A usable past: a contemporary approach to history for the Western profession of arms

The most effective way for the Western profession of arms to use history is to disavow the purism and narrow specialisation of today’s academia in favour of developing a contemporary approach to the subject. The latter aims to foster a range of applied diagnostic skills that transcend the temporal dimensions of past, present, and future. A contemporary approach to history for military professionals emphasises the use of inter-disciplinary war studies to enhance policy relevance. In any defense and security organisation, history must be usable in the sense of providing cognitive and interpretative skills for probing relationships between possibility and actuality, between experience and expectation, and between singularity and repetition. Using history to examine such dialectical interconnections is particularly valuable when military establishments confront their essential task of analyzing emerging trends in the future of war.     

Decentralising authoritarianism? The international intervention,the new ‘revolutionaries’ and the involution of Post-Qadhafi Libya

In 2011, Libya became the only country of the Arab Uprisings where NATO and the Arab League intervened militarily, ostensibly to protect the civilian population, but in reality in support of the opposition National Transitional Council. This article argues that, since 2011, Libya has transitioned from Qadhafi’s centralised authoritarianism to a new decentralised authoritarianism where multiple centres of power coexist and sometimes overlap, while leaving room only for formal democratic institutions. This is the result of decisions taken by the ‘revolutionaries’ after the overthrow of the dictator, and a consequence of long-standing features of the Libyan state and society.     

Conflict and fiscal capacity

We examine the role of war in retarding state fiscal capacity in developing countries, measured by tax revenue ratios to GDP. We build a simple theoretical model of a factionalized state, where patronage substitutes for common interest public goods, along with violent contestation over a rent or prize. Our dynamic panel empirical analysis applied to 79 developing countries, during 1980–2010, indicates that war, especially civil war, retards fiscal capacity, along with imperfect democracy, political repression, poor governance, and dependence on oil and macroeconomic mismanagement. High intensity conflict is particularly destructive of state capacity. In countries experiencing low intensity wars, other institutional factors may matter more than war. The diminution of fiscal capacity due to war appears less pronounced after the end of the cold war.     

推进舰队舰船装备保障军民融合深度发展

文章就推动装备保障军民融合深度发展,提出应正确把握和领会其基本内涵,客观分析其发展现状,着力解决制约装备保障军民融合深度发展的深层次矛盾和问题,并从创新体制机制、构建管理系统、健全法规标准三方面提出了相关的对策思考。     

海军兵棋演习系统研究

兵棋演习系统是我军未来开展模拟训练的重要手段,针对国内外对兵棋推演系统现状及技术发展趋势进行研究,提出海军兵棋演习系统的发展方向和设计方法,并结合海军兵棋推演的研究内容重点,给出作战规则建模、指挥关系建模等主要关键技术的解决方法,为我国海军未来兵棋推演系统设计、研究和发展提供技术支撑。     

户式集中空调在民用住宅中的应用及发展

简单介绍户式集中空调系统的由来,分析了制冷剂系统、风机盘管加新风系统、全空气系统3种类型的优缺点。结合工程实例,总结出全空气系统舒适、节能、低成本的特点。对户式集中空调的发展及其普及要解决的问题提出了自己的见解,最后指出其有着广阔的前景。     

当前战区陆军预备役部队民用运力动员初探

我国民用运力资源丰富.自2020年7月1日零时起,预备役部队全面纳入军队领导体制,改由党中央、中央军委集中统一领导.在此背景下,本文对民用运力动员的含义进行了深入剖析,分析了民用运力动员的主要任务和战区陆军部队对民用运力动员的要求,指出了预备役部队民用运力动员所面临的矛盾和困难,提出了推进民用运力动员的几点对策,如健全...     

美军战略传播中的“叙事”策略

随着互联网技术的飞速发展,信息传播对国家政治、经济、外交和国防带来巨大冲击和影响。美军意识到传播叙事是政府和军队塑造形象、谋划战略、输出文化价值观的重要手段。美国从"重讲故事"的角度出发,将"叙事"包装成对外战略传播的新型方式,从思维认知、情感操控、舆论引导等方面强化对对手的心理威慑和影响,同时以新媒体为媒介扩大叙事传播的影响受众,进而达到物理打击所难以发挥的影响。     

Forces of heresy versus forces of conservation: making sense of Hezb-e Islami-ye Afghanistan’s and the Taleban’s positions in the Afghan insurgency

Ethnicity and ideology are frequently used to determine whether an armed group is hostile or friendly vis-à-vis the state. By contrast, I argue that the social structure of insurgent movements holds more explanatory power for their respective positions than ethnicity or ideology. To illustrate this, I apply Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of a contest between forces of ‘conservation’ and forces of ‘heresy’ to the current Afghanistan war. I demonstrate that the social structure of the Taleban renders them prone to ‘heresy’, while the formerly second biggest insurgent group, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s party, has rather been an impeded force of ‘conservation.’     

Between the Cracks: Actor Fragmentation and Local Conflict Systems in the Libyan Civil War

Abstract

After nearly four years of civil war, Libya continues to be described as an ‘ungoverned space’ where the collapse of state institutions reignited tribal, political, religious and ideological tensions. These accounts, however, obscure Libya’s complex subnational governance, and the role of non-state armed groups in shaping the emerging political orders. By contrast, we contend that distinct subnational political orders have emerged in Libya since 2014 in which actors engage in state-making practices driven by local interests. Using empirical evidence to explore the activity of non-state armed groups during the Libyan civil conflict, we highlight that the local conflict environments in eastern, western and southern Libya provide specific incentives that shape the process of armed group splintering and patterns of violence. The findings demonstrate that claims to authority and notions of statehood extend far beyond the state whereby governance relations are negotiated between state and non-state actors. Conflict patterns, (in)stability and the prevailing political order are therefore conditional on the nature of the dominant actor, their strategies and modes of violence within their areas of influence. Through this analysis, the paper provides a more granular understanding of the local political dynamics that drive violence in Libya and civil wars more generally.