Winning hearts and minds: legitimacy in the Namibian war for independence

Efforts at winning hearts and minds (WHAM) impact on and are affected by perceptions of legitimacy. In the Namibian war for independence (1966–1989) efforts of the South African counterinsurgent forces at winning hearts and minds focused mainly on persuading the population to cooperate in exchange for material benefits and services. The article demonstrates that this successfully contributed to a dimension of legitimacy that is conceptualized as pragmatic legitimacy. However, other dimensions of legitimacy are identified in which the South Africans were lacking, that is in moral, legal, and identity-based legitimacy. Furthermore, in areas where control was contested and where the population could not be shielded from insurgent intimidation, it is argued that the effects of coercion outweighed legitimacy altogether.     

Birth of a norm champion: how South Africa came to support the NPT’s indefinite extension

In 1995, South Africa was in a special position. It was: a new party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the first country to voluntarily renounce nuclear weapons, led by a charismatic leader, and seen as a champion of disarmament principles. Yet South Africa’s new leaders were also interested in affirming their position within the Non-Aligned Movement, which was adamantly opposed to the NPT’s indefinite extension. Why, then, did South Africa decide to support the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995? Existing scholarship has ascribed too much credit to pressure from the United States, overlooking domestic debates in South Africa and the bifurcation between professional diplomats and political elites. This article, building on new archival sources and in-depth oral-history interviews with major actors, demonstrates that South African diplomats opposed indefinite extension while South African policy elites allocated little attention to the topic until late in the game. The findings contribute to our understanding of South Africa’s norm entrepreneurship, as well as the politics of global nonproliferation.     

The Dao of foreign policy: Understanding China’s dual strategy in the South China Sea

In the South China Sea, China neither implements power-maximizing policy nor engages a peaceful approach. Instead, China implements both coercion and cooperation in pursuing its strategic interest in the disputed area. How can we explain China’s paradoxical behavior? This article claims that the best way to explain China’s policy in the South China Sea is to understand the character of dualism in China’s strategic culture. Following constructivist theory that stresses culture, this article argues that Chinese duality approach in the South China Sea is rooted in the philosophy of Daoism. The symbol of Yin-Yang depicts Chinese assertive as well as cooperative behavior in dealing with the South China Sea dispute. Although from a normative perspective Daoism recognizes pacifism and non-violent behavior, the most important feature of Daoism is the assumption that reality consists of two opposing elements that are mutually embedded.     

Group testing procedures with quantitative features and incomplete identification

We present a group testing model for items characterized by marker random variables. An item is defined to be good (defective) if its marker is below (above) a given threshold. The items can be tested in groups; the goal is to obtain a prespecified number of good items by testing them in optimally sized groups. Besides this group size, the controller has to select a threshold value for the group marker sums, and the target number of groups which by the tests are classified to consist only of good items. These decision variables have to be chosen so as to minimize a cost function, which is a linear combination of the expected number of group tests and an expected penalty for missing the desired number of good items, subject to constraints on the probabilities of misclassifications. We treat two models of this kind: the first one is based on an infinite population size, whereas the second one deals with the case of a finite number of available items. All performance measures are derived in closed form; approximations are also given. Furthermore, we prove monotonicity properties of the components of the objective function and of the constraints. In several examples, we study (i) the dependence of the cost function on the decision variables and (ii) the dependence of the optimal values of the decision variables (group size, group marker threshold, and stopping rule for groups classified as clean) and of the target functionals (optimal expected number of tests, optimal expected penalty, and minimal expected cost) on the system parameters.© 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2011     

The Evolution of US Extended Deterrence and South Korea’s Nuclear Ambitions

ABSTRACT

Extended deterrence has been a main pillar of the security alliance between the United States and South Korea (Republic of Korea [ROK]) since the end of the Korean War. The changing dynamics of US extended deterrence in Korea, however, affected Seoul’s strategic choices within its bilateral alliance relationship with Washington. Examining the evolution of US extended deterrence in the Korean Peninsula until the Nixon administration, this article explains why South Korea began its nuclear weapons programme in a historical context of the US–ROK alliance relationship. This article argues that President Park Chung-hee’s increasing uncertainty about the US security commitment to South Korea in the 1960s led to his decision to develop nuclear weapons in the early 1970s despite the fact that US tactical nuclear weapons were still stationed in South Korea.     

Size Still Matters: Explaining Sri Lanka’s Counterinsurgency Victory over the Tamil Tigers

The military effectiveness literature has largely dismissed the role of material preponderance in favor of strategic interaction theories. The study of counterinsurgency, in which incumbent victory is increasingly rare despite material superiority, has also turned to other strategic dynamics explanations like force employment, leadership, and insurgent/adversary attributes. Challenging these two trends, this paper contends that even in cases of counterinsurgency, material preponderance remains an essential—and at times the most important—factor in explaining battlefield outcomes and effectiveness. To test this, the paper turns to the case of the Sri Lankan state’s fight against the Tamil Tiger insurgency, a conflict which offers rich variation over time across six periods and over 25 years. Drawing on evidence from historical and journalistic accounts, interviews, memoirs, and field research, the paper demonstrates that material preponderance accounts for variation in military effectiveness and campaign outcomes (including military victory in the final campaign) better than strategic explanations. Additionally, a new quantitative data-set assembled on annual loss-exchange ratios demonstrates the superiority of materialist explanations above those of skill, human capital, and regime type.     

Brinkmanship,not COIN,in Pakistan’s post-9/11 Internal War

Politics is critical to making sense of Pakistani successes and failures in dealing with non-state armed groups. This includes domestic political currents; regional political currents; and the global impetus of the post-9/11 era. How these currents overlap renders to any reading of insurgency in Pakistan real complexity. This article engages with this complexity rather than shirking from it. Its hypothesis is that while the insurgency bordering Afghanistan has been an epicentre of Pakistani military efforts to fight the Taliban, this theatre is in of itself insufficiently inclusive to grasp the nature of Pakistan’s security challenges and its consequent responses.     

B-learning在《现代教育技术》教学中的实验研究

在《现代教育技术》的课程教学中,笔者对B-learning进行了前测——后测菲对等控制组设计的准实验研究。通过对实验数据的分析发现,在学科知识测验方两,两组无显著差异;在是否完成自己预期目标：疗面,两者呈现了显著差异;在协作方面,两种教学方法也擘现出了较显著的差异。另外,B-learning对于培养学习者认知能力和解决问题的能力非常有效。为了能更好地开展B-learning,教师要帮助学生变革他们的学习观,给学生及时有效地指导,并提供丰富的支持环境。     

关于提高新疆南疆地区双语教育质量的思考

南疆双语教育发展的突出优势是政府高度重视,政策制度落实到位;受众积极性空前高涨,汉语学习氛围浓厚。但由于缺乏双语师资和汉语学习环境,双语教育质量较低。需要调整进度目标;完善层级师资培训机制,促进中青年教师快速成长;深化区内师资激励机制,切实发挥骨干教师力量;建立区内师资疏通机制,引导部分老教师转岗;进一步加大内高班、特培计划等订单式培养力度;拓宽高校双语师资培养输送渠道;积极推行"寄宿制"办学形式;营造汉语学习环境。