Does Income Inequality Derive the Separatist Terrorism in Turkey?

Separatist terrorism has been a severe problem for Turkey since the mid-1980s. The conventional wisdom contends that economic deprivation in southeastern Turkey is the fundamental reason for the long-running battle against the Kurdish rebels. Considering that there is limited empirical literature on the roots of terrorism in Turkey, yielding conflicting results about the claim that the main cause of terrorism is deprived economic conditions, this study aims to answer whether there is a causal relationship between income inequality and separatist terrorism in Turkey. To this end, the Global Terrorism Data Base for the period of 1973–2006, two Theil indices of pay inequality as proxy for income inequality, and the vector autoregression and Autoregressive Moving Average (ARMA) methods are utilized. The results support the early findings that income inequality, a particular focus in this paper and an essential indicator of economic deprivation, is not a main cause of escalation of separatist terrorism in Turkey.     

The insurgency of the Vendée

The insurrection in the Vendée combined open warfare with the methods of petite guerre, ambushing French republican soldiers and cutting their supply lines to Paris. These tactics, when combined with the hatreds generated by a civil war, go far to explain to the cruelty of the conflict in the west and the depth of the hatreds it engendered. In republican eyes the use of guerrilla tactics was unjust and illegitimate, and they denounced their adversaries as common criminals and brigands, portraying them as backward, superstitious, even as subhuman, and in the process justified the savage repression they unleashed against them.     

Initiating insurgencies abroad: French plans to ‘chouannise’ Britain and Ireland, 1793–1798

Secret French plans to launch guerrilla-style raids on the British Isles devised in the spring of 1796 were referred to as ‘chouanneries’. The name and concept behind these small-war operations were modelled on the irregular tactics used by the Chouan rebels in the Vendée, which the French state army had brutally quashed, but some wished to transfer into their institutional practice. Part of France's ongoing military strategy in the war against Britain, which included fomenting insurrection in Ireland, these irregular operations were to be manned partially by pardoned deserters and released convicts and prisoners of war. Of these, only Tate's brief invasion of Wales in 1797 was realised, but the surviving plans provide insightful historical lessons into an Anglophobic mindset shared by a small network of practitioners and policy deciders on the effectiveness of such shock and awe tactics. Largely motivated by the desire to take revenge for Britain's support of counter-revolutionaries in the Vendée, these plans could more aptly be referred to as counter-‘chouanneries’.     

基于粒子群优化的观测站部署算法

针对红外观测站部署问题,在研究观测站位置对定位精度影响的基础上,提出了基于粒子群优化的观测站部署算法。首先对ECEF坐标系下的CRLB矩阵进行推导;然后将观测站优化部署问题抽象为非线性规划模型,并将红外传感器联合定位的CRLB作为目标函数;最后采用粒子群优化算法求解该模型,避免了传统的非线性规划算法需要求解目标函数梯度的难题。结果表明,本文的部署算法具有一定的理论依据和工程意义;可以为实际红外观测站的静态部署和动态部署提供参考。     

外军反舰导弹装备使用现状及发展趋势研究

反舰导弹作为海上舰船＂杀手＂,其发展一直倍受各国海军关注。文章对反舰导弹的发展历程进行了回顾,对目前外军已经装备和正在研发的典型反舰导弹进行了分析和研究。以此为基础,对未来反舰导弹的发展趋势进行了探讨和展望,提出未来新型反舰导弹将趋于超远程化、超高速化、超隐身化、网络化和智能化。     

White hull or white elephant? Soft power and the Chinese hospital ship,the Peace Ark

Although soft power is now seen as an indispensable foreign policy tool, its efficacy has rarely been put to a rigorous empirical test. Using data from HARMONIOUS MISSIONs 2010, 2011 and 2013, this article seeks to examine the degree to which the soft power engagement missions of the Chinese hospital ship, the Peace Ark, has advanced Chinese interests. Although any conclusions drawn must be considered preliminary, as so little time has passed between the ship's visits and the current analysis, this research indicates that these missions’ impact on advancing Chinese interests was at best limited. Although observations from a single set of cases are unlikely to settle the debate between soft power advocates and detractors, it is hoped that this research will serve as a catalyst to further empirically based research on this topic.