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Georgia has been vaulted into recent headlines by the row with Russia over the Pankisi Gorge. But managing Moscow's bellicosity is not the only legacy of its Soviet past that Tbilisi must overcome. Closely related to the problem of the Pankisi Gorge is reform of Georgia's military and security services. Thoroughly committed to full integration into the West, Georgia is a regular participant in the NATO Partnership for Peace and has recently embarked upon a two year U.S. "Train and Equip" program. Still, the most important direction must come from the Georgians themselves. Mindful of this, the government of Georgia in 2000 published Georgia and the World, a general but comprehensive statement of Georgia's foreign policy. Now, the military and security forces must be reorganized accordingly. Leading the way, Defense Minister David Tevzadze this year issued the Defense White Paper. Though the challenges of implementation and of reforming the country's other security services lie ahead, the White Paper represents an important intellectual and political breakthrough. We publish it here not only to mark Georgia's progress, but also to show the prospects and problems that any country might have in thinking through such monumental change in so little time. We wish Georgia the best in its current endeavor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the call for papers focused on the International Studies of Management & Organization Diversification Strategy of Firms in Emerging Economies for the April 30, 2014. It offers information on Sanjoy Sircar, professor with the research interests including corporate finance, corporate strategy and business valuation. It offers information on the developed market enterprises (DME).

In March 2015, the Chinese government initiated an important reform program targeting the defense industry, namely civil–military integration (CMI), with the objectives of introducing military technologies to the civilian market and infusing private capital into military enterprises. On examining this unique exogenous shock in a 2007-2017 sample of Chinese A-share listed firms, we identify the following effects of CMI on military firms' performance. (1) The market value of military firms significantly increases after the establishment of the CMI policy in 2015 and the market value of military firms is on average 6.682% higher after 2015. (2) This effect is robust to propensity score matching, instrumental regression, alternative measures of corporate market value. (3) The positive impact of CMI on military listed firms' market value is stronger for firms with lower innovation ability and weaker corporate governance, suggesting that the CMI policy can improve the research and development abilities and ease the agency conflicts of military firms. (4) After 2015, military firms with weaker financial constraints and those located in provinces with lower marketization levels perform better. Overall, offering a micro-perspective on military firms, this paper complements the growing literature on defense economics and clarifies how CMI improves military firms' performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document provides a list of books received by the journal "European Legacy." The books cover a wide range of topics, including history, politics, philosophy, and literature. Some notable titles include "On a Knife Edge: How Germany Lost the First World War" by Holger Afflerbach, "Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It" by Adam J. Berinsky, and "The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning" by Justin Smith. These books offer valuable insights for library patrons conducting research on specific subjects. [Extracted from the article]

Performance in dynamic complex problem tasks is affected by cognitive inflexibility, whereby people are sometimes unable to adapt their strategies to unexpected changes in their surroundings. This cognitive inflexibility only affects a person's performance when the environmental changes are relevant to the particular problem-solving strategy that they are using. This paper describes a new methodology to detect cognitive flexibility in the use of strategies and presents an experiment designed to test the hypothesis, proving that the type of training affects cognitive flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is about the defense strategies and plans set by Australia in the 1987 White Paper. The author mentioned the dimensions of the crisis that faced the defense establishment of the country and the ways used by the Minister of Defence and his advisers to address the issue. He implied that the current area of operations of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) should be compressed to make greater use of civilian technologies and assets. A discussion about the dimensions of the issues the Australia's defense establishment is now facing is also presented.

Copyright of Australian Journal of International Affairs is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper offers a comparative study of Israel and Singapore to understand the national security policies of geographically smaller states. These states are militarily powerful, geographically small, and in close proximity with much larger potential adversaries. These states are also different in terms of their relationship with that much larger state as well as their independence narratives. Israel remains in a state of conflict with Iran through Syria and through terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel was created through war. On the other hand, Singapore has a complicated relationship with Malaysia based on suspicious cooperation. Malaysia also allowed Singapore independence given differences in the voting behavior of Singaporeans. Both states share a military strategy of preemption or prevention. Since these states are geographically small, striking first may offer Israel and Singapore a better chance at avoiding annihilation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political economy impacts and influences a state's military strategy. This article focuses on how the integration of the US political economy in the Indo-Pacific drives US Navy officers and the broader national security state to establish the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP). Investigating the strategic thought of senior Naval officers shows that they think far beyond military threats and engage with the United States and the Indo-Pacific political economy. Even as the US Navy competes with China's military, its FOIP strategy benefits corporate elites in both China and the US, whose cooperation creates a mutually supportive economic relationship. This argument leads to the finding that the US hegemony in the region is a strategy that avoids a bipolar 'New Cold War' of an entirely de-coupled US and China. The FOIP supported by the US Navy continues to integrate China into regional and global economies, even as it attempts to push back against China by gathering allies and partners. The emphasis on international political economy highlights how the region is a network of 'patchwork' relations, where states rely on one another for economic prosperity. Through investigating speeches and strategic papers from US Naval officials, this paper demonstrates how the US competes and cooperates with China in the context of relations in the region that are in constant flux. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the study of the challenges that disruptive technologies represent for industrial defence strategies and procurement policies. It focuses on the incorporation of drones into military arsenals and will be based on a study of the Brazilian Navy case. Drones are a disruptive technology both for the defence industrial base and for their implications for military tactics and the organisational structure of the armed forces. The analysis addresses the main difficulties encountered in incorporating these technologies into traditional military structures and acquisition systems. We explore the ways in which defence procurement adapts (or fails to adapt) to the emergence of disruptive technologies: are traditional military organisations and procurement structures capable of introducing disruptive technologies and engaging in the organisational and operating practices required to do so? Some lessons are drawn from this experience: even when the military relevance of drone technology is widely acknowledged and even officially recognized, procurement strategies and practices have not been able to shift from their focus on incumbent suppliers and conventional systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the strategic dimensions concept and content analysis of nine key defence white papers published between 1957 and 2010 to assess which factors most influence declaratory policy. The paper also notes that the development of defence policy has been accompanied by the “muddling through” vs. decisive choice debate which reflects the tensions within policy between the thesis of strategy and the antithesis of fiscal parsimony. The paper maintains that defence policy is ultimately contingent upon external threats and it is these, rather than the desire to economise, which are the key policy drivers. It concludes that this extrinsic factor will determine the outcome of the next SDSR and though this is not necessarily incongruent with the desire to economise, events may prove otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To preclude a severely damaged or more likely dissolved NATO, NATO Europe would need the capabilities to fight offensively and to win. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Errors in ancestry prediction for historical military casework result in soldiers unable to be interred to the country they fought and died for. Australian WWII soldiers with varying degrees of European and Asian heritage are expected in the remains recovered in the Asia-Pacific, representing the greatest risk of error for Unrecovered War Casualties-Army (UWC-A). Previous research using the Ghaiyed population-specific panel (GPSP), on a modern British sample, demonstrated less variation in family-level admixture compared to four global ancestry panels. This suggested that the targeting of specific populations of interest may improve accuracy, although an evaluation using a sample of WWII-era European-Australians (W2A) with varying degrees of family-level admixture was required. This paper outlines the development of an ancestry prediction strategy using a W2A sample (non-admixed), and simulation of 4,000 genotypes representing Australian pedigrees with one Japanese ancestor (great-great-grandparent, great-grand-parent, grandparent, and parent). All great-great-grandparent to grandparent profiles were accurately predicted as W2A individuals, and although admixture at the parent level could not be resolved, no profiles were incorrectly assigned Japanese ancestry. The GPSP provided more informative predictions in contrast with the mitochondrial DNA/Y-chromosome lineage approach currently used by UWC-A as the GPSP provides an approximately 75% improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper frames Morocco as a settler state in order to map how the structural logic of settler colonialism persists through the transformation of the built environment in contemporary Casablanca. Rather than focus on commonly-referenced settler states, such as Israel or America, this paper analyzes Morocco, where formal decolonization occurred through the end of the French Protectorate 1956, but there has been an ongoing settler colonial project in Western Sahara since 1975. The logic of elimination of Indigenous populations and territorial expansion of the settler polity endure through urban planning, documentation of the built environment, and architectural preservation. I argue that the structural logic of settler colonialism was produced by the convergence of French military strategy of domination during the Protectorate era was adapted through forms of knowledge and institutions shaping urban space through architectural preservation in contemporary Casablanca. I map the production of knowledge by French academics, then show how this knowledge shaped the preservation agenda that reproduced the structural logic of settler colonialism. The entanglement of institutions, forms of knowledge, and the applications of that knowledge by preservationists highlights how the structural logic of settler colonialism adapts to the changing conditions for settler colonial theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an extensive and rapidly growing body of literature on armed Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) focused on the US War on Terror. However, smaller Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for military use, or what this paper refers to as tactical UAVs utilised by small states, have received much less scholarly attention ̶ despite their rapid proliferation in the last decade. In order to start rectifying this dual neglect of more limited UAVs employed by small states, the paper makes an empirical contribution to the study of tactical UAVs. Drawing on a substantial number of interviews and studies commissioned by the Swedish Armed Forces, the paper examines the Swedish UAV program, which is in certain ways representative of a smaller state's efforts to incorporate UAVs into its armed forces. The paper argues that it is crucial to think in terms of systems rather than the UAV as a free-standing resource to be used on its own. If utilized along with other ISR assets, tactical UAVs may have a significant role to play in asymmetric conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the miscalculations of strategies during the South African War. Miscalculations of the Boers on the issuance of an ultimatum to the British troops; Reaction of Boer troops to the disruption of railway lines; Failure of the British War Office to convert warnings into preventive strategies.

This paper traces the significant change that has occurred in the balance between offense and defence in Israel's 'hybrid' military strategy in recent decades. Relying on fresh materials concerning the organizational, doctrinal, and procurement processes of Israel's military, we identify a shift from offense towards defence as the preferred way to protect Israel in the face of new security threats. We also show that due to rapidly changing security challenges, limited resources, and the military's organizational culture, this change has been gradual, incremental, improvised, and largely informal. We propose that similar changes may characterize other states facing new security challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to underline the Russian's new role in the Mediterranean region and it is divided into three sections. First, it takes into account the notion of hybrid warfare as it, according to NATO and westerner scholars, represents the new military strategy that Moscow devises to achieve its goals. Consequently, the paper studies the current use of the term "hybrid warfare" and then, using a more historical standpoint, it will show how this concept is neither new nor useful to understand current Russian politics toward the Mediterranean region. As a consequence, the paper's second section elaborates on the notion of gray zone warfare that seems to be more appropriate to describe both Russian military operations and its tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hybrid warfare is the latest of the terms/concepts that have been used within the defence community in the last three decades to label contemporary warfare. It has been officially adopted in the core strategic documents of NATO, EU and national governments and has already inspired many articles, policy papers and books; however, this paper is unique in the sense that it analysis the hybrid warfare concept through the lens of strategic theory. It is argued that hybrid warfare does not merit the adoption as a doctrinal concept. Strategic theory instead, which lies at the nexus of all dimensions of warfare, provides a better viewpoint to approach contemporary warfare. It concludes that efforts should be directed towards exploring warfare under the light of eternal principles instead of proving the emergence of new types of warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Islamic State (IS) ruled over 11 million people at the height of its power. It also orchestrated over 250 terrorist attacks against the West. Thus, by any measure, IS surpassed the ambitions held by its predecessor al-Qaeda. Yet the United States (US) did not deploy tens of thousands of troops to confront it. It instead used surrogate forces to evict IS from its strongholds. Drawing on interviews with senior policymakers, diplomats, and military officials with knowledge of Operations Inherent Resolve in Syria and Odyssey Lightning in Libya, this paper confronts commonly-held perspectives on the "by, with, through" approach to warfare. It argues that will-to-fight and skillset play important roles in US military partnerships with irregular forces. Nevertheless, these two characteristics alone cannot overcome interference by other nation-states. To be successful, these partnerships should either be limited to short-term objectives or the US and allied forces should be prepared to deter opposition to their surrogates over the medium-to-long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts of papers about war. They include "Multi-Ethnic Armies in the Aftermath of Civil War: Lessons Learned From Lebanon," "Understanding the Leadership and Culture Dynamic Within a Military Context: Applying Theory to an Operational and Business Context," and "Strategy: The Challenge of Complexity."

Blocks of postcards were recovered from the sea bed at Scapa Flow, from the wreck of a World War I cruiser. There were at least three different images represented: most were of a warship, others of a more sentimental nature. All of the postcards were unused; they were in very poor condition, being extremely soft, badly stained with metal corrosion and sulphides. The treatment of paper items recovered from the RMS Titanic is discussed, and a treatment strategy for the Scapa Flow assemblage is outlined. The condition of the cards is discussed, along with conservation treatment trials, conservation treatments and anticipated long-term problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intrusion prevention requires effective identification of and response to malicious events. In this paper, we model two important managerial decisions involved in the intrusion prevention process: the configuration of the detection component, and the response by the reaction component. The configuration decision affects the number of alarms the firm has to investigate. It is well known that the traditional intrusion detection system generates too many false alarms. The response decision determines whether alarms are going to be investigated or rejected outright. By jointly optimizing these two decision variables, a firm may apply different strategies in protecting its informational assets: slow but accurate, rapid but inaccurate, or a mixture of the two strategies. We use the optimal control approach to study the problem. Unlike previous literature, which studied the problem with a static model, in our model, the decision on balancing the desire to detect all malicious events with the opportunity costs required to do so is time dependent. Furthermore, we show how the choice of an optimal mixture of reactive and proactive responses depends on the values of cost parameters and investigation rate parameters. We find that in our model, a high damage cost does not immediately translate to a preference of proactive response, or a high false rejection cost does not translate to a preference of proactive response. The dynamics of the problem, such as how fast alarms accumulate and how fast they can be cleared, also affect the decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the problem of planning and scheduling a complex make-to-order product with multiple levels of product structure. The work assumes finite capacity constraints and uncertain processing times. For planning such systems we define a schedule as a set of planned operation start times together with a set of priority rules (for individual resources) that are followed in implementing the schedule. An optimal schedule is determined by minimizing the expected total cost (the sum of work in progress holding costs, product earliness costs and product tardiness costs). A Stochastic Discrete-Event Based Evolution Strategy (SDEES) is first introduced to tackle the scheduling problem. However, SDEES is computationally demanding due to the multiplicative effect of the number of search iterations and the size of the evaluation samples required at each stage in the search. To reduce computation and improve search speed, an Ordinal Optimization Based Evolution Strategy (OOES) is developed. Quantitative examples covering a range of uncertainty levels are used to illustrate the effectiveness of the methods. Further, a case study using data from a collaborating company demonstrates the practical effectiveness. The Ordinal Optimization Evolutionary Strategy achieves a performance similar to the SDEES whilst reducing the computational time by around 60%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indian Navy, since independence, has found it challenging to be militarily relevant as a valuable instrument of threat or use of force in India's military strategy. The Navy's fortunes, therefore, have depended far more on the inclinations of India's political leadership, the requirements of India's foreign policy priorities in its immediate neighborhood and the outlook of great powers operating in the Indian Ocean towards littoral navies. After the end of the Cold War, the increase in the Indian Navy's profile is indisputable, evident in its growing size, the diverse diplomatic and constabulary roles assigned to her but also the positive perception of the service as a stabilizing force in the Indian Ocean region by extra-regional powers such as the US and other Quad countries. China's encroachment in the Himalayas and the rising profile of the PLA-Navy has provided a startegic rationale for the Indian Navy to project itself as a vital instrument in India's military statecraft. By linking India's military objectives on the land border to the Navy's natural advantage and capabilities in the Indian Ocean, it aims to fundamentally alter its existential crisis as the most irrelevant arm of the Indian military. Yet, this newfound relevance remains doubtful under the inherent risks accompanying naval coercion and the shortage of resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indian military strategy has tended to neglect the link between the conventional and nuclear domains in a nuclear weapons environment. We argue that this anomaly is evident in two broad areas: the conception of "war," and the complexity produced by new technologies that span the two domains. First, we show with empirical evidence that "limited war" in a nuclear environment is misnomer: the reality is more appropriately called "marginal conflict" owing to its extremely restricted nature. It follows that strategic planning and posture must be tailored accordingly. We then highlight the risk of escalation produced by conventional technologies that carry potential cross-domain nuclear effects, noteably with respect to cyber, artificial intelligence, missile defence and space. We note that the complex strategic effects produced also complicate military-strategic interactions traversing geographic domains, noteably South, Southeast Asia, and Northeast Asia. The paper concludes with some reflections on the reasons for these lacunae in Indian strategic thinking and what might be done about them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on metaphorical representation of military activities of the US-led international coalition and of ISIL which are construed on the basis of systematic metaphors drawn from the combination of the PATH and FORCE image schemas. The corpus for the analysis consists of 30 political speeches delivered by American president Barack Obama in the period from 2014 to 2016 in which the speaker outlined the actions and military strategies against ISIL. Methodological procedure for the identification of systematic metaphors in the President's discourse followed the steps specified within Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) proposed by Pragglejaz Group [2007. MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse. Metaphor and Symbol, 22(1), 1–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926480709336752]. The results from the analysis indicate that systematic metaphors drawn from the combination of the PATH and FORCE schemas were employed as a means for the manifestation of progress in the campaign against the organization and they presented power and intentions of both sides involved in the conflict in the area of the Middle East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colin Gray’s dimensions of strategy, built upon the earlier work of Clausewitz and Howard, has theoretical, practical, and pedagogic value for the Strategic Studies community. This paper further develops the theory, arguing that the dimensions can be controlled or managed to improve strategic performance. The dimensions are divided into two categories: “internal” and “external” to the process of strategy. The paper describes the dynamic process by which the internal dimensions, which can be controlled, are used to exert influence over the external dimensions that are beyond the control of the strategist. It is argued that six dimensions hold the key to strategic success: politics and the five dimensions concerned with warfighting. This conclusion validates the Clausewitzian paradigm with its emphasis on policy and battle. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The European Union (EU) has developed a series of 'strategic partnerships' with a range of great power states. These partnerships reflect the emergence of an actor that seeks to establish foreign policy goals with an attendant institutional architecture and political commitment. This paper examines two of these partnerships with the United States and China to illustrate the manner in which the EU has constructed a collective identity for itself via discursive association with great power states, while claiming a normative character as an actor of a different kind, with the ability to act strategically with great power states via temporal and ethical forms of social distancing from these same actors. This paper consults recent survey research and policy developments to assess the success of these EU discursive strategies. It is concluded that these partnerships play a somewhat useful role in establishing the EU as an actor of global significance, whilst the EU is less successful in its inherent claims of normative superiority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A nonlinear optimization model is developed in this paper to identify the optimal replacement strategy for military aircraft. In the model, the aircraft operating and maintenance (O&M) costs per available year are estimated as a function of age during the aircraft life cycle. After determining the optimal replacement policy, the model is applied to the CF Long-Range Patrol CP-140A Arcturus fleet. A sensitivity analysis is also carried out to assess the impact of some key model parameters on the result. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this introductory paper is to put into perspective some key methodological and practical issues raised by the analysis and implementation of Sustainable Development (SD) approaches in recent years. The key point made here is that, while SD analysis has gained in depth and methodological improvement, implementation issues remain problematic as they underlie serious institutional and strategic constraints. Through different angles, the five papers gathered in this special issue provide several illustrations of this ambivalence and emphasise some key practical challenges facing the design of workable SD policies and measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although social conflict due to the presence of different groups divided by cultural, religious or ethnic issues plagues many contemporary cities, community and participatory planning methods still pay little attention tosegregation in contested spacesas a specific matter of concern. This paper aims to contribute to filling this gap through the development of a novel tool to be implemented during community planning processes in contested cities, particularly in (visual) mapping processes. The pilot area for developing the lexicon has been selected within the city of Belfast, which has been struggling for years with problems related to inter-religious sectarian conflicts. Thematerialeffects on the urban structure of the long process of defensive planning during the so-calledTroublesand within the post-conflicts peace programmes have been investigated by analysing urban artefacts includingedges, borders, barriers, doors, visual control points. The paper suggests that a simple, recognizable lexicon may contribute to honing community planning methods in contested places by integrating the traditional methodology of visual mapping with a tailored taxonomy of elements of urban conflict, which may be used at many stages of the planning process, including developing a visual map, design and planning, and developing and implementing an action plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the period 2001–2003, the paper discusses how the Western military intervention in Afghanistan changed power structures early on, undermining the political settlement in the long term and culminating in the present electoral crisis. Key concepts, a theoretical framework and the initial military approach (including how the initial military strategy undermined an indigenous solution for toppling the Taliban) are outlined and literature focused on hybrid governance and ‘legitimacy’ as an important but overlooked facet of peace-building is presented. Examples of ‘lessons learned’ in relation to the failure to engage with traditional forms of governance–early on in the Afghan conflict—are set out. The objective is to show that the military strategy adopted in 2001–2002 had adverse long-term consequences that were hard to reverse later on (e.g. by shifting the goalposts of military activity to, for example, a counter-insurgency strategy from 2005 onwards). This paper does not aim to resolve these paradoxes in the Afghan context going forward but offers implicit recommendations based on ‘lessons learned’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Indian strategy through the lens of military innovation. Comparing three major indigenous defense projects undertaken within a decade of each other, it asks why the Indian defense establishment managed to deliver on the Naval project while those of the Army and the Air Force were delayed by decades. To explain these differing outcomes, the paper argues, we need to analyze three inter-related issues: institutional capacity within the services; innovation strategy; and project management structures and accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the relationship between national security policymaking and the defence sector. The goal is to understand how a lack of attention to national security policymaking affects the defence sector and vice-versa using Brazil as a case study. Our main argument is that a lack of attention in national security policymaking by civilian elites can weaken political controls over the armed forces, inhibit effective defence reforms that challenge military prerogatives, and, over time, reinforce militarization in national security policymaking, especially in its three main pillars: defence, intelligence, and public safety. We call this process national security neglect. Our case study shows that as internal security challenges grew in complexity, civilian political elites pushed the military to dealing with public safety, border security, and national security policymaking. Civilians also delegated civilian posts to the armed forces in defence, public safety and intelligence, instead of engaging in broader reforms. This led to a vicious cycle of military dependency, deteriorated the already fragile political controls over the armed forces, inhibited defence reforms, and increased the military role in the state and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Australian Journal of International Affairs is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article addresses American strategy in Berlin at a critical ju2ncture of the Cold War, right after the end of the Berlin blockade and through the upheaval brought on by the outbreak of the Korean War. It considers the role of Maxwell Taylor, army general and US commander in Berlin, in shaping policies on the ground and linking military, political, and economic assets in an effort to improve Berlin's economy and deterrent value for an extended Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role of constraints in limiting and enhancing creativity in engineering design. Based on a review of literature relating constraints to creativity, the paper presents a longitudinal participatory study from Coloplast A/S, a major international producer of disposable medical equipment. At Coloplast, constraints played a fundamental role and the observations show the important, dual role of constraints in terms of being a limitation and a prerequisite for creativity. Too few or too many constraints had a negative impact on creativity, whereas the formulation, rationale and ownership of formal constraints played a crucial role in defining their influence on creativity – along with the tacit constraints held by the designers. The designers were found to be highly constraint focused, and four main creative strategies for constraint manipulation were observed: blackboxing, removal, introducing and revising. Constraints introduced late in a project contributed to the generation of new solutions to old problems, and existing solutions were creatively adopted to satisfy new constraints. This paper recommends creative constraint-handling strategies, as well as identifying potential directions for future research on the relationship between creativity and constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on educational policy borrowing has mostly focused on explicit transfer processes, often highlighting how explicit reference to the international has served legitimatory purposes in the borrowing country. In contrast, this paper focuses on 'silent' borrowing, i.e. non-acknowledged processes of policy transfer. The paper argues that keeping processes of policy transfer 'silent' can also follow a logic of legitimation, depending on which patterns of legitimation are favoured in a political culture. Three propositions are argued in the paper, using the case of Sweden as an empirical example: (1) educational policy-making in Sweden has been heavily influenced by international discursive currents; this, however, has largely been left unacknowledged by policy-makers; (2) The educational research community has largely followed the official image of policy-making in its exclusive focus on the national context; and (3) Silent borrowing was so prevalent in Sweden for a long time because political culture was characterised by a powerful myth of rationality and national superiority, favouring strategies of legitimation other than explicit borrowing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UK local authorities are subject to a statutory duty to prepare and deliver community strategies in collaboration with a range of public, private, voluntary and community interests. Community strategies are policy instruments intended to enhance local well-being by improving policy and service co-ordination, tackling cross-cutting issues and targeting resources at community priorities. This paper argues that in practice the delivery of community strategies is hampered by the co-existence of multiple purposes. Drawing on early research in Wales, the paper describes and discusses the purposes attached to community strategies by different stakeholders and considers their implications, singly and in combination, for policy and practice. It concludes that there are fundamental tensions between purposes that limit the capacity of community strategies to improve policy co-ordination and service delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The author reflects on strategy research in hospitality management, including strategy publications. The author suggests ways that researchers in the hospitality field can contribute to the academic society and hospitality industry. The author also discusses how the success of a company and the management role is understood in strategic management.

Military training has always been considered as an education system with its own characteristics that distinguished it from the rest of higher education. However, different initiatives have been developed in order to integrate military education in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). This paper analyses the European system of military institutions of higher education (MHEI). Results indicate MHEI sector has distinctive features that have increased the diversity of European HEIs. Further, the emergence of the MHEI sector can have benefits for both the European defence and their educational attainment. From a defence point of view, it can help the development of a European strategic culture and increase cooperation between countries in defence and security. From the education area modernisation, it will improve defence and security related research and may enhance defence knowledge transfer. In this way, the MHEI sector will be positioned as key player in the development of the Common Security and Defence Policy and a European strategic culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Will emerging technologies increase the risk of conflict escalation? This paper develops a framework for evaluating the role of technology in different types of intra-war escalation. It then uses the framework to probe empirically the possible role of technology in escalation through three carefully chosen cases from Cold War. The findings largely cast doubt on the idea of emerging technologies as an independent, primary driver of otherwise avoidable escalation, suggesting instead that technology more likely functions as an intervening variable – a sometimes necessary, but rarely sufficient, condition for escalation. The conclusion explores the implications of this analysis for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on one of the strategies proposed in the name of ‘fair trade’: the inclusion of social clauses in trade agreements. Although the social clauses could cover any non‐economic aspect of trade exchanges, such as environment, they are more commonly used to protect labour rights. Although examined in other disciplines, this issue is still elusive for marketers, despite its implications for this discipline. This paper attempts to answer the question: Will the inclusion of a social clause in bilateral and multilateral trade agreements help to achieve the objective of fair trade? After analysing the possibility and the effectiveness of such a social clause and examining whether the objectives attached to the social clause are coherent with those of the fair trade movement, the conclusion follows that only to some extent will the inclusion of a social clause in trade agreements help to achieve the goals of the Fair Trade movement. Since it does not aim at altering ‘unjust’ trade structures but ‘unfair’ labour practices, the social clause should be better understood as an improvement of existing Ethical Trade initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Tilly, this paper argues that a social movement is what it does as much as why it does it. This approach is particularly important in the case of the animal rights movement, which is often demonized as extremist and violent. Critics of the movement claim that animal activists use letter bombs, arson attacks and threats to intimidate those they see as animal abusers and that violent direct action of this kind is typical of the movement as a whole. The present paper argues that the mainstream animal movement -- in the USA, the UK and Australia -- is overwhelmingly non-violent and that its core strategies and tactics have two broad aims, namely to gain publicity for the movement and to challenge conventional thinking about how we treat nonhuman animals. This is achieved primarily by the deployment of the key tactical mechanisms of persuasion, protest, non-cooperation and intervention. These tactics may be deployed collectively or as DIY (Do-It-Yourself) activism which many grassroots animal activists -- 'caring sleuths' to use Shapiro's apt term -- seem to prefer. The paper focuses on demonstrations and pamphleteering as examples of publicity strategies or liberal governance strategies as well as critical governance strategies or interference strategies such as the hunger strike, ethical vegetarianism and undercover surveillance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to presents a progress report on how a subnational jurisdiction, the Australian state of Victoria, is attempting to implement regional governance for sustainability through its catchment planning framework. The paper examines the lessons learnt from a best practice approach to the implementation of network governance to see whether there are actions that can be taken to improve regional governance for sustainability in Victoria. The authors argue that Victoria is implementing a network governance approach to natural resource management (NRM) as a significant component of sustainability and that this has certain advantages. In particular the emergence of Regional Catchment Strategies developed by the State's ten statutory Catchment Management Authorities as 'regional sustainability blueprints' is bringing a significant level of maturity to the state\s governance framework. Furthermore the state is currently working to complete its governance for sustainability through new statewide integrating frameworks-an Environmental Sustainability Framework as well as a statewide Catchment Management and Investment Framework. The paper concludes that taking a network governance approach could have transformative potential but there are significant challenges ahead: the complex task of aligning of national, state, catchment and local government strategies through an outcomes focus; the scarcity of mechanisms and tools to assist in translation of strategies into integrated investment priorities: gaps in knowledge and understanding of natural resource management problems; limitations in the capacity of regional and local bodies, including local government; and getting the policy tools right within the framework. However, as the best practice examples illustrate, taking a gradual approach to the development of the institutions-building on successive wins in capacity-is the best and only way to proceed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the contribution of military publishing to the nineteenth-century military revolution leading to the Great War. The subject is addressed in four contexts. The first is informational, analyzing the role of military publications in making available data and ideas that increased military effectiveness. The second is syncretic, evaluating the effect of military publications on cohesion within increasingly large, complex armies, and between armies and their societies. The third is internal. It discusses the contributions to professional insecurity generated by print, and by its electronic extensions the telegraph and the telephone. Finally, the paper considers the print revolution's influence on actual war-fighting [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Typically, in cases where an agent's actions produce foreseen harmful consequences, we morally discriminate in favor of scenarios in which those consequences are unintended. This intuitive distinction plays a particularly important role in our moral assessment of military strategies, especially when innocent bystanders may be involved. However, the analysis of the general principles governing such pre-theoretical inclinations must inevitably confront difficult and obstinate philosophical problems. As has often been pointed out, the criteria proposed by the traditional view on this issue, the so-called Doctrine of Double Effect, are dependent upon the description of the agent's intentional profile in an intuitively inadmissible way. As a solution to the Doctrine's shortcomings, contemporary philosophers have proposed analyses in which the notion of harmful involvement plays a central role. The main thesis of this paper is that appeals to harmful involvement do not provide the desired solution. Given the pervasive role played by the assessment of an agent's intentions in our moral evaluation of the use of military force in particular situations, the philosophical puzzles raised in this paper bring to the foreground a set of correlated problems of unequivocal relevance for the discipline of military ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some extant theoretical studies and different empirical results have demonstrated that a firm's behaviour explains several notable competitiveness microeconomic foundations, based on a wide bundle of elements. Firms can directly control most of these elements; in this paper, we will focus on those related to operations management. Therefore, products, processes, technology, equipments or quality control systems will centre our attention. These, and some additional elements, constitute decisions within the operations management area that must be included in the content of operations strategy. Operations strategy can be conceptualized as a set of decisions or practices with regard to structure and infrastructure variables. On the one hand, these strategic decisions influence a firm's abilities successfully to reach some competitive priorities such as cost, quality, delivery and flexibility, and, on the other hand, to obtain the expected performance. This research analyzes which are the main structural and infrastructural practices that constitute operations strategies in manufacturing companies, and investigates the effect of these decisions on some firm competitiveness indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]