Asia-Pacific Demand for Military Expenditure: Spatial Panel and SUR Estimates

This article investigates the demand for military expenditure for a sample of key Asia-Pacific countries. Spatial panel demand estimates are presented for three joined spatial units using a fixed-coefficient spatial lag model based on a two-step efficient GMM estimator. Spatial autoregression estimates are next presented for 1991–2015, founded on alternative kinds of country connectivities, such as contiguity, inverse distance, discrete distance, and power-projection considerations. Finally, 11 select countries’ demands for defense equations are estimated using seemingly unrelated regressions. From alternative perspectives, these estimated models indicate how Asia-Pacific countries respond to the defense spending of other countries. In the spatial runs, free riding is prevalent despite the growing military might of China, which apparently is not generally viewed as a threat. For the sample period, the projection of Chinese or American power is a relevant spatial factor. The main threat is reflected in non-U.S. allies’ reaction to U.S. allies’ defense spending during 1991–2015 and to Chinese defense spending after 2002.     

陆军后勤专业兵培训基地师资队伍建设

陆军后勤转型建设大背景下,陆军后勤专业兵培训基地师资队伍建设滞后问题凸显,探索和加快其师资队伍建设具有重要意义。结合现阶段陆军后勤专业兵培训基地自身特点和师资队伍建设存在的问题,从师资队伍配备模式、考评体系、培养机制三个方面提出了加快师资队伍建设的建议。      

美军智能化武器装备体系发展

智能化武器装备体系是军事智能化的基础和前提。智能化武器装备体系的集约高效发展,首先需做到找准定位,精准聚焦。本文针对美军的智能化武器装备体系,梳理了其发展,总结了其在各作战领域的典型作战运用,并分析了其下一步的发展趋势。     

陆军人工智能专业人才培养

陆军的智能化建设与发展离不开专业化的陆军人工智能人才培养。本文分析了智能化技术对战争形态转换、装备演化、指挥决策优化的影响,论述了陆军培养军用人工智能专业人才的必要性,提出了军用人工智能专业人才的能力模型,依据该模型设计了基础课程体系。     

The security sector and the plunder of Zimbabwe’s Chiadzwa alluvial diamonds: the ‘goat mentality’ in practice

While the human rights impact of the deployment of state security agencies in the Chiadzwa diamond fields has been explored, it is important to continue to expose the increasing tendency within the sector to take public resources that should be protected by the state and used for the benefit of the people and channel them for personal gain. The security sector stranglehold of President Robert Mugabe and the ruling political party, the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), has facilitated the siphoning of Chiadzwa diamond revenue into the pockets of individual security personnel. The unfolding sociopolitical crisis in Zimbabwe has also meant that these security personnel have been deployed beyond conflict zones and into traditionally civilian domains, with dire consequences for the public purse. With this in mind, it is asserted that these issues have driven state security agencies to enrich themselves through what is termed in this article as a ‘goat mentality’. The article thus explores the ways in which state security agencies have been deployed and gone on to promote personal enrichment in the Chiadzwa diamond fields.     

Quantitative monitoring of military transformation in the period 1992–2010: Do the protagonists of transformation really change more than other countries?

Military transformation is a complex, slow, asymmetric, changeable, political, and not necessarily completely rational process that clearly needs an effective monitoring mechanism. This paper fills a gap in current literature by creating and testing a model for multi-dimensional and multi-level quantitative monitoring of military transformation applicable in any country. The model is based on 10 transformation indicators that reflect changes in organizational structure, personnel structure, weapon systems, and defense spending. Its application on a sample of seven countries (USA, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, and China) in the period from 1992 to 2010 unexpectedly shows that the USA – a protagonist in the transformation process among allies as well as globally – has carried out the smallest relative change. The non-directed transformation index indicates that Russia carried out 51.8% more change (or 34.1 index units), and the directed index indicates that Poland carried out 157.2% (or 40.8 index units) more change than the USA.     

New sources of military change – armed forces as normal organizations

The literature on how European states have adapted to the post-cold war security environment ffocuses invariably on different understandings of military transformation, a process which is seen as inherently different from other forms of organizational change. However, as this paper argues, new management practices, going back to the introduction of so-called New Public Management (NPM) reforms throughout Europe in the 1980s, have eventually penetrated also the last bastion of the old state – the defense sector. Taking a critical approach to the idea of military transformation and existing theories of military change, the paper demonstrates how other international developments have pushed towards what may be seen as a “normalization” of Europe’s defense sectors. This has important implications for how we approach and understand change in contemporary defense organizations.     

Soldiering the terrain of war: Zimbabwean soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1998–2002)

The paper reveals how Zimbabwean soldiers who fought in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1998–2002) were challenged by the terrain of war. While soldiers are trained to live and fight in dreadful wars, I argue that immersing oneself in the war terrain is neither mathematical nor calculative; rather, war tactics to be employed are defined by the context in which soldiers operate in. When soldiers reflect on and about the war, they unconsciously produce accounts that are often not completely heroic, but a life lived in fear as well an issue that they had never anticipated when they set out to war. A main finding of this study is that while these soldiers were deployed to fight against the rebels, they find difficulties in locating physical features from map reading to the ground, distinguishing the enemy from civilian people and deployed for days without eating a proper meal as well as seeing their fellow soldiers dying in the context of war. The paper provides a vantage point in which we can also understand that trained soldiers do not exert total power over war terrains, they are sometimes challenged by the war situation itself.     

Rethinking military behavior during the Arab Spring

Why did some Arab militaries remain loyal to authoritarian rulers amid mass uprisings during the Arab Spring while others defected to the opposition? One popular explanation shows this variation with reference to the degree of military institutionalization: institutionalized militaries defected, while patrimonial militaries remained loyal. This article argues that the institutionalization hypothesis does not provide a complete account of the mechanisms through which the degree of military institutionalization leads to either defection or continued loyalty. This shortcoming stems from the fact that scholars have treated military institutionalization as a catch-all concept for three distinct variables: ethnic stacking of the military, patronage distribution, and organizational factionalization. Examining the interaction between these variables highlights the mechanisms through which military defection occurs, and therefore that disaggregating institutionalization into its component parts provides a more complete explanation of military behavior during the Arab Spring.     

Revisiting the rise and fall of the Somali Armed Forces, 1960–2012

The history of the Somali Armed Forces, principally the army, forms an important part of studying the Somali civil war. Two key themes are evident from 1960: the pursuit of an irredentist agenda beyond reasonable limits, which led to the downfall of Siad Barre’s regime, and the clan divisions and agendas that Barre used to shore up his rule in the 1980s and that have bedeviled the rebirth of the Somali Army in the twenty-first century. With the twentieth-century context covered, and in some places reinterpreted, this article then focuses on the uncertain rebirth of the Somali Armed Forces since 2008, using a host of primary and United Nations official sources. Assistance efforts have been focused on Mogadishu, but limited success has been made in forming truly national armed forces. Future prospects are uncertain, but there are some signs of hope.