The Kashmir conflict in South Asia: voices from Srinagar

This article looks at the Kashmir conflict in South Asia, which has been going on since 1947, when India and Pakistan became independent from British colonial rule. After looking at some historical background, the article looks at both the external dimension as well as the internal dimension of the conflict. The external dimension tends to focus on Indo-Pak relations over Kashmir and the internal dimension looks at India's repressive state policies within the state of Kashmir. This article uses Mary Kaldor's “New War” thesis as a theoretical framework to understand the situation and pays special attention to the conflict's very complex and multifaceted nature. The article argues that although the levels of violence have differed from time to time in the region since 1947, today the conflict seems to have less to do with Indo-Pak relations or the external side of things and has more to do with the internal dimension and India's undemocratic ways within Kashmir. Today, Kashmir is one of the most militarised conflict zones in the world. The stationing of the Indian military and paramilitary forces in the region has only exacerbated the situation since it is the security personnel who cause much of the problem. The Armed Forces Special Powers Act gives these security forces extraordinary powers in the region, which they often abuse. The armed forces have no real understanding of the local culture or sympathy for local religious sentiments. Poverty, corruption, administrative failure, police brutality, identity politics and human rights abuses are some of the key features associated with this conflict. Methodologically, a number of interviews were carried out with the local people in the region recently. From the data gathered through the interviews, it is very obvious that the people still feel very oppressed and that the situation is still very volatile, fraught with uncertainty. Finally, after making an assessment of the situation, the article tries to suggest methods of peaceful building and conflict management as the way forward.     

Financial versus human resources in the Greek‐Turkish arms race: A forecasting investigation using artificial neural networks

This paper aims at forecasting the burden on the Greek economy resulting from the arms race against Turkey and at concentrating on the leading determinants of this burden. The military debt and the defence share of GDP are employed alternatively in order to approximate the measurement of the arms race pressure on Greece, and the method used is that of artificial neural networks. The use of a wide variety of explanatory variables in combination with the promising results derived, suggest that the impact on the Greek economy resulting from this arms race is determined, to a large, extent, by demographic factors which strongly favour the Turkish side. Prediction on both miltary debt and defence expenditure exhibited highly satisfactory accuracy, while the estimation of input significance, indicates that variables describing the Turkish side are often dominant over the corresponding Greek ones.     

A rent‐seeking model of international competition and alliances∗

This paper presents an alternative approach for analyzing international competition and alliances as rent‐seeking contests that are able to capture the impure public good nature of defense spending. Two‐country Cournot and Stackelberg games are considered and comparative static results derived. A three‐country model is investigated, and alliance behavior is explored in the context of this rent‐seeking model. The conjecture that an alliance may become less effective if the allies’ interests become more closely aligned is verified. Finally, the model is generalized, and a Nash‐Cournot equilibrium is computed.     

Strategic Defense and Attack for Series and Parallel Reliability Systems: Reply to Rejoinder

Kovenock and Roberson's (2012a, b) replication of Hausken’s (2008a) equations and parameter restrictions do not enhance our insight into the defense and attack of reliability systems. This reply intends to fill the remaining understanding gaps.     

What Goes Up Must Come Down: Military Expenditure and Civil Wars

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of civil war on military expenditure. We employ two measures of military expenditure: the share of military expenditure in general government expenditure and the logarithm of military expenditures. We would reasonably expect a priori that military expenditure as a share of general government expenditure increases during a civil war and that such increases would taper off over the duration of a civil war. We also explore whether the termination of a civil war induces a decline in the share of military expenditure as a share of the general government expenditure in the short-run. We find evidence the of share of military expenditure increases during a civil war and falls in the year succeeding the end of a civil war, and, in particular, if a war ends in a peace treaty. The level of military expenditures, however, rises during civil wars and does not appear to decline in the short-term after the end of a civil war.     

MONEY IN SOUTHERN AFRICAN POLITICS

“Lack of money is the root of all evil”

George Bernard Shaw

In a environment where party financing, private funding in particular, is generally a laissez-faire business, as in most Southern African countries, there is the real risk that interest groups and wealthy individuals will buy influence in political parties and in so doing erode public confidence in the political system. Because they are neither open to public scrutiny nor subject to any legislative restraints, huge private donations can, and often do, come with strings attached. This lack of transparency and openness, as well as mechanisms to prevent it, provides ample ground for influence peddling, where those who pay the piper call the tune. Left unchecked, this party funding scenario will continue to be a serious indictment of the region's democratisation projects, crippling democracy and stunting economic development. This article consid     

Russian military reform: institutional,political and security implications

This critical comment examines the incentives, major priorities, difficulties and first results of the Russian military reform that is being implemented since 2008. The authors conclude that despite numerous drawbacks and barriers to the reformist efforts certain successes can be identified. Particularly, there is a clear shift from the old-fashioned, Soviet-type army to a more compact, mobile, better equipped and combat-ready armed forces that are capable to cope with today's challenges to Russian national security.     

一种新的双输入多通道直流变换器

在传统的含储能单元分布式供电系统中,一般都需要多个单向直流变换器和双向直流变换器才能实现其功能。提出一种新的双输入多通道直流变换器,它的功能等效于一个单向直流变换器和一个双向直流变换器。分析了双输入多通道直流变换器的工作原理,给出了变换器的稳态关系式以及能量管理方法,并运用Saber软件进行仿真,验证了理论分析的正确性。该直流变换器除具有双输入Buck直流变换器的优点外,还能实现可再生能源向储电输入源充电。     

Coordination mechanisms for a three‐stage reverse supply chain to increase profitable returns

In this article, we consider a generic electronic product that can be remanufactured or recycled at the end of its life cycle to generate new profit. We first describe the product return process and then present a customer segmentation model to capture consumers' different behaviors with respect to product return so that the retailer can work more effectively to increase the return volume. In regard to the collaboration between the retailer and the manufacturer, we explore a revenue‐sharing coordination mechanism for achieving a win‐win outcome. The optimality and sensitivity of the critical parameters in four strategies are obtained and examined both theoretically and numerically, which generate insights on how to manage an efficient consumer‐retailer‐manufacturer reverse supply chain, as well as on the feasibility of simplifying such a three‐stage chain structure. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2013     

Should competing firms reveal their capacity?

In this article, we explore when firms have an incentive to hide (or reveal) their capacity information. We consider two firms that aim to maximize profits over time and face limited capacity. One or both of the firms have private information on their own capacity levels, and they update their beliefs about their rival's capacity based on their observation of the other firm's output. We focus on credible revelation mechanisms—a firm may signal its capacity through overproduction, compared to its myopic production levels. We characterize conditions when high‐capacity firms may have the incentive and capability to signal their capacity levels by overproduction. We show that prior beliefs about capacity play a crucial, and surprisingly complex, role on whether the firm would prefer to reveal its capacity or not. A surprising result is that, despite the fact that it may be best for the high‐capacity firm to overproduce to reveal its capacity when capacity information is private, it may end up with more profits than if all capacity information were public knowledge in the first place. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2013