Neo-conservation

Africa's wildlife is in danger. The last couple of years have been disastrous for the African elephant as poaching for ivory reached record numbers. Rhinos have been hit hard with several sub-species becoming extinct. The current anti-poaching and anti-trafficking operations lack the sophistication and determination that is found abundantly within criminal organisations immersed in this illicit trade. Terrorism, rebellious elements and corrupt officials all benefit from the destruction of Africa's eco-system and the inaction or lack of efficient action thereof by law enforcement officials. This commentary suggests new courses of action using methods from the fields of counter-terrorism and special operations.     

UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL REFORM

Much has changed since the United Nations was established in 1945. New challenges confront the organization including global warming, global diseases and global terrorism. Responding to these challenges requires continual change, adaptation and learning—a hallmark of the stewardship of current UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. In 1997 Annan announced major structural changes to streamline the organization, follow up five years later by another initiative to clarify, simplify and rationalize the organization and subsequent efforts to streamline UN peacekeeping. The UN has also forged new partnerships with civil society and the private sector. Important as these changes are, reform of the General Assembly and the Security Council hold the organization hostage to the vested interests of key member states. There are a number of options to make the Council more representative including regionalism, population distribution, economic weight, culture/religion/civilization and democracy. Clearly the largest challenge is the absence of representation for Asia, Africa and Latin America. Currently Germany, Japan, India and Brazil have strong claims—plus at least one candidate from Africa. Should these four countries decide to act in unison, they could force reform of the Security Council     

The inherent propensity toward peace or war embodied in weaponry

Thomas Schelling argues that armed adversaries face an inherent propensity toward peace or war embodied in their weaponry, geography and military organizations. Inherent propensity is the idea that there are characteristics embodied in the weapons that push adversaries toward peace or war, independent of the goals of the decision‐makers, the political disagreement between adversaries, and misperceptions about mutual resolve and hostility. We theoretically illustrate inherent propensity in conventional and nuclear arms settings using Lanchester and Intriligator war models. Our work extends the Intriligator‐Brito model, identifies when the competing Richardson and Intriligator‐Brito views of the relationship between arms races and war are correct, illustrates the stabilizing/destabilizing effects of alliances, and highlights the importance of arms quality control in the US‐USSR relationship.     

基于体系结构方法的机群对海作战活动分析

机群综合电子信息系统在高技术局部战争环境中可以为机群协同作战提供信息能力与优势,对机群作战活动的分析是设计其体系结构的基础,因此对机群在作战中的活动进行分析有重要意义。针对海军航空兵机群的对海作战,利用体系结构设计工具,在DoD AF V1.0框架下分析了机群对海作战活动,并在此基础上开发了相关作战视图。     

快速部署机场指挥决策关键技术

针对快速部署机场指挥决策问题,分析了美军指挥决策技术发展现状,重点研究了快速部署机场指挥决策需要的态势感知、决策模型设计与优化、知识表示与存储、案例推理、综合业务信息查询、任务流程规划、模拟推演与效能评估、行动监视与动态干预、软硬件系统综合集成等9项关键技术及其相互之间的关系,指出任务规划是指挥决策过程的核心任务。最后分析了模型设计、案例推理、推演评估、3S技术等四个方面存在的主要技术应用难点。     

The practice and theory of British counterinsurgency: the histories of the atrocities at the Palestinian villages of al-Bassa and Halhul, 1938–1939

This article details two largely unreported atrocities by British forces operating against Arab rebels during the Arab revolt, 1936–9, at the Palestinian villages of al-Bassa and Halhul. It then examines the military-legal system that underpinned and authorised British military forces operating in aid of the civil power, suggesting that the law in place at the time allowed for a level of reprisals and punitive actions, such as happened at al-Bassa and Halhul. The article does not conclude that the law allowed for atrocities but it does argue that it gave a basic form and understanding to an operational method that was brutal and could lead to atrocities. It thus tests the idea in much of the literature on counterinsurgency that the British were restrained and used minimum force when compared to other colonial and neo-colonial powers fighting insurgents.     

The virtual dimension of contemporary insurgency and counterinsurgency

This paper looks at the virtual dimension of contemporary insurgency and counterinsurgency. It argues that the West is faltering in the ‘War of Ideas’ with global Jihad for the main reason that the messages that we wish to convey lack narrative coherence. This is a result of the fact that we misapprehend the nature of the virtual operational environment whereas our opponents possess an intuitive grasp of it as a result of which their structure and method of operations are better adapted and more effective than our own. There is no reason, beyond inertia, that this should remain the case.     

防空兵网络化作战指挥控制方式

信息化条件下防空兵作战依托防空兵指挥信息系统,已经将防空兵各个作战要素联结到了一起,初步具备了网络化作战的雏形.而恰当的指挥控制方式是实施高效防空兵网络化作战的关键问题之一.首先剖析了防空兵网络化作战给指挥控制带来的新特点,而后构建了防空兵网络化作战指挥控制方式的概念模型,在此基础上提出了适应防空兵网络化作战的指挥控制方式是自适应指挥控制方式.并研究了防空兵网络化作战实施自适应指挥控制方式的必要性、可行性、内在机理以及实现的途径.     

Institutionalizing supreme command: explaining political–military integration in the Vietnam War, 1964–1968

Under what conditions can leaders achieve wartime political–military integration? In the Vietnam War, political–military integration exhibited dramatic variation: in the air war, the US was able to tightly integrate its political objectives and military conduct, but in the ground war, the American military prosecuted a strategy that was both divorced from broader political objectives and was immune from Washington's influence. I argue that the nature of information management between the military and civilian leadership explains the pattern of political–military integration in the Vietnam War more completely than do explanations that focus on the organizational cultures of professional militaries.     

Colonial violence and its ‘Small Wars’: fighting the Kuki ‘guerillas’ during the Great War in Northeast India, 1917–1919

ABSTRACT

This paper concerns the lesser known British counterinsurgency (COIN) operations in Northeast frontier of India during the First World War. Officially known as the ‘Kuki Operations’, it was considered as part of the Great War. Carried out in isolation from press and public, and shelved in colonial archives, the event remained invisible until today. Yet, it registers a critical case of colonial COIN doctrine where the ‘moral effect’ doctrine was employed without being questioned. It unleashed enormous amount of organized violence, ranging from shoot at sight to indiscriminate burning of villages, wholesale destruction of property and livestock, prevention of cultivation and rebuilding of villages, forced mass displacement in jungles or in ‘concentration camps’, and collective punishment (communal penal labour and payment of compensation) after the war. This paper argues that the theory of ‘minimum force’ and the practicability of the ‘moral effect’ doctrine as applied by the Empire, sit oddly with each other at the frontier, where violence was seen both as a natural and moral orders. Violence as an ‘imperatively necessary’ method to bring order in a disorderly frontier, in the opinion of colonial state, informs and registers Northeast India as geography of violence.