A Good Ally - Norway and International Statebuilding in Afghanistan, 2001-2014

The article examines the findings of the Commission of Inquiry established by the Norwegian government in 2014 to evaluate all aspects of Norway’s civilian and military contribution to the international operation in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014. Concerned with the wider implications of the Commission’s findings, it focuses on two issues in particular: (1) Norway’s relations with the US, a close and long-standing strategic ally whose resources, capabilities and dominance of decision-making dwarfed that of all other coalition partners in Afghanistan; and (2) Norway’s record in the province of Faryab, where, from 2005 to 2012, a Norwegian-led Provincial Reconstruction Team was charged with bringing security, good governance and development to the province. How Norway prioritised and managed relations with the US highlights and helps to problematise the challenges – political, practical and moral – facing small and medium-sized powers operating in a coalition alongside the US. Norwegian efforts in Faryab are revealing of the dilemmas and contradictions that plagued and, ultimately, fatally undermined the international intervention as a whole. As such, Norway’s experience provides a microcosm through which the inherent limitations of the attempt to transfer the structures of modern statehood and Western democracy to Afghanistan can be better understood.     

国家安全视角下的网络文化安全形势与对策

互联网的发展加速了权力分散,对我国的国家安全尤其是文化安全维护提出了新的问题。当前,我国社会进入新时代发展阶段,社会主要矛盾发生重要变化。与互联网尤其是网络文化安全有关的风险和挑战不断增多,互联网已经成为文化安全斗争的主战场。如何直面挑战,着力维护网络文化安全,提出队伍建设、舆论阵地和平台建设、维护手段、思维和素养、机制和法规建设的对策方法。     

基于灰色关联和D-S证据理论的导弹系统安全性评估

针对导弹系统安全性评价的不确定性问题,提出了将灰色关联和D-S证据理论相结合的方法,从人员安全性、设备安全性和环境安全性建立了综合评估指标体系,用灰色关联分析处理了指标之间的关联性。在传统证据合成公式的基础上,考虑证据集非关键因素的权重,给出了修正的证据合成公式。并以打靶选弹为例进行了计算分析,得出了导弹安全性优先级排序,并将改进算法与传统计算方法的结果进行了比较,验证了评价模型的可行性与实用性,为导弹系统的管理工作提供了有益的参考。     

潜艇信息系统信息安全与纵深防护策略研究

随着网络中心战的发展,信息安全问题在现代潜艇系统中的重要性日益凸显。首先分析潜艇信息安全问题的背景、总结其研究现状,然后研究了潜艇信息安全需求及属性定义,探讨了潜艇信息系统信息安全防护整体框架,在此基础上提出了一种综合静态安全防护和动态运行安全防护的潜艇信息系统信息安全纵深防护体系结构。以期为解决潜艇系统设计中的安全缺陷、建立潜艇信息安全防护体系,辅助系统维护、保障系统安全提供基础。     

多波束卫星网络的物理层安全性能指标研究

安全性是卫星通信网络充分发挥其优势的必要保证。将物理层安全传输技术引入多波束卫星通信网络,可望有效提高卫星通信系统的抗截获和抗侦测能力。分析了卫星通信的物理层安全应用需求,设计了一套波束成形和功率控制相结合的多波束卫星下行链路物理层安全传输策略,建立了信道模型和信号模型,构建了一套多波束卫星网络下行链路的物理层安全性能评价指标,并对指标进行了定性和定量的分析。     

The relevance of the Gulf of Guinea in global energy politics

Africa and for that matter the Gulf of Guinea cannot be indifferent to the global energy politics of the 21st century. The increasing importance of the region has attracted major actors in the energy sector. The competing interests of these actors are played out in various forms. This heightened interest in the region, especially with the discovery of oil in huge commercial quantities, has brought the importance of the area into focus in global oil politics. This paper looks at the importance of the region in light of the huge energy potentials of the Gulf of Guinea and how the institution of proper governance systems could serve as an important factor in ensuring the proper management of the resource.     

‘Responsibility to protect’ and the African Union: Assessing the AU’s capacity to respond to regional complex humanitarian and political emergencies

Despite its many institutional and political weaknesses and limitations, the African Union (AU) has been developing a variety of tools and mechanisms to respond effectively to complex disasters and emergencies (both natural and manmade) by building up a comprehensive regional security architecture. Furthermore, it has become the first and only regional or international organisation to enshrine the principle of ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) in its Constitutive Act. This regional approach to and formal endorsement of the R2P principle allowed it to assume a particular place in the promotion of peace and security in its area. This article aims to critically assess the effectiveness of the AU on the African continent by exploring its real capacity in preventing and responding to emergencies and violent conflicts, and therefore in rendering the principle of R2P operational. The article argues that the formalisation of principles does not necessarily mean their effective implementation. The organisation's use of the R2P principle is also greatly conditioned by internal and external factors.     

National security,military spending and the business cycle

This paper develops a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model where national security is an argument in the agent’s utility function and the government chooses optimally the level of military spending to maximize social welfare. National defense depends on military expenditure and on the strategic environment reflecting a potential hostile external threat. We use aggregate data on consumption, investment, and military spending for the US economy to estimate the parameters of the model. Estimation results suggest that consumption and national defense are complements and that military spending variability is mainly explained by external threat shocks although it also depends on the macroeconomic conditions. We compute impulse response functions of the main macroeconomic variables to several shocks: a total factor productivity shock, a defense technology shock, and a strategic environment shock. Surprisingly, we find that the optimal response to an increase in the external threat (a worsening in the strategic environment) will rise output by reducing consumption and increasing investment.     

The lobbies’ network at the EU policy level: the case of security and defense

Lobbyists may not share the same interests, but they usually agree to form a link in a network which could eventually be used to spread information, to search for potential partners, to speak with one voice to decision makers. In other words, social links represent value for lobbyists because they may ultimately facilitate access. In this article, we explore the network of the Security and Defense lobbies in the EU and we describe its structure.     

重大自然灾害警卫任务的特点及措施——以四川抗震救灾警卫任务为例

以2008年四川“5·12”地震发生后的抗震救灾警卫任务为例,对重大自然灾害警卫任务的特点进行深入剖析,总结抗震救灾警卫工作经验。探求重大自然灾害警卫任务的方式方法,有利于更好地完成警卫任务。