CIAO DATE: 06/2014
Volume: 12, Issue: 3
Summer 2013
The Economics of Smart Defense (PDF)
Keith Hartley
NATO’s “Smart Defense” proposal claims to be a new way of thinking about generating defense capabilities. It encourages allies to cooperate in developing, acquiring, and maintaining military capabilities. It means pooling and sharing capabilities, setting priorities, and coordinating efforts better. It involves member states not spending more but spending better; it is about specializing in what we do best and seeking multinational solutions to common problems.[1] Smart Defense has economic dimensions that need to be clarified and assessed critically. We do not live in a world of “magic wand” economics, where declarations of intent miraculously lead to efficiency improvements in defense markets. Smart Defense cannot ignore the incentives and constraints that operate in defense markets at both the national and Alliance levels.
How Do Social Media Affect Intra-State Conflicts other than War? (PDF)
Thorsten Hochwald
To look at social media in the context of conflict seems, at first glance, a stretch of the imagination. Before 2011, many would have argued that the Web 2.0 or social media was originally designed for business purposes and had little to do with conflict at all. However, following recent events, mainly in the Arab world, this view faces some serious challenges. Some would go so far as to claim that new media can be and actually have been “weaponized” in order to catalyze the transformation of existing authoritarian regimes in the Arab world. It has also been argued that social media was the single most important factor in bringing about the Arab Spring – leading to it being referred to as “Revolution 2.0.” [1] Those who support the antithesis to this argument merely see social media as a set of new information exchange tools made available by the ever-advancing tide of technology. Whatever the truth may be, the events in the course of the Arab Spring, which swept the Region of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) since December 2010, took many by surprise. As these events are quite recent or still ongoing, factual data is fragmentary, and research on the connections between conflict and social media is incomplete at best. Although numerous books have been published, up-to-date information can be found mostly in think-tank research papers and articles on the Web. Much is still unresolved and in a state of change. Moreover, the nature of conflicts has changed after the end of the Cold War, from mainly inter-state to intra-state. Civil society’s influence became a major and expanding factor within the conflict sphere. Last but not least, the nature and number of actors playing important roles in these struggles have also changed—not only in dimension but also in their scope of action.
A Critical Analysis of the U.S. "Pivot" toward the Asia-Pacific: How Realistic is Neo-realism? (PDF)
Rong Chen
At the time of writing, the U.S. had its highest-ranking military delegation in over two years, led by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, visiting Beijing. The mission was intended to conduct sensitive bilateral negotiations at the highest level in China, having been received by President Xi Jinping and members of China’s Central Military Commission. This visit took place during a period of heightened tension in northeastern Asia, characterized by nuclear tests and other provocative actions of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), and the escalating territorial dispute between China and Japan over Diaoyu Island. It underscored the importance of Sino-U.S. bilateral relations, and encouraged students of the region to reflect on the strategic significance and policy implications of the U.S. pivot toward the Asia-Pacific, which is the key factor of the strategic context of the region. In the Fall of 2011, the Obama Administration announced that it would expand and intensify the U.S. role in the Asia-Pacific region, and that “the center of gravity for U.S. foreign policy, national security, and economic interests is shifting towards Asia,” [1] a move that was later to be labeled as the U.S. “pivot” or “rebalancing” with respect to Asia. Since then, “the U.S. pivot to Asia” (hereafter referred to as “the U.S. pivot”) has been the subject of discussion by many analysts, theorists, and policy practitioners in the U.S., China, Asia and elsewhere. There are many articles analyzing the reasons why the United States undertook this strategic readjustment or “rebalancing” that ask the following question: What are the implications of this shift on the Asia-Pacific region, and especially on emerging powers in the region such as China and India? However, these questions are not the topic of this essay.
The Rise of All (PDF)
James Thompson
Introduction: What Will the World Look Like in 2050? In the 1950s, there was much speculation as to what would happen if mankind ventured into outer space. Both Soviet and U.S. scientists were forced to speculate about how objects would perform above the atmosphere without knowing what would truly happen. TIROS I, for example, was the first successful orbit-sustaining satellite, designed to map the earth’s weather. It was launched by the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on 1 April 1960.[1] Thirty years later, NASA turned the TIROS technology around and started looking outward, towards deep space. In 1990, NASA launched the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit and created some of the most detailed visible-light images ever, thereby allowing a deep view into space and time. Many Hubble observations have led to significant breakthroughs in astrophysics. By taking modern theory from communications satellites and looking outward instead of toward Earth, or “reversing the lens,” scientists were able to discover a new universe. But could scientists have accurately predicted the Internet, a rover on Mars, or hypersonic travel in the 1950s?
Xinjiang in China's Foreign Policy toward Central Asia (PDF)
Malika Tukmadiyeva
Introduction The collapse of the Soviet Union led to the appearance of new players in the Central Asian region, the most important of which is China. In the span of some twenty years, China has become a major trade partner and investor in the region. Its trade with nations in the region has grown impressively, from almost nothing in 1991 to more than USD 30 billion in 2011, with China being the region’s second-largest trading partner after Russia. According to the Premier of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, Wen Jiabao, Chinese direct investments in Central Asia by 2012 are estimated at USD 250 billion.[1] China is extensively building oil and gas pipelines, developing a network of transportation links, “as well as expanding its diplomatic and cultural presence in the region.” [2] Scholars and experts on the region have devoted extensive attention to the question of what are the drivers of Chinese policies in Central Asia. There is a consensus among Western as well as Chinese and Central Asian researchers that the region is not the primary focus of China’s foreign policy. China’s relations with the United States is its most important bilateral relationship, and perhaps the primary focus of its foreign policy, along with relations with Japan and other nations in North East Asia, with concerns over stability on the Korean Peninsula taking second place. South East Asia and the wider Asia-Pacific region take third place in order of priority.[3] However, one point that has been highlighted by most studies is that the aspiration to pacify the restive northwestern region of Xinjiang (officially the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region) constitutes the key factor that defines Chinese engagement with and presence in Central Asia.[4] Thus, according to Sébastien Peyrouse, “If Chinese influence in Central Asia has evolved in the course of the two post-Soviet decades, China’s key interests have not changed.
Critical Energy Infrastructure: Operators, NATO, and Facing Future Challenges (PDF)
Dinos Kerigan-Kyrou
Introduction Critical infrastructure enables modern society. It includes our communications and Internet, our banking systems, the means of safely delivering our supplies of food and water, health systems, defense installations, transportation networks, air traffic control systems, and logistics and port facilities. It also includes our energy and electricity supply. Power generation plants, electricity grids, and diesel, gasoline, oil, and natural gas distribution networks underpin our entire infrastructure. Critical energy infrastructure is the single most important part of the complex web of critical infrastructure. Without energy—particularly the regular supply of gasoline and diesel—no other element of our critical infrastructure can operate. This was clearly seen in the northeastern United States during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. That is why the priorities in the wake of the storm were first to reestablish power, and second to restore transit systems (buses and subways). Governments and relief organizations quickly realized that only then could other infrastructure, such as hospitals, become operational again. Threats to our energy infrastructure increasingly take different forms. They can arise from environmental hazards (as in the case of Hurricane Sandy, or the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan); industrial accidents; deliberate sabotage; and “consequential sabotage.” The latter two examples are closely connected, and will be explored further below.
Emil Souleimanov, Maya Ehrmann
Background of the Events The official version of the events presented by the Georgian authorities shortly after this skirmish took place states that in the woods to the east of the village of Lapankuri, a group of five Georgian youngsters was captured by Islamist insurgents who had most likely penetrated the Georgian territory from Dagestan. In subsequent negotiations, the Georgian youngsters were freed in exchange for one or two police officers, and the Georgian authorities then suggested that the jihadists lay down their arms and surrender, a demand that was declined by the insurgents. It is not entirely clear what exactly followed at this point, except for the fact that Georgian security forces supported by military helicopters and aerial vehicles eventually managed to destroy the majority of the group of insurgents, which consisted of sixteen to twenty people, while the rest of the group was most likely able to retreat.[1] News spread of the burial in Georgia’s Duisi district of three Kists,[2] members of an ethnic sub-group of the Chechens inhabiting the Pankisi Gorge region,[3] located approximately 40 km to the northwest of the village of Lapankuri. According to this news (which eventually turned out to be true), at least three Kists, citizens of Georgia, were killed in the incident, while some others killed belonged to Georgia’s Chechen community that arrived in the early 2000s,[4] when thousands of Chechens escaping the Second Chechen War had moved southward, finding refuge among their ethnic kin in the Kist villages spread across the Pankisi Gorge.[5] This was supported by some eyewitness accounts from among the Lapankuri villagers, according to whom at least some of the insurgents were fluent in Georgian. The rest of the slain insurgents were Russian citizens whose surnames and places of birth indicated their overwhelmingly Chechen origin.[6]