ALBANIA'S CHEMICAL WEAPONS CON

In 2003, the Albanian government declared that in late 2002 it had discovered a heretofore unknown cache of 16 tons of chemical weapons. Tirana requested and received assistance from the West in securing and destroying the materials, a task completed in 2007. Albania has been lauded for its responsible handling of the discovery and for being the first nation to complete the destruction of its chemical weapons under the terms of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). This article argues that the Albanian government has always knowingly possessed the weapons, keeping them a secret until a post-September 11, 2001 international focus on weapons of mass destruction made it politically worthwhile for Tirana to declare and destroy them. The likelihood that the governments of the West turned a willful blind eye to this chain of events is troubling for the credibility of the CWC and confidence in nonproliferation measures in general. Finally, the author recommends measures to avoid and address similar situations in the future.     

CALLING FOR ACTION

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards are under more stress today than at any time in their history. Compliance concerns, a shortage of resources and technology, and growing responsibilities threaten to undermine the effectiveness and credibility of this vital and fundamental pillar of the nonproliferation regime. To address this challenge, the United States recently launched the Next Generation Safeguards Initiative. The goal of this initiative is to ensure the IAEA makes the fullest possible use of its existing authority to prevent the diversion of safeguarded material and to investigate suspicious activities. The initiative will advance state-of-the-art technology, foster the development of a new generation of safeguards experts, and promote technology collaborations and safeguards-conscious infrastructure in states using or pursuing nuclear power. Although it has a domestic focus, the initiative's intent is to catalyze a much broader commitment to international safeguards in partnership with other governments and the IAEA.     

VERIFIABILITY,RELIABILITY, AND NATIONAL SECURITY

The rejection of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) by the U.S. Senate in October 1999 could have been avoided, and the consequences of that vote still loom in the minds of supporters of the treaty. President Barack Obama has embraced the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, and a key element of the Obama administration's arms control agenda is delivering on U.S. CTBT ratification. In order to secure the two-thirds majority in the Senate necessary to ratify the treaty, senators that remain skeptical of nuclear disarmament must also be convinced that the entry into force of the CTBT is in the national security interest of the United States. This article provides an analysis of the issues surrounding U.S. CTBT ratification divided into three segments—verifiability of the treaty, reliability of the U.S. stockpile, and the treaty's impact on U.S. national security—and concludes that CTBT ratification serves the security objectives of the United States. The CTBT constitutes an integral component of the multilateral nonproliferation architecture designed to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and it constrains the qualitative development of nuclear weapons, thereby hindering efforts by states of concern to develop advanced nuclear weapons.     

China's Naval Ambitions in the Indian Ocean

This article argues that an increasingly sea-power-minded China will neither shelter passively in coastal waters, nor throw itself into competition with the United States in the Pacific Ocean. Rather, Beijing will direct its energies toward South and Southeast Asia, where supplies of oil, natural gas, and other commodities critical to China's economic development must pass. There China will encounter an equally sea-power-minded India that enjoys marked geostrategic advantages. Beijing will likely content itself with ‘soft power’ diplomacy in these regions until it can settle the dispute with Taiwan, freeing up resources for maritime endeavors farther from China's coasts.     

The Zimbabwe people’s revolutionary army military operations in Makonde district and the attack on Salisbury’s fuel storage tanks, 1965-1979

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army operations in Mashonaland West province with particular reference to Makonde District during the country’s war of liberation. Despite the growing literature on ZAPU and ZPRA in Zimbabwe’s war of liberation there is little that has been written concerning the operations of ZPRA guerrillas in Mashonaland provinces. Guided by evidence drawn from secondary and primary sources the article further asserts that ZPRA adopted a four pronged strategy in Makonde District. This strategy in part was hinged on the politicization of the population on the one hand and annihilation of the enemy forces, attrition and manoeuvre warfare on the other. Again, the article argues that ZPRA guerrillas attempted to capture Salisbury (Harare) in order to conquer the Rhodesian Security Forces’ centre of gravity. It was hoped that the capture of the capital city would Makoni District was of strategic significance to the conduct of ZPRA operations and arguably hastened Ian Smith’s decision to attend the Lancaster House Conference negotiations that led to the independence of Zimbabwe in 1980.     

Domestic political and external security determinants of the demand for greek military expenditure

By European Union and NATO standards, Greece consistently allocates substantial human and material resources to defence. The Greek defence burden (i.e. military expenditure as a share of GDP) has invariably been appreciably higher than the EU and NATO averages. The paper applies an autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) to present cointegrated estimates of the demand function for Greek military expenditure, in which domestic political factors and external security determinants are incorporated. Our empirical findings suggest that Greek defence spending over the period 1960-1998 has been influenced by both external security concerns, namely Turkey, as well as changes in the domestic political scene.     

An Empirical Analysis of the Arms Race Between South and North Korea

This study analyses an arms race between South and North Korea over the period 1963–2000. Despite the strategic importance of the Korean Peninsula, the arms race between South and North Korea has rarely been studied. In this study, the South–North arms race is empirically estimated using Richardson’s action–reaction model. The pattern of South–North arms race between the Cold War (1963–1989) and the post‐Cold War eras (1990–2000) as well as the existence of an arms race is examined comparing both countries’ defence spending, number of military personnel and tactical aircraft.     

ACHIEVING THE VISION OF THE NPT

This article assesses the prospects for a strategy of incrementalism to lead to achievement of the core bargain of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons: non-nuclear weapon states' nuclear nonproliferation in exchange for nuclear weapon states' nuclear disarmament to the point of “global zero.” Game theory, prospect theory, and liberal international theory are used to evaluate the potential of a strategy of incrementalism. While separately each has insights to offer, it is when all three theoretical approaches are used in tandem that meaningful explanatory gains emerge. The article concludes that incrementalism probably cannot lead to complete nonproliferation and global nuclear zero. Instead, signal events (as described by prospect theory) are needed to “punctuate” incremental processes in negotiations (best explained by liberal international theory) in order to move past hindrances such as international structural constraints (exemplified by game theory) and the conservative risk-taking propensities of state elites (described by prospect theory).     

More Attacks,Less Violence

A response to John Stone, Dale Peterson, and Gary McGraw on cyber war.     

把握党的群众路线科学内涵需厘清的几个逻辑问题

当前,以“为民、务实、清廉”为主要内容的党的群众路线教育实践活动在全党全军深入开展,准确把握党的群众路线科学内涵,必须厘清党员干部要“相信谁”、“依靠谁”、“为了谁”和“我是谁”这四个逻辑问题,才能科学地指导教育实践活动深入开展,这既是确保活动取得良好成效的客观要求,也是新形势下丰富马克思主义党建学说的应有之义.