Attacking the Atom: Does Bombing Nuclear Facilities Affect Proliferation?

Abstract

What are the consequences of military strikes against nuclear facilities? In particular, do they ‘work’ by delaying the target states ability to build the bomb? This article addresses these questions by conducting an analysis of 16 attacks against nuclear facilities from 1942 to 2007. We analyze strikes that occurred during peacetime and raids that took place in the context of an ongoing interstate war. The findings indicate that strikes are neither as uniformly fruitless as the skeptics would suggest, nor as productive as advocates have claimed. There is evidence that the peacetime attacks delayed the target's nuclear program, although the size of this effect is rather modest. The wartime cases were less successful, as attacks often missed their targets either due to operational failure or limited intelligence on the location of critical targets. In our concluding section we show that many of the conditions that were conducive to past success are not present in the contemporary Iran case. Overall, our findings reveal an interesting paradox. The historical cases that have successfully delayed proliferation are those when the attacking state struck well before a nuclear threat was imminent. Yet, this also happens to be when strikes are the least legitimate under international law, meaning that attacking under these conditions is most likely to elicit international censure.     

Russian Reactions to Reagan's ‘Maritime Strategy’

The US Navy's audacious Maritime Strategy of the 1980s is often credited with acting as a key catalyst to the demise of the USSR. In assessing the role of strategic missile submarine “bastions” in the country's overall military strategy, the authors are skeptical of the above thesis, explaining that Moscow actually viewed deployments of Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles on to US submarines (versus direct threats against the Soviet Navy itself) as the most alarming threat. The authors concede that the arms race played a role in the collapse of the USSR, but deny a direct connection with Soviet naval development citing the relatively minor naval proportion of overall defense spending. For the difficulties facing the fleet at the end of the Cold War, they instead blame deep systemic problems internal to the Soviet Navy.     

Problems with the Kurds as proxies against Islamic State: insights from the siege of Kobane

Abstract

The siege of the northern Syrian town of Kobane was lifted in January 2015. The Kurdish defenders there had triumphed against Islamic State (IS). The conflict then moved on. It moved on, though, with the United States, the United Kingdom, and other Western powers having adopted, almost by default, the Kurds as proxy fighters in this conflict. The Kurds, however, are a divided and fractious nation spread across three states and historically famous for fighting among themselves. In employing the Kurds as proxies against IS, as this article shows, these Western powers must be aware of the unintended consequences that can result.     

Saudi Arabia,Wahhabism, and the Taliban of Afghanistan: ‘Puritanical reform’ as a ‘revolutionary war’ program

This article argues that the Taliban's revolutionary war (RW) program is puritanical reform informed by the Islamic legal duty of al-amr bi'l-ma‘ruf wa'l-nahy ‘an al-munkar (‘commanding what is good and forbidding what is reprehensible’). It also examines the history of this duty with examples of puritanical reform movements emerging from Berber tribes in North Africa and tribes in Arabia. Furthermore, the importance of this duty in Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, and its exportation to Pakistan where Taliban leaders imbibed this ideology, are discussed. Finally the article shows that corruption and abuses by the Afghan regime have given impetus to puritanical reformers: the condition precedent for puritanical reform is pervasive wrongdoing in an Islamic society.     

Reassessing private military and security company (PMSC) ‘competition‘ in civil war: lessons from Sierra Leone

ABSTRACT

This paper challenges recent claims that competitive market dynamics incentivize Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) to fully commit to providing effective services, thereby reducing the duration of civil war. Our assessment of a most-likely case scenario for this argument – Sierra Leone – reveals four critical problems. First, there is rarely direct competition, even if numerous companies are present. Second, the presence of multiple PMSCs usually represents a collaboration among subsidiaries providing distinct services, often under the same corporate umbrella. Third, data aggregation obfuscates the overlap of PMSC presence, inflating the amount of perceived competition. Finally, we raise concerns regarding how quantitative analyses can conflate conflict intensity with conflict termination.     

基于局域模板的STAP非均匀检测器

分析了STAP(Space Time Adaptive Processing)中强干扰目标影响传统非均匀检测器性能的机理,针对强干扰目标引起的非均匀检测器性能下降和传统自适应功率剩余(APR)方法运算量大的问题,提出了一种基于局域模板的非均匀检测器(Local Template NHD,LT-NHD)。该方法不需要进行协方差矩阵求逆的耗时运算,便能获得较高的运算效率;此外,其检测不易受训练样本中的强目标样本影响,能获得比传统方法更为鲁棒的检测性能。实测数据实验验证了本文方法的有效性。     

基于IGSO卫星的多普勒定位单向授时方法研究

针对导航战、城市或者室内环境中,可见卫星数目小于3颗,用户位置未知时,接收机无法完成授时等问题,并结合我国已有卫星导航系统(北斗和CAPS系统)现状,提出了一种基于IGSO卫星的多普勒定位单向授时方法。该方法通过测量卫星信号的多普勒频移,采用积分多普勒计数计算用户位置,完成单向授时功能。分析结果表明,使用3颗IGSO卫星搭载透明转发器载荷,可使我国领土范围内的定位授时可用性基本达到100%;静态观测用户,长期测量定位精度可达3m以内,授时精度误差小于100ns。由于该方法最少只需观测1颗IGSO卫星信号,这为导航战背景及微弱信号环境下的定位授时服务,提供了新的解决方法。     

新疆高校地方特色课程对大学生文化观的影响研究

《新疆历史与民族宗教理论政策教程》是最具有中国特色、新疆地方性特色的课程,开设此课的目的是为了提高大学生思想、牢固树立马克思主义"五观"理论。为了解课程对大学生文化观的教育效果,选取民族班大学生进行研究发现,课程开设后,少数民族大学生的多元文化观显著提高了。居住格局、家庭语言交流类型、上大学前的学习模式等个体变量会影响文化观的提高程度。     

Z and other cinematic tales from the 30-year Greek civil war

Greek cinema has documented and debated the civil war and its repercussions under different angles, largely defined by censorship, the general political climate, and cinematic trends. This article, first, offers a retrospective that traces the evolution of Greek cinema's ‘takes’ on the civil war vis-à-vis the political changes. Second, it provides an in-depth analysis of Costas Gavras’s film Z, examining its relevance to Greece and how political conflict, in general, is cinematically depicted. The article argues that Z and Gavras’s cinema have been affected and have affected the Greek political situation. However, while Z has spearheaded an international cinematic genre (political thriller), it had minimal effect on the Greek cinema.