Coping with the refugee and migrant crisis in Slovenia: the role of the military

Approximately 470,000 refugees and migrants passed through Slovenian territory between September 2015 and March 2016, creating a crisis that required a great deal of organisational and field work on the part of many governmental and non-governmental institutions. In the social sciences, a discourse on “security versus humanitarian approach” on the refugees and migrant issue appeared; however, the article goes over such a discourse and deals with roles and problems of different institutions – mostly the military – that responded to the crisis. Namely, coping with the crisis was characterised by significant institutional adjustments, difficult co-ordination, and intense public debate. The Slovenian Armed Forces were included in this process as support for Civil Protection and Police. The military’s role followed the military missions defined by the Defence Act; however, the government also proposed some changes to the act that were met with some doubts on the part of the public and different institutions.     

South African defence policy: the rationale and impact of the SANDF’s primary role and conventional force design

The 2015 South African Defence Review set out to reverse the deterioration of South African National Defence Force (SANDF) capabilities. Within the South African Department of Defence (DOD) this deterioration is expressed mainly in terms of a decreasing defence budget, subsequent declining conventional capabilities and obsolete prime mission equipment. Contemporary research and defence expert debates on this theme, point out the disjuncture between policy ends and the available means, with scepticism for an increased defence budget given the DOD’s lack of internal reform and strategy adjustment. One question that remains largely unanswered in the literature regarding the decline of the SANDF, is why both the policy-makers and the SANDF have remained focused on the primary role of the military (defending territorial integrity) accompanied with an unaffordable conventional force design? This question relates to the aim of this paper and is explored by revisiting initial defence policy decisions and compromises that were made in the 1990s. It is argued that the primary role of the SANDF and its conventional force design suited the interests of both the politicians and the military, but that the drawbacks thereof have harshly caught up with the DOD.     

民族区域自治地区推进信息化和发展信息产业的战略思考

信息技术已经成为当今世界经济与社会发展的主要驱动力,信息产业也已经成为新世纪具有强劲发展实力的经济增长点.民族区域自治地区实施西部大开发战略,实现超越式发展,加快现代化建设的步伐,提高国民经济发展的质量与素质,必须重视对信息化推进和信息产业发展的依靠.但民族区域自治地区推进信息化和发展信息产业的基础条件较差,发展速度亟待进一步加快,发展层次亟待进一步提升,因此,必须要有超常规的强有力措施来推进,需要作为"一号工程"来实施.     

Collective action and the common enemy effect

How is collective defence by players affected when they face a threat from an intelligent attacker rather than a natural threat? This paper analyses this question using a game-theoretic model. Facing an intelligent attacker has an effect if players move first and visibly set their defence strategies, thereby exposing any players who do not defend, and if the attacker is, moreover, not able to commit to a random attack. Depending on the parameters of the game, the presence of an intelligent attacker either increases the probability that players jointly defend (where such joint defence either does or does not constitute a utilitarian optimum), or decreases the probability that players jointly defend (even though joint defence is a utilitarian optimum).     

Militarism in post-war Cyprus: the development of the ideology of defence

This article provides a theorisation of militarism in post-war Cyprus. Based on qualitative empirical research conducted in Cyprus in 2011, the article explores the manifestation and steadfastness of Greek-Cypriot militarism, and the development of this militarism, which appeared after the partition of the island in 1974. In particular, it proposes the ideology of defence as a way to understand post-war Greek-Cypriot militarism. It shows the embedded nature of defence in the idea of the national struggle. It aims at mapping the character of this militarism in order to provide the grounds for future discussion. Only by understanding the interconnecting discourses that made Greek-Cypriot militarism possible in post-war Cyprus, can we understand its past, present, and future.     

Defence industrial policy – a sound security strategy or an economic fallacy?

This article explores whether it makes sense for national governments to employ defence industrial policies – such as offsets and discriminatory procurement practices – to support their domestic defence industries. This question has so far primarily been discussed by economists, who have argued strongly against the use of defence industrial policies. This article maintains that these economists fail to address the often complex motivation behind the introduction of these policies. It illustrates these shortcomings by contrasting their arguments against a case study of Norway, which accounts for the country’s use of defence industrial polices from the early post-Second World War era up until today. The article concludes that, depending on their objectives, defence industrial policies can be seen as either a sound security strategy or an economic fallacy.     

Strategic and Budgetary Necessity,or Decision-making ‘Along the Grain’? The Royal Navy and the 1981 Defence Review

The 1981 Defence Review undertaken by John Nott as Secretary of State for Defence controversially and dramatically cut the capabilities of the Royal Navy’s surface fleet. Many of those involved in these decisions have emphasised the budgetary and politico-strategic drivers for these reductions in capability, and the first generation of academic analysis has broadly followed this position. However, recently released government and private archival sources demonstrate that Nott’s review was initially much more severe than thought, and that this was due as much to the presumptions and assumptions of the key decision makers as to any strategic or budgetary factors.     

我国消防产业现状分析及对策建议

我国消防产业经过几十年的发展,在企业规模、市场开发、技术水平、规范管理、政策调控、中介组织等方面都有了很大发展,但也存在许多不足,与社会经济发展需要和国际竞争局势不相适应,必须整体谋划,寻求新的发展。     

The effects of customer rebates and retailer incentives on a manufacturer's profits and sales

In some industries such as automotive, production costs are largely fixed and therefore maximizing revenue is the main objective. Manufacturers use promotions directed to the end customers and/or retailers in their distribution channels to increase sales and market share. We study a game theoretical model to examine the impact of “retailer incentive” and “customer rebate” promotions on the manufacturer's pricing and the retailer's ordering/sales decisions. The main tradeoff is that customer rebates are given to every customer, while the use of retailer incentives is controlled by the retailer. We consider several models with different demand characteristics and information asymmetry between the manufacturer and a price discriminating retailer, and we determine which promotion would benefit the manufacturer under which market conditions. When demand is deterministic, we find that retailer incentives increase the manufacturer's profits (and sales) while customer rebates do not unless they lead to market expansion. When the uncertainty in demand (“market potential”) is high, a customer rebate can be more profitable than the retailer incentive for the manufacturer. With numerical examples, we provide additional insights on the profit gains by the right choice of promotion.© 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2010     

A general strategic capacity planning model under demand uncertainty

Capacity planning decisions affect a significant portion of future revenue. In equipment intensive industries, these decisions usually need to be made in the presence of both highly volatile demand and long capacity installation lead times. For a multiple product case, we present a continuous‐time capacity planning model that addresses problems of realistic size and complexity found in current practice. Each product requires specific operations that can be performed by one or more tool groups. We consider a number of capacity allocation policies. We allow tool retirements in addition to purchases because the stochastic demand forecast for each product can be decreasing. We present a cluster‐based heuristic algorithm that can incorporate both variance reduction techniques from the simulation literature and the principles of a generalized maximum flow algorithm from the network optimization literature. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2006