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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]

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]

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]

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.

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]

The article presents the perspective of the U.S. on the Western Alliance nuclear deterrent power. The explosion of a nuclear device by Frances had generated debate on the British capability to counter nuclear strike. Regarding the future of nuclear deterrence, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has planned to integrate Western deterrent power and disperse the power among members of the coalition. It can be seen that the difference of international perspectives and interests between the U.S. and European counties is an underlying factor which tend to weaken NATO. The author explains the different proposals for the solution of the problem encountered by NATO. He suggests that an allied deterrence would be the perfect solution to the dilemma that now confronts NATO.

The article discusses the possible consequences on the continuance of inventing nuclear weapons by the superpower nations. Each of this nation's aim focuses on national security. The system of thinking based on security through military dominance has been their core strategy in achieving world peace. However, this mode of analysis is becoming obsolete and is far more positively dangerous in that it will bring about catastrophic damages to the humanity. At a certain point, where tests of thermonuclear weapons in the Pacific and Siberia dramatized this transition. Understandably, accidents and misunderstandings are always a possibility should this misadventure continues, thus, the term stalemate.

The article focuses on the author's comments regarding the strategy Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-reduction meant for maintaining national security, maximizing the likelihood of reciprocation and evaluating the genuineness of reciprocations. According to the author, nuclear capacity can serve rational foreign policy if it is viewed as a security base to take limited risks in reducing tensions. A shift in military policy should be clearly indicated at the beginning.

The article discusses the objectives of the Central Asian states on national security. Topics discussed include the importance of continuous balancing of Russian, U.S., and Chinese regional security agendas in ensuring Central Asian militaries, the multi-vector foreign policy of Kazakhstan, and the military-to-military cooperation of the U.S. with the Central Asian states.

The article discusses whether the role of military is limited to national security and stabilization. It is stated that the U.S. military is already substantially engaged in both stability and development activities in Afghanistan and other conflict and post-conflict zones. It is stated that in the U.S. operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan, foreign assistance played a key role in stability and reconstruction efforts.

In this article, I investigate the processes of the discursive construction of the identity of Kazakhstan as a sovereign and non-nuclear state, and show how the construction and performance of these identities are both productive and the product of Nuclear Weapons Technology (NWT) as a threat to the national security of Kazakhstan. I argue that both practices – the production of the state identity and the abolition of the ex-Soviet nuclear arsenal from the territory of Kazakhstan – are instrumental ways to secure the values of Kazakhstan, in this case the existence of Kazakhstan as a sovereign state. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the relationship between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Canada. It explores how and why is that NATO has managed to retain considerable significance to the Canadian security and defense policy a ten years after the September 11, 2011 terrorists attacks. It highlights the pessimism about NATO's future prospects expressed by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. It notes that Canada was more engaged with NATO than it had been since the start of the early 1950s, an engagement that correspond closely with liberal foreign policy doctrine.

This article seeks to refine the concept of 'strategic culture' and to highlight some appropriate methods of analysis through which this concept might be applied in empirical studies. In doing so, I seek to synthesise a much ignored element of strategic culture literature - Bradley Klein's 'second generation' approach - with insights drawn from contemporary critical constructivist theory. The resulting conception of strategic culture presents a less deterministic account of culture than that found in much existing literature regarding. It also provides far greater critical potential with regard to the analysis of the strategic practices of states and other actors. More generally, this conception of strategic culture leads us to ask how strategic culture serves to constitute certain strategic behaviour as meaningful but also how strategic behaviour serves to constitute the identity of those actors that engage in such behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the political interplay of foreign policy, military intervention, and Founding Father's visions on the U.S. and global political culture. It discusses the imbalance of power in the American government that was created by the interventionist foreign and military policy. The military roles of the American government in the utilization of force in the international community are cited including the interest of the national security, national consensus on the military intervention, and as a consequence of last recourse to warfare. It mentions the Congressional control over war struggles of the U.S. Moreover, the necessity to restructure the U.S. military focus based on the interest of the national security is mentioned.

In these remarks I offer some tentative observations based largely on my experience as a policy analyst on China security-related issues for nearly twenty years, at RAND and now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. My focus during this time has been mainly on national security and military/defense issues, but also has included attempts to interpret the impact of both domestic and external factors on Chinese foreign/defense policies and military-security behavior. This has included analysis of the impact of domestic change on the People's Republic of China's (PRC) foreign policy and of Chinese grand strategy from a historical perspective. My uses of theory and of history, both premodern and modern, have been largely as needed to support my analysis of Chinese perceptions and motivations in the security arena. What I am most familiar with is the way in which policy analysts and policy practitioners look at China, including their use (or non-use) of studies from history and political science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tenth anniversary of India's and Pakistan's 1998 nuclear tests enables scholars to revisit the issue of South Asian proliferation with a decade of hindsight. What lessons do the intervening years hold regarding nuclear weapons' impact on South Asian security? Some scholars claim that nuclear weapons had a beneficial effect during this period, helping to stabilize historically volatile Indo-Pakistani relations. Such optimistic analyses of proliferation's regional security impact are mistaken, however. Nuclear weapons have had two destabilizing effects on the South Asian security environment. First, nuclear weapons' ability to shield Pakistan against all-out Indian retaliation, and to attract international attention to Pakistan's dispute with India, encouraged aggressive Pakistani behavior. This, in turn, provoked forceful Indian responses, ranging from large-scale mobilization to limited war. Although the resulting Indo-Pakistani crises did not lead to nuclear or full-scale conventional conflict, such fortunate outcomes were not guaranteed and did not result primarily from nuclear deterrence. Second, these Indo-Pakistani crises led India to adopt a more aggressive conventional military posture toward Pakistan. This development could exacerbate regional security-dilemma dynamics and increase the likelihood of Indo-Pakistani conflict in years to come. Thus nuclear weapons not only destabilized South Asia in the first decade after the nuclear tests; they may damage the regional security environment well into the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the ethical issues surrounding the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP), and the military undertakings of the European Union (EU) since 1999. The compatibility of any military posture with the stated purpose of the EU as an agent of international cooperation is discussed, along with issues around criteria for intervention in international conflicts, including concern for peace, human rights, and international law. Other topics discussed include the EU involvement with disarmament questions, internal EU security, and political accountability.

The article discusses the European Security and Defense Policy in relation to the emerging "human security" paradigm, an alternative to the traditional concept of national security. Human security prioritizes the welfare of individuals over that of the state, and is proposed as a more ethical basis for security policy. Topics discussed in the article include the nature of war in the post-Cold War and "post-national" era, the evolving military and foreign policy of the European Union, and the role of the United Nations and NATO.

Hungary's constitutional commitment to support kin-nationals beyond its borders (nation policy) has been a central feature of its post-1989 foreign policy and highlights a particularly important national security concern - the societal security of national identity, culture, language and tradition. This article examines Hungary's societal security concerns and the policy methods it utilises, including its EU membership and the promotion of minority rights at the European level, to help combat these concerns. It is suggested that Hungary has found it somewhat difficult to balance its societal security policy objective with internal economic demands on its welfare system and its external foreign policy objective to maintain good neighbourly relations. This article also notes that Hungary's attempts to Europeanise, or rather 'EU-ise', minority and ethnic rights issues as a means to enhance societal security for the Hungarian nation has certain political consequences for the EU. This suggests that societal security provision is an issue that cannot be overlooked when trying to understand the longer-term implications of EU eastern enlargement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in the international environment such as the shift toward unipolarity, the rise of globalization, and the expansion of terrorist networks have redefined the sorts of problems confronted by policymakers and military practitioners in the arena of national security. With most of its fundamental concepts and frameworks rooted in the study of international relations (IR), the field of security studies has failed to keep up. Highly educated soldiers and diplomats sent to help rebuild failed or fragmented states are still poorly equipped to identify major obstacles or formulate solutions for accomplishing their missions. The safety of states and societies today depends less exclusively on blocking the military, economic, and ideological initiatives of a foreign power and more on supporting the integrity of members that can participate in an international system regulated by generally agreed-upon rules and conventions. The need to help various types of states under a variety of cultural and economic conditions build legitimate, durable political institutions and functioning societies should push security studies toward a broader examination of comparative politics. Beyond the balance of power and modalities of interstate competition, the new security studies should embrace fundamentals found outside of IR to make more robust intellectual contributions to the examination of comparative defense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From a military standpoint, the European Union's Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) defies logic. Why would the European allies seek to create a competing military force outside NATO when worried about American isolationism and when unable and unwilling to dedicate the necessary resources? This article suggests an alternative motive behind the European Union's establishment of a defense program—the development and enhancement of a "European identity." In short, the ESDP is designed in no small part to further the project of nation-building in a broadening European Union. This article proposes a social-constructivist framework for analyzing this development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On July 30 the European Union started its second largest military operation so far. However, for the EU, interventions abroad for security and peace are nothing new. The EU is involved in security interventions on three continents and in 11 missions. In parallel, the project of European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) is being advanced by the member states with battle groups, a European gendarmerie, and the Defence Agency. However, the more the EU extends its security policy engagement the more diffuse ESDP's political and strategic profile seems to be. In fact, at the end of 2003 the member states adopted the EU's first common security strategy, but even this document leaves a number of crucial issues unanswered, above all what EU military intervention would involve. A political and societal debate concerning what European Security and Defence Policy wishes to achieve, as well as its limitations and requirements, is urgent. The central question is the following: Is ESDP under the conditions of the twenty-first century defined primarily as a defense or as a political project? A juxtaposition of the concepts "offensive (self-) defense" and "human security" illustrates the conceptual and strategic alternatives facing Europe in security policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The George W. Bush administration's national security strategy, which asserts that the United States has the right to attack and conquer sovereign countries that pose no observable threat, and to do so without international support, is one of the most aggressively unilateral U.S. postures ever taken. Recent international relations scholarship has wrongly promoted the view that the United States, as the leader of a unipolar system, can pursue such a policy without fear of serious opposition. The most consequential effect of the Bush strategy will be a fundamental transformation in how major states perceive the United States and how they react to future uses of U.S. power. Major powers are already engaging in the early stages of balancing behavior against the United States, by adopting "soft-balancing" measures that do not directly challenge U.S. military preponderance but use international institutions, economic statecraft, and diplomatic arrangements to delay, frustrate, and undermine U.S. policies. If the Bush administration continues to pursue aggressive unilateral military policies, increased soft balancing could establish the basis for hard balancing against the United States. To avoid this outcome, the United States should renounce the systematic use of preventive war, as well as other aggressive unilateral military policies, and return to its traditional policy governing the use of force—a case-by-case calculation of costs and benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the American foreign policy of U.S. President George W. Bush. Calibration of national interests that are essential to wise policy decisions; Consideration of American militarism as one of the most dramatic and consequential legacies of the Cold War; Assessment of the unprecedented centralization of power within the executive branch.

European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) has become a contentious subject in transatlantic security relations. This essay identifies the ambiguities that have occurred in the policymaking on both sides of the Atlantic that appear to have generated a basic lack of confidence and trust in the other side's good intentions and commitment to cooperation. It does so by sketching three historical time periods—1981–1986, 1988–1996, and 1998–2004—that convey the recurrent patterns and outcomes in the ESDP dispute. These three cases cover the periods (1) from the London Report on European Political Cooperation to the Single European Act and the Western European Union Security Platform, (2) the Maastricht Negotiations on a Common Foreign and Security Policy, and (3) the evolution of ESDP from St. Malo to Brussels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the strategic assessment of the military power in Canada. Reference to the Rush-Bagot Treaty of 1818 between Canada and the U.S.; Percentage of the Gross National Product allocated for the defense sector in Canada; Dependence of Canada's political, economic, and military power on the U.S.

In recent years nonlethal weaponry has become increasingly available for widespread application as a means of promoting national security. Among the fascinating questions raised by this development, the deterrence impact of nonlethal weaponry seems particularly ripe for scrutiny. After a background discussion of definition, motives, history, and dangers surrounding this trend, this article develops a set of highly tentative propositions about the conditions under which nonlethal weaponry is most beneficial and detrimental as an instrument of deterrence. It is hoped that these propositions provide guidance for policymakers in using this coercive instrument to manage domestic and foreign turmoil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Gulf Cooperation Council's (GCC) regional security and integration prospects. The author relates that the military cooperation between member-states has become a pressing matter for the GCC. The rising regional threats, the GCC's primary concern is with external security, and it is through the Joint Defence Arrangement that the organization seeks to face challenges to its politico-military stability. With respect to internal security, GCC states continue to discuss the adoption of the Internal Security Agreement, blocked by Kuwait's insistence that certain extra-territorial rights conceded to Saudi Arabia be revoked.

This article is a discussion of how ideological paradigms shaped during the Cold War might be adapted in high schools to explore critically the roles played by the United States in world affairs during the last half century. The author focuses on two specific paradigms, represented respectively by the work of Paul Gagnon and Noam Chomsky. Whereas Gagnon asserts that examination of flaws in American foreign and military policies must be tempered by recognition of the legitimate national security concerns of policymakers and the difficult dilemmas they face, Chomsky argues that the rela objective of American policies has been geopolitical dominance and that the methods used to realize that objective have been ruthless. The author concludes with the argument that allowing students to stand outside of both paradigms and explore them in light of historical evidence will help them to develope a meaningful perspective on the roles played by the U.S. during the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on issues pertaining to the plan of the U.S. government to develop an effective defensive shield or ABM in order to protect the country from nuclear annihilation. Reason why the author believes that no defensive system, no matter how advanced, will work; Focus given on how an intensified effort to develop ABMs will change the basic U.S.-Soviet Union strategic relationship; Effect on U.S. national security.

The article presents a letter from the editor of "Interfaces" concerning the November-December, 2006 issue. The issue focuses on the United States Department of Homeland Security's Operations Research division, which aims to give the department a scientific framework for considering problems and decisions. In addition, articles within the issue also discuss other aspects of homeland security, ranging from attack detection, identification, and prevention to response preparedness in the case of successful attacks.