archived issue August, 2007 volume 28, issue 2
Redesigning Land Forces for Wars Amongst the People
David Betz - View Article
The Culture of Self-Destruction: Pyongyang’s Struggle for Regime Survival
Jianxiang Bi
Are Africa’s Wars Part of a Fourth Generation of Warfare?
Paul Jackson
REEVLAUATING SMALL AND MIDDLE POWERS
Towards an Explicative Understanding of Strategic Culture: The Cases of Australia and Canada
Alan Bloomfield and Kim Richard Nossal - View Article
Small State Security Postures: Material Compensation and Normative Leadership in Denmark and New Zealand
William T. Tow and Russell Parkin
DILEMAS OF EUROPEAN SECURITY
A weak link? Irish National Security Policy on International Terrorism
Michael Mulqueen
Military Capability Development in the ESDP: Towards Effective Governance?
Christopher Reynolds
Replacing Trident: Britain, America and Nuclear Weapons
Nick Ritchie
BOOK REVIEWS | View Book Reviews
Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons
by Joseph Cirincione
Mario E. Carranza
Reluctant Crusaders: Power, Culture, and Change in American Grand Strategy
by Colin Dueck.
Sean Kay
Rethinking the World: Great Power Strategies and International Order
by Jeffrey W. Legro
Thomas Ambrosio
Asia Pacific in World Politics
by Derek McDougall
Brad Glosserman
Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power
by Randall L. Schweller
Stephen J. Cimbala
Insurgents, Terrorists and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat
by Richard H. Shultz Jr. and Andrea J. Dew
Hakan Tunç
Deterring America: Rogue States and the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, by Derek D. Smith
Nathan E. Busch
Bioterrorism: Confronting a Complex Threat
by Andreas Wenger and Reto Wollenmann
Jez Littlewood
Abstracts of Articles
Redesigning Land Forces for Wars Amongst the People by David Betz
Contradicting centuries of Western practice, the problem of future wars is one of learning to fight wars amongst the people. Currently, Western armies are optimized for fighting the wars of a previous age. This has begun to change. The United States Army particularly has moved very rapidly from being a force that fundamentally abjured irregular warfare and nation-building to one which is beginning to embrace them as core activities. Still, organizational, structural and cultural change is slow and uneven. Moreover, argues this paper, a major failing is that the current orthodoxy suggests that the future force ought to be either medium-weight or bifurcated between light and heavy units. Both approaches are mistaken: the first will lead to a force disadvantaged in both regular and irregular warfare; the second reinforces an erroneous conception that warfighting and nation-building are distinct and separate endeavours. Instead, the challenges of contemporary use of force require a fundamental reorientation of thinking, organizing and equipping regular land forces to reflect the increasingly apprehended fact that regular warfare is growing more and more irregular.
The Culture of Self-Destruction:
Pyongyang’s Struggle for Regime Survival
by Jianxiang Bi
North Korea is at the top of the agenda of Asia-Pacific security, but the agenda remains almost exclusively reactive, not proactive. Against this backdrop, the article argues that the key to dealing with North Korea is Pyongyang’s culture of self-destruction, collectively held ideas of state-centered sacrifice designed to ensure regime survival. Fears of insecurity embedded in unequal relations with Asia-Pacific powers have lead this authoritarian state to construct and reconstruct a national identity narrative of life and death, fostering domestic solidarity against foreign powers. As an inseparable part of this ideational power, its nuclear weapons are primarily utilized to attract international attention, to maximize political and economic gains, and, in the end, to guarantee regime survival.
Given dynamic increasing accessibility to dual-use technology, of ideology-based nonproliferation rules, and North Korean determination to weaponize its nuclear technology, it is time for the Asia-Pacific powers to acknowledge that North Korean nuclear proliferation is about knowledge of nuclear technology and weapons, and will continue to remain uncontrolled and directionless. Autonomy of knowledge suggests that the Non-Proliferation Treaty is unenforceable in North Korea and, by extension, in other parts of the world, a problem the international community must face and accept. North Korea’s neighbors, not the distant powers, must take the lead in regional security, seeking solutions acceptable to all the parties for peace and stability on the Korean peninsula.
Are Africa’s Wars Part of a Fourth Generation of Warfare? by Paul Jackson
This paper examines the relevance of the ideas encompassed by Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) in the context of warfare in Africa. 4GW theorists have largely focused on contemporary conflicts where American or Nato forces are deployed, especially Afghanistan and Iraq. The exclusion of Africa from this debate represents a strategic danger, limiting the body of theory that American strategic planners can draw on when the United States and its allies become involved, as it currently is in Somalia, the Mahgreb, and elsewhere.
This essay argues that whilst there are serious problems with the application of such a Western-centric approach to a linear, chronological development of warfare, there are a number of elements within the 4GW approach helpful in describing contemporary conflict in Africa. Application of 4GW to Africa shows that African patterns of warfare include both 4GW-type features and also pre-colonial patterns. The emphasis on decentralised, non-formal networked conflict within 4GW lends itself to the development of new approaches to conflicts across Africa, also tied into globalised economic systems. This approach may establish common ground for a synergies between military strategy and post-conflict reconstruction.
Towards an Explicative Understanding of Strategic Culture:
The Cases of Australia and Canada
by Alan Bloomfield and Kim Richard Nossal
Strategic culture remains a highly contested but potentially vital concept in the analysis of security policy. This paper contributes to the strategic culture debate by using the cases of Australia and Canada to assess the utility of strategic culture as an explanatory tool. Much of the debate over strategic culture hinges on the proper relationship between the ideational and material variables in analyzing a country’s security policy, and the attendant difficulties of distinguishing between strategic culture and strategic behavior. We argue that if strategic culture is defined in a inclusive way to include ideational factors, material factors and strategic behavior, one will develop a richer understanding of a country’s strategic situation. Using this approach, this paper undertakes a long-range historical survey of strategic culture in these two countries. We show that in both countries, strategic culture remains relatively stable for extended periods of time, usually changing only when patterns of global power shift, and provides a better explanation for contemporary security policy in both countries than perspectives that focus on purely material or ideational factors.
Small State Security Postures:
Material Compensation and Normative Leadership in Denmark and New Zealand
by William T. Tow and Russell Parkin
Nearly two decades after the Cold War, debate is intensifying among American policy-planners and independent commentators over what constitutes a ‘good ally’. Largely absent from this discussion, however, is what international security role may be played by ‘small’ states with industrialised economies and western values. There is a failure to recognise or appropriately value the importance of the contribution that small states can make in great power politics. This analysis evaluates the relative importance of small allies to American interests and strategies, the benefits and constraints on such cooperative relationships. There is no such thing as a ‘typical’ small state ally or ‘typical’ security policy or US relationship. Denmark and New Zealand illustrate a useful range of relationships and policies. Contemporary American security politics are visibly influenced by small states that project intellectual leadership. While this premise is not always applicable to the shaping of American strategic postures, it is sufficiently important to assess how small state security behaviour can play an important role.
A Weak Link?
Irish National Security Policy on International Terrorism
by Michael Mulqueen
Throughout the Cold War, Irish national security was detached from western priorities and its policy attracted little academic interest. But such detachment has become increasingly problematic. This paper argues that the threat of international terrorism underlines the need for a change of attitude among security scholars and policy managers alike. Irish policy on terrorism places at risk the security of other western states and highlights deficiencies in the European Union’s fight against terrorism. New evidence is explored here regarding Irish air and sea security, intelligence systems and immigration procedures, underlining the international implications of each. Trenchant insights and reforms emerged from Irish experience in the weeks that followed the September 11th attack. The policies framed in that period, hwoever, have not changed in any substantial way since. Within the literature on Irish security there are three key explanations for the shape of national policy: 1) political pressures on the security agencies, 2) financial pressures on these agencies and 3) Anglo-Irish security considerations. Domestic deficiencies create problems for broader counter-terrorism efforts, especially at EU level. This challenges the premise that individual Member States will help secure the Union as a whole.
Military Capability Development in the ESDP:
Towards Effective Governance?
by Christopher Reynolds
Although the improvement of military capabilities has been a key rationale underpinning the development of the European Security and Defence Policy, EU member states’ continued preference for non-binding, intergovernmental forms of ‘soft’ or ‘new’ governance in this policy field has significantly limited progress. It is argued here that while agreements based on such mechanisms are easier to make, they are also easier to break. Stronger governance elements, such as independent leadership and enhanced cooperation, are likely to be required if security ambitions are to be translated into the kind of credible, deployable military capabilities that member states seek. Clauses contained in the Constitutional Treaty, as well as the creation and consolidation of the European Defence Agency, permit a degree of optimism, however.
Replacing Trident: Britain, America and Nuclear Weapons
by Nick Ritchie
The British government has decided to modernise its nuclear arsenal and retain nuclear weapons at least to the 2050s. The British government’s primary rationale is that it needs to retain nuclear weapons as a necessary response to an uncertain future strategic security environment. The article argues that one of the primary rationales for the retention of nuclear weapons is to maintain political and military credibility in Washington and to facilitate British participation in military interventionist activity alongside the United States, thereby assuring both continued American engagement in the world and Britain’s long-term security. This vital but perhaps more indirect role for British nuclear weapons, and the wider nuclear relationship with the United States, has generally been excluded from the British government’s discourse. The article concludes by arguing that parliamentary and NGO activity aimed at making Trident modernization decisions open to public scrutiny face significant obstacles, but that the policymaking process will be a long one stretching well into the next decade.
-->NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
David Betz is a lecturer in the Department of War Studies, King's College London with interests in information warfare, complex irregular warfare, transformation, and strategy. He is the author of Civil-Military Relations in Russia and Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2003) and Army and the State in Post-Communist Europe (Frank Cass, 2001).
Alan Bloomfield is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Studies, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. He received his BA/LLB from the University of Western Australia and his MA in politics and international relations at the University of New South Wales. His doctoral research focuses on the evolution of strategic culture in Australia, Canada, and South Africa.
Paul Jackson is Director of the International Development Department of the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, and also of the Global Facilitation Network for Security Sector Reform, a programme funded by the Ministry of Defence, Foreign Office and Department for International Development that provides policy advice and support on security in developing countries. He has several years experience of international work in security and development, particularly in Africa, including Sierra Leone, Uganda and Rwanda.
Jianxiang Bi is Assistant Professor of History at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, and Research Associate at the Center of Security and Defense Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.
Michael Mulqueen is completing a PhD dissertation on Irish national security and international terrorism, at the School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, Ireland. He is a former IRCHSS Government of Ireland Scholar. His research interests include international relations theory, EU Common Foreign and Security Policy, and Irish and British security and defence policies.
Kim Richard Nossal is professor and head, Department of Political Studies, Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario. He has written widely on Canadian and Australian foreign and defense policy. Among his books are The Politics of Canadian Foreign Policy (1997), Diplomatic Departures: The Conservative Era in Canadian Foreign Policy, 1984-1993 (co-edited with Nelson Michaud, 2001) and Politique étrangère: perspectives canadiennes et québécoises, (co-authored with Stéphane Paquin and Stéphane Roussel, 2007).
Russell Parkin is a researcher within the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University. He has a PhD in history and is a former Australian Army officer with operational service in both East Timor and the Middle East.
Christopher Reynolds is a researcher in political science at the Geschwister-Scholl-Institut of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Munich, Germany.
Nick Ritchie is completing his PhD at the Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, England, on the evolution of American nuclear weapons policy since the end of the Cold War. He previously worked for Oxford Research Group. He is the author of The Political Road to War with Iraq with Paul Rogers (Routledge, 2007) and Replacing Trident: Who Will Make the Decisions and How? (Oxford Research Group, 2006).
William T. Tow is Professor of International Security in the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University. He is the author or editor of numerous books and articles on alliance politics. He is currently working on an Australian Research Council project dealing with American security relations with Commonwealth allies.