data to support a low-yield nuclear weapon test as a plausible explanation for the still contentious 22 September 1979 Vela Incident, in which U.S. satellite Vela 6911 detected an optical signal characteristic of an atmospheric nuclear explosion over the Southern Indian or Atlantic Ocean. Based on documents not previously widely available, as well as recently declassified papers and letters, this article concludes that iodine-131 found in the thyroids of some Australian sheep would be consistent with them having grazed in the path of a potential radioactive fallout plume from a 22 September low-yield nuclear test in the Southern Indian Ocean. Further, several declassified letters and reports which describe aspects of still classified hydroacoustic reports and data favor the test scenario. The radionuclide and hydroacoustic data taken together with the analysis of the double-flash optical signal picked up by Vela 6911 that was described in a companion 2017 article (“The 22 September 1979 Vela Incident: The Detected Double-Flash”) can be traced back to sources with similar spatial and temporal origins and serve as a strong indicator for a nuclear explosion being responsible for the 22 September 1979 Vela Incident.     

Analysis of artillery shoot‐and‐scoot tactics

Firing multiple artillery rounds from the same location has two main benefits: a high rate of fire at the enemy and improved accuracy as the shooter's aim adjusts to previous rounds. However, firing repeatedly from the same location carries significant risk that the enemy will detect the artillery's location. Therefore, the shooter may periodically move locations to avoid counter‐battery fire. This maneuver is known as the shoot‐and‐scoot tactic. This article analyzes the shoot‐and‐scoot tactic for a time‐critical mission using Markov models. We compute optimal move policies and develop heuristics for more complex and realistic settings. Spending a reasonable amount of time firing multiple shots from the same location is often preferable to moving immediately after firing an initial salvo. Moving frequently reduces risk to the artillery, but also limits the artillery's ability to inflict damage on the enemy.     

Aggregating courier deliveries

We consider the problem of efficiently scheduling deliveries by an uncapacitated courier from a central location under online arrivals. We consider both adversary‐controlled and Poisson arrival processes. In the adversarial setting we provide a randomized (3βΔ/2δ ? 1) ‐competitive algorithm, where β is the approximation ratio of the traveling salesman problem, δ is the minimum distance between the central location and any customer, and Δ is the length of the optimal traveling salesman tour overall customer locations and the central location. We provide instances showing that this analysis is tight. We also prove a 1 + 0.271Δ/δ lower‐bound on the competitive ratio of any algorithm in this setting. In the Poisson setting, we relax our assumption of deterministic travel times by assuming that travel times are distributed with a mean equal to the excursion length. We prove that optimal policies in this setting follow a threshold structure and describe this structure. For the half‐line metric space we bound the performance of the randomized algorithm in the Poisson setting, and show through numerical experiments that the performance of the algorithm is often much better than this bound.     

The Illusion of Afghanistan’s Electoral Representative Democracy: The Cases of Afghan Presidential and National Legislative Elections

This article is the latest in a series of published articles systematically examining Afghan Presidential and legislative elections. Structural problems including fraud, ethno-linguistic block voting, and the Single Non-Transferable Vote have had significant impacts on the development of Afghan democratic elections. The challenge now facing the current Afghan government and future elections is the daunting task of uniting the Afghan people while not repeating the electoral mistakes of the past. The tricky balancing act of fostering an overarching national identity without being perceived as privileging particular identities requires strong leadership and a willingness to challenge traditional ethnic, linguistic, and religious norms when need be. Karzai and Ghani Administrations have seriously failed relative to this dynamic.     

Health Insurance,Health Conditions,and Veteran Health Care Utilization

Abstract

The utilization of health care services by veterans has received much attention in recent years. However, the impact of the large array of factors affecting the veterans’ demand for health care services remains understudied. These factors include individual socio-demographic and economic characteristics, the availability of various sources of health insurance, and the prevalence of medical conditions. We use public data to analyze how veterans’ utilization of health care services varies with these factors. We also analyze how the reliance on VA services varies when alternative sources of health insurance are available to veterans. Based on the estimated relationships, we use a micro-simulation model to forecast future health care utilization, both inside and outside of VA.     

Tripwires and free-riders: Do forward-deployed U.S. troops reduce the willingness of host-country citizens to fight for their country?

This article investigates the relationship between U.S. overseas troops and the willingness of the citizens of host states to fight for their country. The study joins the long-running debate about burden-sharing and free-riding among U.S. allies. Unlike most previous empirical studies, we focus on non-material or intangible measures of the underlying concepts. Our dependent variable estimates the proportion of citizens expressing a willingness to fight for their country. Scores at the aggregate-national as well as the individual level are shaped by the presence of U.S. military forces, which act as a “tripwire” signaling credible security commitments. This increases opportunities of (non-material) free-riding. We present both bivariate and multivariate analyses covering the period 1981–2014 to test this supposition. Findings indicate that once U.S. troop levels reach a certain threshold (between 100 and 500 troops), citizens’ willingness to fight drops significantly. This likely reflects non-material free-riding.     

The Damoclean sword of offensive cyber: Policy uncertainty and collective insecurity

Cyberspace is a new domain of operation, with its own characteristics. Cyber weapons differ qualitatively from kinetic ones: They generate effects by non-kinetic means through information, technology, and networks. Their properties, opportunities, and constraints are comparable to the qualitative difference between conventional and nuclear weapons. New weapons and their target sets in a new domain raise a series of unresolved policy challenges at the domestic, bilateral, and international levels about deterrence, attribution, and response. They also introduce new risks: uncertainty about unintended consequences, expectations of efficacy, and uncertainty about both the target’s and the international community’s response. Cyber operations offer considerable benefits for states to achieve strategic objectives both covertly and overtly. However, without a strategic framework to contain and possibly deter their use, make state and non-state behavior more predictable in the absence of reciprocal norms, and limit their impact, an environment where states face persistent attacks that nonetheless fall below the threshold of armed conflict presents a policy dilemma that reinforces collective insecurity.