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31. Journal of Advanced Military Studies: Economics of Defense

Author:
Patrick Callaway, James Lockhart, Nikolas Gardner, Rebecca Jensen, Ian Brown, J. Craig Stone, Lauren Mackenzie, and Kristin Post
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Advanced Military Studies
Institution:
Marine Corps University Press, National Defense University
Abstract:
During the past two decades, the U.S. government infrastructure has ground to a halt for a variety of reasons, particularly due to deficit reductions, military spending, health care, and overall party-line budget disagreements, but even more recently on border security and immigration. Regardless of party politics and the daily administrative drama in the White House, how does one of the wealthiest countries in the world prepare for the impact of making war and defending peace within these economic and political constraints? Authors for this issue of MCU Journal address the economics of defense and how those costs impact nations. Aside from the economic costs the United States bears for its defense, the articles in the Spring issue of MCU Journal will demonstrate there are other costs and unique limitations faced by America and other nation-states. For example, smaller nations such as Oman must rely on technologically advanced allies for their defense support. Long-term political costs also may apply to these nations, as James Lockhart’s article on the Central Intelligence Agency’s intervention in Chilean politics discusses. There are also other ways to wage “war” that are discussed in this issue; for example, looking to the past, President Thomas Jefferson attempted to wage a trade war against Great Britain and France to maintain U.S. trade neutrality and, looking to the present and future, governments must address the real costs of cyberwar. Finally, we must consider the political and diplomatic costs associated with U.S. servicemembers and their work in foreign states, but also the relationship repair they must rely on to keep the peace.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Counterinsurgency, Culture, Armed Forces, Military Affairs, Authoritarianism, Cybersecurity, Weapons, Economy, Military Spending, History, Coup, Trade, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Augusto Pinochet
Political Geography:
Britain, Afghanistan, China, South Asia, Canada, Asia, South America, North America, Chile, Oman, and United States of America

32. Xi Jinping and PLA Transformation through Reforms

Author:
You Ji
Publication Date:
05-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS)
Abstract:
China’s five-year plan of PLA reform marked a new page in the history of PLA transformation. This article will analyse two major aspects of this round of unprecedented PLA reforms: (i) the politics of the military reform; and (ii) the PLA’s efforts to reshape its force establishments, organisational structure, and command chains. The first concerns Xi’s political leadership and the second draws a roadmap to remould the PLA by 2020. By now the reform has yielded substantial achievements: (i) the overhaul of the apex of power; (ii) the reshaping of the mid-level command chains of the war zone and service; and (iii) the restructuring of the overall force establishments. It has also created some transitional uncertainties as well.
Topic:
Military Affairs, Reform, Political structure, and transnationalism
Political Geography:
China and Asia

33. Juche Doctrine as the Official Ideology of North Korea and Effects on the North Korean Foreign Policy

Author:
Can Kakişim
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
Juche, the official ideology of North Korea, is an original doctrine which influences every aspect of life and politics within the country. This ideology leads to one-man rule in the political area and highly statist and isolationist structure in the economic realm in North Korea. Effects of such an internal structure on the foreign relations of the country appear as the dominance of an uncompromising foreign policy philosophy. North Korea has a skeptical approach towards the external world and it pursues a military-first policy including nuclear armament in order to achieve its foreign policy goals and secure the continuation of Juche regime at home.
Topic:
Military Affairs, Nuclear Power, Ideology, Socialism, and Juche
Political Geography:
Asia and North Korea

34. The People’s Liberation Army Strategic Support Force: Leadership and Structure

Author:
Rachael Burton and Mark Stokes
Publication Date:
09-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Project 2049 Institute
Abstract:
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Strategic Support Force (PLASSF) is one of the most significant components of the People’s Republic of China’s (China, PRC) ongoing military reform and reorganization. Based on limited sources available, the PLASSF appears intended to integrate the launch, tracking, and control of satellites with the operational units that apply the services that the satellites provide, such as command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. This paper aims to provide an overview of the Strategic Support Force’s role within the PLA, its leadership structure, and the biographies of its core decision makers. In addition, it examines how the PLASSF’s presumed ability to provide “cross-domain fusion” helps to augment synergies among PLA assets, which could enhance the PLA’s capacity to further project power in the Indo-Pacific region.
Topic:
Military Affairs, Leadership, and Army
Political Geography:
China and Asia

35. China Maritime Report No. 3: China’s Distant-Ocean Survey Activities: Implications for U.S. National Security

Author:
Ryan D. Martinson and Peter A. Dutton
Publication Date:
11-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S. Naval War College
Abstract:
Today, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is investing in marine scientific research on a massive scale. This investment supports an oceanographic research agenda that is increasingly global in scope. One key indicator of this trend is the expanding operations of China’s oceanographic research fleet. On any given day, 5-10 Chinese “scientific research vessels” (科学考查船) may be found operating beyond Chinese jurisdictional waters, in strategically-important areas of the Indo-Pacific. Overshadowed by the dramatic growth in China’s naval footprint, their presence largely goes unnoticed. Yet the activities of these ships and the scientists and engineers they embark have major implications for U.S. national security. This report explores some of these implications. It seeks to answer basic questions about the out-of-area—or “distant-ocean” (远洋)—operations of China’s oceanographic research fleet. Who is organizing and conducting these operations? Where are they taking place? What do they entail? What are the national drivers animating investment in these activities?
Topic:
Military Strategy, Military Affairs, Geopolitics, Navy, Oceans and Seas, Seapower, Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and People's Republic of China (PRC)
Political Geography:
United States, China, and Asia

36. Echelon Defense: The Role of Sea Power in Chinese Maritime Dispute Strategy

Author:
Ryan D. Martinson
Publication Date:
02-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S. Naval War College
Abstract:
On April 10, 2012, two Chinese law-enforcement cutters on joint patrol in the South China Sea received orders to proceed immediately to Scarborough Shoal, a disputed cluster of rocks 140 nautical miles west of Subic Bay, the Philippines. Earlier that day, a Chinese fisherman aboard one of several boats moored in the lagoon had transmitted an alarming message to authorities in his home port in Hainan: “Philippine Navy ship number 15 heading this way.” Ship number 15 was BRP Gregorio del Pilar, an elderly former U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) cutter now serving as a frigate in the Philippine navy. Not long after the first message arrived in Hainan, sailors operating from the ship entered the lagoon and approached the Chinese boats. At this point, the fisherman sent a final message: “They’re boarding.”
Topic:
Military Strategy, Military Affairs, Geopolitics, Navy, Oceans and Seas, Seapower, and Port
Political Geography:
United States, China, and Asia

37. Detecting patterns in North Korean military provocations: what machine-learning tells us

Author:
Taehee Whang, Michael Lammbrau, and Hyung-min Joo
Publication Date:
05-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
For the past two decades, North Korea has made a series of military provocations, destabilizing the regional security of East Asia. In particular, Pyongyang has launched several conventional attacks on South Korea. Although these attacks seem unpredictable and random, we attempt in this article to find some patterns in North Korean provocations. To this end, we employ a machine-learning technique to analyze news articles of the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) from 1997 to 2013. Based on five key words (‘years,’ ‘signed,’ ‘assembly,’ ‘June,’ and ‘Japanese’), our model identifies North Korean provocations with 82% accuracy. Further investigation into these attack words and the contexts in which they appear produces significant insights into the ways in which we can detect North Korean provocations.
Topic:
Security, Military Strategy, and Military Affairs
Political Geography:
Asia, South Korea, North Korea, and Asia-Pacific

38. Fall 2018 edition of Strategic Visions

Author:
Alan McPherson
Publication Date:
09-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Strategic Visions
Institution:
Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy, Temple University
Abstract:
Strategic Visions: Volume 18, Number I Contents News from the Director ......................2 New Web Page...............................2 Fall 2018 Colloquium.....................2 Fall 2018 Prizes..................................3 Spring 2019 Lineup.........................4 Note from the Davis Fellow.................5 Note from the Non-Resident Fellow....7 Update from Germany By Eric Perinovic.............................8 A Conversation with Marc Gallicchio By Michael Fischer.......................10 Fall 2018 Colloquium Interviews Kelly Shannon...............................12 Jason Smith...................................14 Drew McKevitt.............................16 Book Reviews Implacable Foes: War in the Pacific, 1944-1945 Brandon Kinney.........................18 Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and the Globalizing of 1980s America Taylor Christian.........................20 To Master the Boundless Sea: The US Navy, the Marine Environment, and the Cartography of Empire Graydon Dennison.....................23 Losing Hearts and Minds: American-Iranian Relations and International Education During the Cold War Jonathan Shoup.........................25 The Action Plan. Or: How Reagan Convinced the American People to Love the Contras Joshua Stern..................................27
Topic:
Diplomacy, War, Military Affairs, Grand Strategy, and Empire
Political Geography:
Japan, Iran, Middle East, Asia, and Asia-Pacific

39. Debating the Quad

Author:
Euan Graham, Chengxin Pan, Ian Hall, Rikki Kersten, Benjamin Zala, and Sarah Percy
Publication Date:
03-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Australian National University Department of International Relations
Abstract:
In this Centre of Gravity paper, six of Australia’s leading scholars and policy experts debate Australian participation in the ‘Australia-India-Japan-United States consultations on the Indo-Pacific’ - known universally as the ‘Quad’. A decade since its first iteration, the revival of the Quad presents significant questions for Australia and the regional order. Is the Quad a constructive partnership of the region’s major powers to safeguard regional stability, uphold the rules-based order and promote security cooperation? Is it a concert of democracies seeking to contain China? Or is it an emerging strategic alignment that risks precipitating the very confrontation with China it seeks to avoid? Or is it something else entirely? Euan Graham opens the debate by arguing that the Quad represents a rare second chance for Australia to cooperate with regional powers who have a shared interest is the maintenance of stability in Asia through the preservation of a balance of power. In addition to constraining China’s strategic choices beyond its maritime periphery, Dr. Graham argues that the Quad’s revival aims to send a concerted strategic signal to China along the four compass points of the Indo-Pacific region, but sufficiently restrained to avoid significant blowback from Beijing. Chengxin Pan responds that instead of forcing China to change tack, the Quad, by exacerbating China’s strategic vulnerability, will achieve precisely the opposite: prompting it to further strengthen its military capabilities. Dr. Pan argues that the nature of China’s challenge to the existing regional order is actually geoeconomic in design, as evidenced by the Belt and Road Initiative. To meet this challenge, however, the Quad’s military response is far from the right answer or an effective alternative. Ian Hall next argues that the Quad is neither a proto-alliance nor an instrument for containing China. Given that these states have so far failed to advance a coherent and coordinated line on Chinese initiatives to transform the region, Dr. Hall notes that the Quad offers something more prosaic and evolutionary: a forum for discussion and information exchange intended to lead to better policy coordination between like-minded states with a stake in the rules-based order. Rikki Kersten notes that the Japanese government wants Quad 2.0 to be seen as a Japanese initiative because it aspires to lead an ethical endeavour that reaches beyond the Asia-Pacific region. This represents a stepchange in post-war Japanese foreign and security policy thinking. Japan under Abe is seeking to harness rising insecurity to underpin its own regional leadership credentials and enhance the geographical scope of its security policy ambition. Benjamin Zala responds that the potential risks associated with sending containment-like signals to Beijing in the short-term and the potential for misperceptions over ambiguous commitments during a future crisis in the longer-term clearly outweigh the benefits of the current vague aspiration to cooperation with no clear purpose. Dr. Zala also warns against blurring the lines between formal military alliances and strategic partnerships like the Quad which increase the odds of miscalculation during times of power transition. Finally, Sarah Percy rounds out the debate by arguing that discussions of the Quad’s high politics have thus far obscured the more practical and interesting questions about how it might function and contribute to maritime security. Dr. Percy notes that that the day-to-day operations of most navies are focused on the more proximate security challenges posed by maritime crime. The Quad would yield tangible and possibly lasting benefits from such cooperation.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Diplomacy, Military Affairs, and Maritime
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, India, Asia, and Australia

40. North Korea’s International Scientific Collaborations: Their Scope, Scale, and Potential Dual-Use and Military Significance

Author:
Joshua Pollack and Scott LaFoy
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies
Abstract:
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has described research and development as crucial to his regime’s efforts to overcome the international sanctions regime. By developing key technologies indigenously, North Korea seeks to reduce its need to import sensitive goods that might otherwise be denied to it through export controls, sanctions enforcement, or lack of funds. Direct collaboration between North Korean and foreign scientists is playing an expanding role in the regime’s pursuit of technological advancement. To assess the extent of this activity, and to identify collaborative research involving dual-use technologies and other technologies of potential military significance, the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey developed a new dataset capturing publications coauthored by North Korean scientists and foreign scientists between 1958 and April 2018.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Military Strategy, Military Affairs, and Nuclear Power
Political Geography:
Asia and North Korea