The rise of targeted killing

Targeted killings have become a central tactic in the United States' campaigns against militant and terrorist groups in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. Both ‘demand’ and ‘supply’ factors explain the rise of targeted killings. Demand for targeted killings increased as the United States faced new threats from militant groups that could not be effectively countered with conventional military force. Concerns about the political consequences of long-term military involvement overseas and American casualties led political leaders to supply more targeted killings. The conclusion discusses how this tactic may have unintended consequences as other states follow the United States use of targeted killings.     

Setting military reenlistment bonuses

The United States military frequently has difficulty retaining enlisted personnel beyond their initial enlistment. A bonus program within each service, called a Selective Reenlistment Bonus (SRB) program, seeks to enhance reenlistments and thus reduce personnel shortages in critical military occupational specialties (MOSs). The amount of bonus is set by assigning “SRB multipliers” to each MOS. We develop a nonlinear integer program to select multipliers which minimize a function of deviations from desired reenlistment targets. A Lagrangian relaxation of a linearized version of the integer program is used to obtain lower bounds and feasible solutions. The best feasible solution, discovered in a coordinate search of the Lagrangian function, is heuristically improved by apportioning unexpended funds. For large problems a heuristic variable reduction is employed to speed model solution. U.S. Army data and requirements for FY87 yield a 0-1 integer program with 12,992 binary variables and 273 constraints, which is solved within 0.00002% of optimality on an IBM 3033AP in less than 1.7 seconds. More general models with up to 463,000 binary variables are solved, on average, to within 0.009% of optimality in less than 1.8 minutes. The U.S. Marine Corps has used a simpler version of this model since 1986. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

A computationally efficient approach for determining inventory levels in a capacitated multiechelon production‐distribution system

The system under study is a single item, two‐echelon production‐inventory system consisting of a capacitated production facility, a central warehouse, and M regional distribution centers that satisfy stochastic demand. Our objective is to determine a system base‐stock level which minimizes the long run average system cost per period. Central to the approach are (1) an inventory allocation model and associated convex cost function designed to allocate a given amount of system inventory across locations, and (2) a characterization of the amount of available system inventory using the inventory shortfall random variable. An exact model must consider the possibility that inventories may be imbalanced in a given period. By assuming inventory imbalances cannot occur, we develop an approximation model from which we obtain a lower bound on the per period expected cost. Through an extensive simulation study, we analyze the quality of our approximation, which on average performed within 0.50% of the lower bound. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 47: 377–398, 2000     

Investment in production resource flexibility: An empirical investigation of methods for planning under uncertainty

We examine several methods for evaluating resource acquisition decisions under uncertainty. Traditional methods may underestimate equipment benefit when part of this benefit comes from decision flexibility. We develop a new, practical method for resource planning under uncertainty, and show that this approach is more accurate than several commonly used methods. We successfully applied our approach to an investment problem faced by a major firm in the aviation information industry. Our recommendations were accepted and resulted in estimated annual savings in excess of $1 million (US). © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2003     

Eight Lost Years? Nixon,Ford, Kissinger and the Non-Proliferation Regime, 1969–1977

The years following the signature of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968 have generally been seen as a period of neglect in US non-proliferation policy. While joining recent scholarship questioning this, the article also shows that the policies that emerged from the Nixon–Ford years were the product of a broad range of factors that constrained both the United States’ ability and willingness to build an effective non-proliferation regime. These included the Nixon administration’s initial skepticism regarding the NPT, as well as the global dispersion of power away from the US, combined with the continued importance of anti-Soviet containment.     

Evolutionary Psychology and Global Security

Peace and global security are human endeavors, and thus their attainment depends as much on psychology as it does on governance and technology. In this paper I outline 3 ways our evolved psychology is an obstacle to achieving international cooperation and peace. First, humans show strong evidence of adaptations for cooperation within groups, but equally clear evidence that this cooperative nature does not extend to members of other groups. Second, humans evolved to have a relative sense of fairness, and thus will often reject even mutually beneficial agreements if they benefit others more than themselves. Third, humans evolved to be self-deceptive and hypocritical, believing in the unique righteousness and inevitable victory of their own cause, which tends to exacerbate conflict. Nevertheless, these obstacles are not insurmountable and an awareness of them can help in the development of strategies to increase the chances of lasting peace and security.     

‘Outside their expertise’: The implications of Field Manual 3-24 for the professional military education of non-commissioned officers

Within the framework of classical theory, the joint US Army-Marine field manual Counterinsurgency (FM 3-24) described an ambitious set of skills required for success against guerrillas. But if counterinsurgency, as FM 3-24 describes it, is ‘the graduate level of warfare’, then these two military services have been for years systematically failing to train their talent in the appropriate fields. In today's small wars, NCOs serve as modern-day Mounties, and consequently require at least a modest undergraduate education in armed good governance.     

ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MILITARY EXPENDITURE,THREAT, AND ECONOMIC GROWTH: A NONLINEAR APPROACH

The main objective of the paper is to decipher the military expenditure–economic growth relationship, taking the level of economic development (income) into consideration. Our findings suggest the following: (i) military expenditure has a significantly negative relationship to economic growth for the 23 countries with initial incomes (threshold variable) less than or equal to $475.93; (ii) when the threat level is heightened, economic growth (23 countries) is expected to decrease. However, military expenditure in the presence of sufficiently large threats increases growth; (iii) for the remaining 69 countries whose initial incomes (real GDP per capita in 1992 price) exceed $475.93, no significant relationship exists whether the threat variable is taken into consideration or not.