How not to pay for the war

As a result of allied subsidy and the influence of sunk costs, the marginal cost of the Gulf War to the US was reduced to negligible size. This result is at variance with the Olson‐Zeckhauser thesis that in an alliance “the small exploit the large.” A game theoretic alternative explanation suggests that the relation between allies resembles the game of Chicken, successfully played by the US. The ability to shift the marginal costs of war in the short term raises questions about the possible underestimation of long term effects.     

POLITICAL SCIENCE,COMING IN FROM THE COLD

Forecasting Nuclear Proliferation in the 21st Century: The Role of Theory (vol. 1, 312 pages, $24.95) and A Comparative Perspective (vol. 2, 488 pages, $24.95), edited by William C. Potter with Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova. Stanford University Press, 2010.     

Turkey-Africa alliance: Evolving patterns in security relations

ABSTRACT

Turkey has maintained its strategic relations with Africa at the highest level under recent AK Party governments in the field not only of low politics but also of high politics. For example, it opened its largest overseas military base in Somalia in 2017 and signed military, defense and security pacts with more than 25 African countries. This article traces the deep historical and cultural relations with Africa behind its newly evolving foreign policy identity, arguing that its booming economic power has been a significant driving force in shaping a new security strategy. It examines what the growing security involvement means for both Turkey and Africa in order to contribute to the relevant literature through a holistic approach from both theoretical and conceptual perspectives.     

CREATING SUNS ON EARTH

Concerns about climate change and energy security have prompted some countries to revive dormant nuclear fission power programs to meet growing energy demands and reduce carbon dioxide emissions. However, this so-called nuclear renaissance based on fission would have major drawbacks in the areas of safety, security, and nonproliferation. Nuclear fusion, however, is portrayed by its proponents as mitigating these drawbacks, and scientists continue to pursue fusion's promise with two large-scale projects: the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), and the Laser Inertial Fusion Engine (LIFE) reactor. Although supporters often hail fusion as proliferation resistant, the technology could be used to create weapons-usable fissile material. This article explains how fissile material could be created in ITER or LIFE and analyzes other nonproliferation implications of fusion; the authors discuss the various challenges faced by ITER and LIFE.     

Dynamic inventory control with limited capital and short‐term financing

For most firms, especially the small‐ and medium‐sized ones, the operational decisions are affected by their internal capital and ability to obtain external capital. However, the majority of the literature on dynamic inventory control ignores the firm's financial status and financing issues. An important question that arises is: what are the optimal inventory and financing policies for firms with limited internal capital and limited access to external capital? In this article, we study a dynamic inventory control problem where a capital‐constrained firm periodically purchases a product from a supplier and sells it to a market with random demands. In each period, the firm can use its own capital and/or borrow a short‐term loan to purchase the product, with the interest rate being nondecreasing in the loan size. The objective is to maximize the firm's expected terminal wealth at the end of the planning horizon. We show that the optimal inventory policy in each period is an equity‐level‐dependent base‐stock policy, where the equity level is the sum of the firm's capital level and the value of its on‐hand inventory evaluated at the purchasing cost; and the structure of the optimal policy can be characterized by four intervals of the equity level. Our results shed light on the dynamic inventory control for firms with limited capital and short‐term financing capabilities.Copyright © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 184–201, 2014     

Impact of tax reduction policies on consumer purchase of new automobiles: An analytical investigation with real data‐based experiments

We investigate and compare the impact of the tax reduction policies implemented in the United States and China to stimulate consumer purchase of new automobiles and improve manufacturers' profits. The U.S. policy provides each qualifying consumer with a federal income tax deduction on state and local sales and excise taxes paid on the purchase price (up to a cutoff level), whereas the Chinese policy reduces the vehicle sales tax rate for consumers. We observe that these policy designs are consistent with the tax management system and the economic environment in the respective country. We analytically determine the effects of the two tax reduction policies on the automobile sales and the manufacturer's and the retailer's profits. Numerical examples are then used to provide insights on the importance of certain factors that influence the effects of the two policies. Finally, a numerical experiment with sensitivity analysis based on real data is conducted to compare the merits and characteristics of the two policies under comparable conditions. We find that the U.S. policy is better than the Chinese policy in stimulating the sales of high‐end automobiles, whereas the Chinese policy is better than the U.S. policy in improving the sales of low‐end automobiles. The U.S. policy is slightly more effective in increasing the profitability of the automobile supply chain; but, in general, the Chinese policy is more cost effective. The methodology developed herein can be used to evaluate other tax reduction policies such as those related to the purchase of energy‐saving vehicles and to serve as a decision model to guide the choice of alternative tax reduction policies. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 61: 577–598, 2014     

卓越指挥人才实战化教学训练创新

卓越指挥人才培养是院校人才培养新的增长点。文章着眼卓越指挥人才的实战化训练,分析了军事教学训练体系的构成模块,提出了教学训练的内容拓展,并从教学条件建设、师资队伍交流和养成机制等方面提出了保障要求。     

Concavity and monotonicity properties in a groundwater management model

We consider a discrete‐time groundwater model in which the cost of pumping takes a slightly different form to that which has been traditional in the research literature to date. This enables us to prove that (a) the optimal pumping quantity is nondecreasing in the ground water stock, (b) the stock level remaining after each period's pumping is also nondecreasing in the groundwater stock, (c) the optimal decision is determined by maximizing a concave function, and finally (d) the optimal pumping quantity is nonincreasing in the number of periods to go. We show that (a)–(c), while intuitive, do not hold under traditional modeling assumptions. We also explain the connections between our results and similar ones for some classic problems of operations research. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 00: 000–000, 2011     

着眼培养合格人才 不断提高武警院校教学质量水平

胡锦涛同志在十七大报告中提出,要“加紧培养大批高素质新型军事人才,切实转变战斗力生成模式。”作为一所武警部队初级院校,培养合格人才,不断提高教学质量水平,需要在树立先进教育理念、规范教学制度法规和完善教员队伍建设上下功夫。     

主机安全监控系统的设计与实现

针对现有主机监控系统存在的执行效率低、监控粒度粗等问题,通过在内核态设置钩子函数改写系统服务调度表,同时在用户层设置策略库进行细粒度监控,设计并实现了主机安全监控系统。该系统具有执行效率高、占用系统资源少、监控粒度细等特点。