Maritime security and capacity building in the Gulf of Guinea: On comprehensiveness,gaps, and security priorities

It is widely acknowledged that maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea is a highly complex phenomenon involving a variety of issues (legal deficiencies, inadequate military equipment, and challenges like corruption, political unrest and youth unemployment) as well as a multiplicity of external responders. To make sense of the impact that external actors have when they address this complex problem through various maritime capacity building endeavours, this article argues that there is a need to understand the attractiveness of capacity building vis-à-vis the widely acknowledged need for a comprehensive approach, as well as the difficulties of translating the potential for comprehensiveness into practice (as important aspects of the problem remain largely unaddressed). Further, it is argued that it is important to appreciate that even if these gaps – i.e. the aspects that maritime capacity building currently leaves unaddressed – represent a ‘failure’ to deliver a comprehensive response, they are at the same time illustrative of how the maritime capacity building activities of various external actors also ‘succeed’ in having an impact on this regional security landscape – for instance, by influencing how certain aspects of this multifaceted problem are prioritised, whilst others are only marginally addressed, if at all.     

浅议计算机系统安全

介绍计算机病毒及其防护知识 ,提高用户的安全防范意识 ,做好计算机系统的安全防范工作。     

潜伏-隔离机制下的信息扩散拓展模型及稳定性

为适应信息扩散中病毒传播的复杂性和不确定性,在传统病毒传播模型和信息扩散模型基础上,引入潜伏状态和隔离状态,研究潜伏-隔离机制下的信息扩散模型及其稳定性。构建基于潜伏-隔离机制的信息扩散模型;运用劳斯稳定性判据,论证系统平衡点的局部稳定性,分析基本再生数R0及其对网络感染源和系统状态的影响;通过仿真实验,分析节点连通半径、节点分布密度和节点接触率对信息扩散的影响。仿真结果表明:通过调整节点连通半径、节点分布密度和节点接触率等参数,可实现对信息扩散的有效控制。     

话语体系与国家安全

话语体系是当今人文社会科学研究的热词,也已成为影响国家安全的一个重要因子。论文首先介绍话语体系的概念及其特点,报告了话语体系研究的缘起和发展脉络、主要学科与核心关键词以及主要相关文献,并对当前研究现状进行总结。分析了话语体系与国家的关系,并从国家的主体思想、发展道路、身份特质、文化自信、文明追求、话语权等方面阐述了话语体系对国家安全的重要性。论文指出,话语体系是影响国家安全的重要领域,也是国家之间博弈的重要阵地。     

EU security sector reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Reform or resist?

ABSTRACT

Attempts to explain the failure to reform the security sectors in post-conflict countries have often resorted to two sets of explanatory factors: international and local factors. This article seeks to move from that unhelpful dichotomy to an explanation linking both factors. Drawing on a Foucauldian approach and the concept of “counter-conduct,” it examines the rationality and practices of European Union (EU) governmentality and how governing technologies are resisted and reversed by local elites involved in security sector reform (SSR). Instead of understanding power and resistance as binary opposites, this article argues that counter-conduct can be conceived as implicated in the very relations of power that it seeks to resist. To tease out these relations, the article analyzes the EU's efforts in SSR in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where it identifies four forms of counter-conduct: upholding European standards, using the local ownership trap, simulating reforms, and lowering the bar.     

Effective? Locally owned? Beyond the technocratic perspective on the European Union Police Mission for the Palestinian Territories

ABSTRACT

The European Union Police Mission for the Palestinian Territories (EUPOL COPPS) was established in 2006 to contribute to the establishment of effective policing in support of an independent and democratic Palestinian state. EUPOL COPPS is often commended for its contribution to the professionalization of the Palestinian security sector under local ownership. Drawing on 40 interviews, we argue that the mission can be considered effective and locally owned only from a narrow technocratic perspective, which denies the political reality of continued occupation and absence of democracy. A broader analysis, which includes the voices of ordinary Palestinians, reveals that EUPOL COPPS contributed to the professionalization of authoritarian policing under continued Israeli occupation. Our findings show the limits of technocratic approaches to peacebuilding interventions and call for a stronger engagement with the ultimate beneficiaries of peacebuilding missions.     

Herdsmen militancy and humanitarian crisis in Nigeria: A theoretical briefing

This article explores the phenomenon of herdsmen militancy as a new trajectory for the farmer–herder crisis in Nigeria, with reference to its humanitarian implications. Relying on a systematic analysis of secondary data and aligning with the analytical anchorage of liberal political ecology theory, the article posits that herdsmen militancy depicts a contradiction in agrarian relations in the context of a national security crisis which has been complicated by salient socio-ecological factors such as climate change, armed violence, and identity politics. In view of the dire humanitarian consequences of this situation, the article submits that herdsmen militancy constitutes a major threat to human and national security in Nigeria. It makes a case for a pragmatic policy capable of mitigating the myriad socio-ecological factors that tend to trigger herdsmen militancy, with prohibition on open grazing in critical hotbeds of herder–farmer conflict as a strategic measure.     

Regional responses to security and development challenges in East and Southern Africa: lessons and way forward

Since the mid-twentieth century, the East and Southern African regions have been mired in complex and overlapping security and development challenges, including ethnopolitical conflicts, terrorist insurgencies, the proliferation of small arms and light weapons (SALWs), and overwhelming economic crisis. These challenges have had implications for human security, socio-economic development, territorial authority, sovereignty and the stability and legitimacy of political regimes in the affected states. The adequacy and relevance of the regional responses to these challenges is the subject of ongoing debate, to which this paper now adds. Among other factors, this paper identifies competition for regional dominance and institutional inadequacies as accounting for the inability of regional governance bodies to respond adequately to the challenges they face. Consequently, it recommends the expansion of the mandate of the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) beyond regional economic integration to include peacebuilding and a deepening of the institutional efforts focused on security cooperation and conflict management.     

Turning the tides of war: The impact of private military and security companies on Nigeria’s counterinsurgency against Boko Haram

Since the 2003 war in Iraq, private military and security companies (PMSCs) have become increasingly legitimate actors in modern conflicts. Despite this normative shift, rumours in March 2015 regarding the use of South African mercenaries in Nigeria to combat Boko Haram insurgents caused an international outrage, while the Nigerian government remained nonchalantly silent on the matter. This article investigates the impact of mercenaries on the conflict in the last six months of the Jonathan government. Using primary and secondary qualitative research, it assesses the role that PMSCs played in Nigeria’s counterinsurgency strategy, along with the ensuing reaction of international and local media to the outsourcing of violence to foreign companies. The article concludes that – notwithstanding the improved image of PMSCs in the world, and the actual impact of the contractors on the Nigerian counterinsurgency effort – the stigma of mercenaries continues to plague the industry, particularly on the African continent.     

美英海军舰船远海维修保障体系特点

我国海军执行远海护航与南海领海巡航任务已成常态化,同时随着"一带一路"国家战略的稳步实施,海军舰船必将走得更远,为经济建设与世界和平、地区稳定保驾护航。为了科学地构建我国远海舰船维修保障体系,本文分析总结美英国家海军舰船远海维修保障体系基本模式、特点及利弊,并在合理界定远海及远海维修保障概念的基础上,提出构建我国海军舰船远海维修保障体系的基本策略。