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Australia's new government is committed to delivering the next defence white paper in 2015. The two previous white papers took a predominantly risk-management approach to Southeast Asia, generally ignored the strategic opportunities in the region, treated it as a stand-alone region largely unrelated to developments in East Asia and failed to link Australia's policies in Southeast Asia with the broader goal of helping to ensure greater strategic stability in Asia by putting constraints on Chinese assertiveness and encouraging its peaceful rise. After offering a summary of recent Australian defence thinking on Southeast Asia, this paper outlines why managing China is the key variable when it comes to strategic stability in the region. It then examines how China's strategy and behaviour can be shaped and influenced by events and relationships in Southeast Asia, and offers some suggestions as to the role Australia can seek to play in Southeast Asia that relates to Canberra's China-focused objectives and strategic stability in Asia more broadly If that can be achieved in the 2015 defence white paper, Australia - which is often criticized for being preoccupied primarily with managing the relationship with its superpower ally the United States - will demonstrate to itself and Asia that its heavy reliance on the ANZUS treaty is no barrier to strategic creativity in Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the United States northern neighbor, Canada serves as a NATO ally and a strategic partner with Washington through the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Canadian forces have fought honorably and bravely in concert with American forces in many wars. Canada's Government, however, has been less consistent in promoting a credible vision of Canadian national security policy and geopolitical interests in its defense white papers. These documents have often contained idealistic rhetoric about adhering to a rules-based international order and defending freedom. In reality, Canadian governments of varying political parties have consistently failed to provide the sustained funding and coherent national security strategy to make Ottawa an effective partner with the U.S. and the NATO alliance in addressing historical and emerging national security threats. This article examines Canadian defense white papers for several decades and recommends ways Canada can ensure its defense policy planning can have greater credibility in the national security policymaking corridors of its allies and with potential adversaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On November 23, 2015 the United Kingdom (UK) released a defense white paper detailing its national security strategic objectives. This work examines the geopolitical, economic, and strategic implications of this document and compares it with recent and historical defense white paper documents issued by the British government. It scrutinizes the text of these documents and relevant scholarly literature analyzing them while also examining the national security threats facing the UK at the time of their issuance and assesses whether the 2015 document will be supported with requisite political will, military personnel, and financial support to carry out its objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2013 White Paper talks a great deal about reform in Defence. It is notable, however, that the areas of reform that are discussed relate primarily to processes of accountability, planning, reporting, consultation and reviewing. Some advances have been made in these fields. However, their effect has largely been to tune long-standing and well entrenched administrative systems. Deeper strategic or root and branch reform to achieve world's best practice in efficiency and effectiveness is hardly mentioned. If Defence is to win the internal functional savings directed by the 2009 Defence White Paper, much more rigorous and thorough-going processes of reform lie ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the history of the civil defense program of the U.S., from 1944 to 1984. Reason given by the government on the establishment of a civil defense program; Studies conducted on the potential impact on a typical American city of the hydrogen bomb; Creation of the U.S. Federal Civil Defense Administration; Ways used to educate the public on civil defense; Implementation of the Interstate Highway Act of 1956.

The article focuses on the reorganization of the U.S. National Security Council (NSC) under the presidency of Dwight David Eisenhower. The author provides an analysis on the performance of NSC under the administration of former president Harry S. Truman and identifies its weakness. Some of which is the informal nature of NSC proceedings during that time and that NSC had been always late in the policy-making process in matters concerning national security. But with the powerful tandem of Robert Cutler and Eisenhower, several significant changes occurred in the NSC. The NSC structure was strengthened and the Council mechanism was implemented for all major foreign and military policy-making.

This paper assesses the parameters and utility of "targeted killing" in combating terrorism and its role within the norm of state self-defense in the international community. The author's thesis is that, while targeted killing provides states with a method of combating terrorism, and while it is "effective" on a number of levels, it is inherently limited and not a panacea. The adoption and execution of such a program brings with it, among other potential pitfalls, political repercussions. Targeted killing is defined herein as the premeditated, preemptive, and intentional killing of an individual or individuals known or believed to represent a present and/or future threat to the safety and security of a state through affiliation with terrorist groups or individuals. The principal conclusions of this paper are that targeted killing: • Must be wholly differentiated from "assassination" and related operations involving the intentional targeting of an individual during wartime, in order to be considered properly and rationally. • Is a politically risky undertaking with potentially negative international implications. • Is the proven desire of some terrorist groups to conduct attacks involving mass casualties against innocent civilians that may, in the future, cause states to reconsider previous abstention from adopting targeted killing in order to protect their populace. • Can serve to impact terrorists and terrorist groups on a strategic, operational, and tactical level. • Has historically had both negative and (unintentionally) positive impacts for terrorist groups. • Oftentimes exposes civilians to unintentional harm. The methods of investigation include a thorough review of the available literature: books, published and unpublished essays, interviews of selected individuals (to include academics and retired members of military and police forces), and the author's independent analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the interplay of discourse and practice in American grand strategy under President Obama. A particular focus is the trajectory of military intervention, from the 'surge' in Afghanistan to the campaign against DAESH, and how competing discourses of hegemony, engagement and restraint have informed U.S. national security policy and the application of military power. The paper analyses how President Obama followed a post-American vision of hegemony intended to lower the financial and human cost of American primacy through burden sharing and 'leading from behind.' This strategy resulted in a recalibration of American military power that shifted its emphasis to covert operations, and the use of drones and Special Forces in combating terrorism, while ultimately prioritizing the Asia-Pacific over the Middle East as region of vital strategic interest to the U.S. Oscillating between limited engagement and extraction from the latter region however, undermined America's leadership position both at home and abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problems of violent youth groups have escalated in Indonesia, following economic recession, unemployment, and weakened state institutions. Young people have beers hit by the lack of income and broken expectations In consequence, youth groups emerge and arrange for members' economic revenue as well as identity creation and confidence. Religion in some cases is used to legitimize violence and to strengthen the boldness of group members. The paper offers a brief overview of gangster (preman) traditions in Indonesia. Empirical findings on violent youth groups in the two selected provinces are presented within a multi-factor analytical framework, where the need for income and identity strengthening, political élite interests, and the lack of law enforcement contribute to explaining criminal and vigilante violence, Interviews with leaders and members of movements engaged in violent actions offer insights into a problem that threatens national security and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article is based on a number of key assumptions as well as a conceptual system of military security, which is anchored in the theoretical system of security studies. Since these two disciplines are relatively young, there is a need to analyze them for the purpose of determining the basic theoretical apparatus in the field of security studies. This article presents an original definition and description of the fundamental nature of security as well as a general description of military security. It includes the vital domain of the subject's own activity leading to the maintenance of the proper level of security. The paper contains original definitions of such basic categories as security, state security and military security. Indeed, much of the content is based on theories used in previous research, but these have served merely as "bricks" that are used to fill in the already existing theoretical structure. Thus, through a specific redesign, a structure compatible with the basic tenets of security studies has been devised, also taking into account recent results of other sciences that cover military affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article cites U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower's unique approach to the formulation of security policy. It highlights the failure of most presidents to fully comprehend the process of formulating grand strategy, particularly the utilization of the National Security Council (NSC) in formulating security policy. It highlight's Eisenhower's commitment to a studied development of U.S. national security strategy and his relevance for today's national security professionals and strategists.

This paper analyses the separate roles and functions of the police and the military in the context of the current security environment in the Caribbean, which now includes such diverse factors as trans-national organised crime, corruption, links between politics and crime, natural disasters, oil dependency, high levels of public debt and the chronic marginalisation of large sectors of the population. Some have argued that the Caribbean is unlikely to be invaded, and that the military can therefore be merged into the police as a cost-saving measure. This paper argues, by contrast, that the rapidly-evolving challenges require that the roles, functions and training of the police and the military be kept separate and distinct, and that the policy community needs to understand why the purpose and architecture of the training has to be appropriate for the different missions of the respective organisations. This argument is supported by a model of discipline which defines the different organisational and individual roles and functions. It is further argued that it is essential that the police forces of the Caribbean continue to move further from their former quasi-military roles, functions and attitudes, and become fully modern police services. The paper accepts that there will continue to be a need for specialist units in the police services that will have paramilitary roles and functions, but concludes that these specialist units should not define the normal role and function of mainstream policing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article represents the first attempt to examine the Chinese elite's threat perception of Japan using statistics to analyse what, if any, differences exist among the People's Liberation Army, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Chinese economic institutes. It seeks to answer two questions that have not previously been addressed in the literature. First, has there been a change in perception of the Japanese threat in these three sectors over time? And if so, what can we deduce about the causes of this change? This study finds that there have indeed been two major shifts in China's threat perception of Japan since the 1980s, one in the late 1980s and the other in the mid-1990s. It also finds that there were no differences between sectors as to the direction and timing of these shifts. It suggests that Japan's military build-up in the late 1980s and the strengthening of the US-Japan alliance from 1996 onwards are what prompted these shifts in China's threat perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite calls over the years for the Asia-Pacific region, or some subset of it, to develop a regional security regime, no deliberate action to achieve this has been taken. This paper considers the possible ends of a regional security regime and the means towards achieving them. The ends themselves would differ according to whether any regime focused on security, traditionally and narrowly conceived, on comprehensive security or on human security. No matter which approach is taken, if the regime is to be successful in any sense beyond that of rhetoric, some of the region's cherished norms such as non-intervention as that is currently interpreted will have to be at least modified, if not completely scrapped. Even if the region collectively decides it needs a security regime and can agree on its ends, there are many alternative ways of achieving the ends and the processes of working out detailed rules will be difficult and time-consuming. None of this is to say that establishing a regional security regime will be impossible. It is to say that it will involve a lot of work, and a lot of compromise by state policy-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses Finland's defense policy. Three circles of national security interest; Basing of Finnish defense policy and development plans on Defense White Paper of 2001; Transformation of Finnish national defense based on the Defense White Paper of 2004.

The central concern of this paper is with what factors give momentum to the chain of decisions which result in a weapon that goes against the standards of performance. The defense policy literature suggests that the variations in the performance of American military hardware are tied to the government's difficulties in resolving fundamental disagreements on strategic and doctrinal matters, variations in the technological demands of military projects, and the need for bargaining and coalition building. These relationships yield three hypotheses which are tested using simple bivariate analysis. With the caveats appropriate to a small sample of cases, the hypotheses are stated as relations between conditions rather than as correlations, and the findings are suggestive. The data support all three of the primary hypotheses. The study concludes with reform recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes Saudi Arabia's historic and arduous journey to national‐defense transformation, launched around 2015. It analyzes the challenges and opportunities of defense reform in the kingdom while highlighting the role of the United States in this process. Last, the article discusses the future of US‐Saudi defense relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the new (2013) Japan's National Security Strategy and its relationship with the actual changes in the regional and global strategic landscape. The connections between the new Japanese perspectives on the subject and the recent U.S decision to focus its military Power in the Asia Pacific region will be specially stressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to describe the consolidation of the militarization of public security in Mexico, during the first four years of the administration led by President Felipe Calderon (2006-2012). Although this is not a new state response to the challenge of organized crime, during the second-generation transition government, the involvement of the armed forces has reached a peak, spreading to the sphere of the states through the designation of military men as public security secretariats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The security and defense policy of Finland has undergone significant changes after end of the Cold War. These changes have had a significant impact on the country's development. In this paper I highlighted some areas and many important aspects of this impact. Besides being subjective, these issues concern the Finnish public as well as the policy maker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Parliament of Canada has traditionally deferred to the government on matters relating to national security although parliamentarians have, on occasion, vied for the task of being actively involved in holding the government to account on these matters. In 1991, parliament conducted a five-year review of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act where the Solicitor General of Canada and his officials presented classified summaries to parliamentarians to assist them in their review of the effectiveness of the legislation. In 2004, a National Security Committee of Parliamentarians was proposed in Securing an Open Society: Canada's National Security Policy. The Speaker's ruling on the provision of documents of April 27, 2010 also dealt with this issue. This paper examines a number of issues and concerns that have arisen in the past on this issue, and it examines parliamentary review of national security matters in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. It concludes that there are no reasonable barriers to the involvement of parliamentarians in reviewing matters of national security in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The determination that strategy should have a long-term predictive quality has left strategy seemingly wanting when having to address what are currently called 'strategic shocks', such as the recent Arab Spring and the NATO commitment to Libya. The focus on grand strategy, particularly in the US, is responsible for this trend. Its endeavour to mitigate risk in the national interest is inherently conservative, rather than opportunistic, and it is favoured and probably required by powers that are committed to the status quo, that need to manage diminishing resources, and that are dealing with relative decline. Strategy as traditionally but more narrowly defined by generals for use in a military context, is much more exploitative and proactive. Precisely because it is designed to be used in war it presumes that its function is offensive, that it will have to deal with chance and contingency, and that its aim is change. Its task is to deal with the uncertainties of war, and to respond to them while holding on to long-term perspectives. Clausewitz addressed the issue of 'war plans' in book VIII of On war, but the thinker who did most to inject planning into European strategic thought was Jomini. His influence has permeated much of American military thinking. The effect of nuclear planning in the Cold War was to ensure that strategy at the operational level became conflated with broader views of grand strategy-not least when the Cold War itself provided apparent continuity to strategic thought. Since 1990 we have been left with a view of strategy which fails to respond sensibly to chance and accident. Strategy needs context, and a sense of where and against whom it is to be applied. Its core task is to embrace contingency while holding on to long-term national interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The establishment of a military command for Africa (US AFRICOM) symbolizes the radical repositioning of the US military. Facilitated by the consensus in contemporary Western foreign policies - that there can be no development without security - over the last ten years the US military has expanded its activities into civilian domains including development and conflict prevention. As a reaction to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, recent US military doctrines on counterinsurgency and stability operations have singled out the need for more civilian and long-term activities as a precondition for success. AFRICOM has put most of these „military innovations" into practice. Due to the command's focus on development activities, on civil-military coordination and its proposed engagement in non-war situations, in military circles AFRICOM is seen as a role model for future military practices. This paper problematizes the military's expanding mandate and discusses its implications. It argues that the military's increasing engagement in issues of governance and development deeply blurs the normative boundary between the military and the civilian and exposes development as a technology of security. Furthermore, the military's repositioning follows the dominant securitization of so- called „fragile states" and classifies social spaces along Western strategic interests. As a consequence, targeted communities find it hard to separate development efforts aimed at countering poverty and those aimed at countering insurgency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2010 the coalition government conducted a major review of defence and security policy. This article explores the review process from a critical perspective by examining and challenging the state-centrism of prevailing conceptions of current policy reflected in the quest to define and perform a particular 'national role' in contrast to a human-centric framework focused on the UK citizen. It argues that shifting the focus of policy to the individual makes a qualitative difference to how we think about requirements for the UK's armed forces and challenges ingrained assumptions about defence and security in relation to military operations of choice and attendant expensive, expeditionary war-fighting capabilities. In particular, it confronts the prevailing narrative that UK national security-as-global risk management must be met by securing the state against pervasive multidimensional risk through military force, that military power projection capabilities are a vital source of international influence and national prestige and that the exercise of UK military power constitutes a 'force for good' for the long-term human security needs of citizens in both the intervened and intervening state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a strategic defence review expected to begin in 2010, this article reflects upon the history of the review in British defence policy and planning. The authors argue that for decades successive defence reviews have followed a process in which policy development moves through four phases: failure, inertia, formulation and misimplementation. This has resulted in a cycle of defence reviews that have proved to be incomplete and unsustainable: a cycle in which each review leaves so much unfinished business that another radical reappraisal of defence policy is soon thought necessary, and a cycle from which a succession of governments have so far proved unable or unwilling to escape. The article suggests that the strategic defence (and security) review promised for the next parliament is in danger of continuing this pattern of policy deficiency. The authors contest that this need not be the case. With a close understanding of the pattern of past reviews it should be possible for the 2010 review finally to break the mould and produce a coherent and above all sustainable defence policy and strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than fifteen years after engaging in the endeavors of giving a political and security muscle to the already powerful economic European Union, there is still a good deal of work that needs to be done. Most of the institutions necessary for carrying out the security and defence tasks are already at work and still the European Union is rather shy in undertaking such responsibilities. The article is centered around the possible answers to the question of the extent to which the new by no means constitutional but still reform Treaty of Lisbon will be able to strengthen the authority of the European Union, in a very sensitive and highly important area for its respectability, as an effective actor on the world stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the question of how well South African defense policies and investments during the apartheid and postapartheid era have supported the country's overall political objectives. Perhaps not surprisingly, the single-mindedness of mission during apartheid contributed, in many ways, to a defense strategy that was more cohesive than that of the postapartheid era. In the postapartheid era, opportunities for using the country's defense assets to achieve political objectives and overall national priorities have not been fully exploited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the security documents of 2000 compared with the Defense White Paper (DWP) of 2003 concerning the security policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysis of the factors affecting Russian international relations, national interests, and national security; Assessment of the DWP and the priority tasks in the development of the Armed Forces; Prospects and outlook on the Russian security policies.

This article reviews the recent release of material concerning the National Security Council by the Nixon presidential material staff in NARA. The new collection covers a wide array of issues relating not only to the structural and procedural developments of the council during the Nixon-Kissinger years, but also to the activities of its many interagency groups. Following an evaluation of the collection's sub-series, the article will demonstrate the significance of the findings by analyzing a particular document, suggesting that the new NSC series offers researchers a unique opportunity to reconstruct the story of the Nixon-Kissinger dyad and their control of the foreign policy machinery between 1969 and 1974. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to provide an overview of the development of Turkey's defense industry from a historical perspective within the context of the country's national security strategy. Due to its unique geostrategic location and deep-rooted historical, socio-political and economic relations with the countries of its neighboring regions, it is appropriate for Turkey to possess a multidirectional foreign policy and defense concept. Since 1980, Turkey has been taking impressive steps to build a modern defense industry, launching initiatives at the national and international level, leading to the emergence of a new national defense industry strategy and defense concept for the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Canadians have been called an "unmilitary people," Canada has played a significant role in many wars, from South Africa to Korea, and has been able to mobilize its resources to meet the demands of war. This paper concentrates entirely on the mobilization of military personnel: the process of moving armed forces from peacetime to wartime levels. Its analysis centers on the internal and external factors that influence force requirements and availability and on the means of filling the inevitable gaps between peacetime and wartime needs. Canada's mobilization policies are currently emerging from a period of neglect and must resolve the traditional tendencies of an unmilitary people with the demands of modern conventional war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada's alliance relationships, NATO and NORAD, constitute nearly the sum total of Canadian defense policy. In addition to providing national security through collective Western defense, these alliances have been viewed in Canada as affording Ottawa a seat at the table, where important issues of international security and U.S.-Soviet relations are discussed. While enjoying this access, Canada has, nonetheless, been concerned about the overwhelming U.S. influence over its defense policy. For the Canadian military, the problem has been obtaining adequate funding for the Allied commitments made by the government. The 1987 White Paper on defense promised sufficient resources, but recent budget cuts have cast serious doubt on Canada's future role in its alliances and on Ottawa's ability to make use of its seat in Allied councils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1960s and 1970s the creation and analysis of coded international events data became a major tool for the analysis of international relations and crises. Unlike other quantitative projects developed by the academic community, the events data approach was transformed to applied research and used by various national security bureaucracies in the U.S. government. The approach was eventually rejected due to an aversion by bureaucrats to quantitative analysis systems and procedures which did not incorporate their expertise, organizational objectives and need for user-friendly and timely presentation. The lessons learned from this case can be used to inform current efforts by academics to transfer basic research to the foreign policy making community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a structural analysis of the Belgian national defense policy domain. It offers two sets of findings: (1) It shows that among organizations involved in formulating defense policy in Belgium in the 1980s, governmental agencies and political parties were considered the most prominent. (2) Through the use of multidimensional scaling techniques and cluster analysis, it identifies five "issue publics." Such issue publics are groups of organizations concerned with similar kinds of issues—one with comparatively general interests; three concerned respectively with manpower, procurement, and general defense policies: and a marginal manpower public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists and political scientists have long fretted over the dangers that a politicized military poses to democracy. In recent times, however, civil–military relations experts in the United States accepted retired or indeed still serving generals and admirals in high-ranking political posts. Despite customary revulsion from scholars, the sudden waivers are an indicator that military participation in momentous national security decisions is inherently political without necessarily being partisan, including when civilian authority defers to a largely autonomous sphere for objective military expertise. Military politics is actually critical for healthy civil–military collaboration, when done prudently and moderately. Janowitz and Huntington, founders of the modern study of civil–military relations, understood the U.S. military's inevitable invitation to political influence. Here, we elaborate on two neglected dimensions, implicit in their projects, of military politics under objective civilian control based on classical virtues of civic republicanism: Aristotle's practical wisdom and Machiavelli's virtú. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a comparative study of the national security, defense policies and defense-planning approaches of three small states that include Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Singapore. Topics discussed include Qatar's prudent economic policies, astute diplomatic maneuvers, and national security and defense, the development of the national security policy and defense planning of the UAE, and Singapore's deterrent power.