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Russian nuclear sabre-rattling following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine has reinvigorated debates over NATO deterrence. One of its key components—nuclear sharing—has been in place since September 1954, but support for it within the alliance has varied over time. Indeed, although Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey host American gravity bombs on their territory, there were fears during the 2010s that some of them would follow Canada, Greece and the United Kingdom's example and withdraw from the scheme. By examining why and how NATO's nuclear-sharing arrangements have changed since inception, we argue that they consistently serve deterrence, signalling, alliance cohesion and burden-sharing goals, which make them hard to dismantle. However, we also demonstrate, through our survey of post-Cold War policies, official statements and public debates, that there is more room in a low threat environment for political contestation within host states. Accordingly, nuclear sharing requires a high threat environment to escape domestic opposition, which effectively returned in 2022, cementing the nuclear status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1949, Turkey became the first Muslim country to formally recognize Israel. Initially, relations were limited to trade and transportation; a partnership to counter the United Arab Republic's pan-Arab influence in the region. Diplomatic relations would cool however, following Israel's reunification of Jerusalem in 1967. By 1994, Turkey no longer had any illusion that the post-Gulf War Middle East would be a peaceful region. By early 1996, the alliance between Israel and Turkey had reached an all-time high with the signing of an agreement on military cooperation and training, followed by a second one in defence, research and development, and technology transfer. Throughout the second half of the 1990s, the Turkish military continued to oversee foreign and defence policy, which remained firmly tied to the West. The Israeli-Turkish alliance was also viewed as a critical buffer against Syria and Iran, sponsors of terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah, with Syria also backing the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The strategic connection with Israel was so valued that when former Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan mulled rapprochement with Iran, the military forced him to resign, resulting in a more pro-western government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, Charles A. Duelfer, Deputy Executive Chair of UNSCOM, 1993–1998, and Head of the Iraq Survey Group, 2004–2005, finds that UNSCOM demonstrated the value of access to individuals in achieving monitoring goals. A vital aspect of UNSCOM's inspection authorities (arguably the most important) was the access to interview identified individuals. "Experts talking to experts" produced data and intangible, but critical, confidence in the weapons of mass destruction declarations of Iraq. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this interview with Henrietta Wilson, a freelance researcher, Nikita Smidovich details the lessons that the UNSCOM experience can teach those who undertake weapons of mass destruction verification efforts today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction remains a constant threat to regional and global peace. To organize the background of proliferation financing including the characteristics, methods, and development trends thereof, this study systematically and comprehensively analyzes the problems China faces in proliferation financing. The purpose is to put forward corresponding Chinese countermeasures to prevent the harm caused by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. This is before its "lifeline" is cut off. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much ado has been made about the specter of unconventional weapons in the hands of militant groups. Despite the alarmism of the policy community, the pursuit of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear capabilities by non-state actors is rare. What explains why some violent non-state organizations pursue chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons while most do not? Using new data on organizational behaviors and attributes from the Big Allied and Dangerous 2 Insurgency project, we analyze 140 insurgent actors, from 1998 to 2012. We expand previous work by Asal, Ackerman & Rethemeyer by studying the phenomenon longitudinally and attending to organizational behavior rather than only to structural and environmental factors. We find that organizations that attack cultural sites are more likely to pursue and use chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons. We interpret the latter as a willingness to transgress upon accepted mores, for the sake of sensationalism and shock value, which coheres with a willingness to pursue unconventional weapons. Our results reflect that chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear pursuit and use is part of a larger strategy for some violent non-state organizations, one predicated on generating mass fear and exacting a psychological toll. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to establish whether the 2003 Iraq war was waged within the confines of United Nations (UN) Charter rules. To achieve this, the study analyses the circumstances under which armed force in international relations (IR) may be used within the provisions of the UN Charter. In the wake of the contentious US-led war in Iraq, critics opine that the UN thresholds for waging war were not met by the US and its allies. The US argued that the war was justified given the unprecedented security challenges occasioned mainly by 9/11. Crucially, post 9/11, US re-ordering of international security fed on the narrative that preventative strikes against states that it suspected to be potential havens for terrorist activities (the so-called rogue states) was within the broader UN Charter parameters of self-defence. Using the UN Security Council Resolutions (SCRs) on Iraq and the UN Charter rules on warfare as a framework of analysis, this study navigates the causal factors and justifications for and against the Iraq war. The study concludes that although the US faced security challenges and arguably had fathomable reasons, the invasion of Iraq was conducted without UN authorisation, and hence in defiance of the UN Charter rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Strategic Review / Przeglad Strategiczny is the property of Faculty of Political Science & Journalism, Adam Mickiewicz University 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 international community has consistently underestimated North Korean nuclear and missile capabilities. How has an economically impoverished, technologically backward, and internationally isolated state been able to establish robust and increasingly competent nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, especially since the mid-2010s? Has North Korea predominantly relied on foreign sources of technology or are its nuclear and missile programs the result of domestic effort? Even when technologies have been borrowed, a detailed analysis of the evolution of the programs suggests sustained domestic investment has proven crucial. The result is a far-flung and large weapons of mass destruction (WMD) infrastructure. Any negotiations over the program must take the extent of this infrastructure into account and consider the challenges of how to inspect, verify, and limit them, including through repurposing these capabilities to civilian uses.

Aims: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is caused by infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and within a few months of the first outbreak, it was declared a global pandemic by the WHO. The lethal virus SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted through respiratory droplets and enters host cells through angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE-2) receptors. ACE-2 receptors are highly expressed in many tissues, including testes. Therefore, the objective of this study was to summarize the available literature regarding the correlation between sex hormone levels and COVID-19. Methods: The PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, and Cochrane Library databases were reviewed systematically through August 2022 for studies comparing sex hormone levels between different patient groups: COVID-19 versus no COVID-19, more severe versus less severe COVID-19, and nonsurvivors versus survivors. Various types of clinical research reporting sex hormone levels, including free testosterone (FT), luteinizing hormone (LH), follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), 17β-oestradiol (E2), the oestradiol-totestosterone ratio (E2/T), prolactin (PRL), and sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG), were included. Random- or fixed-effects models were used to calculate weighted mean differences (WMDs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Heterogeneity among the studies was assessed by the I² index, and data analyses were performed using meta-analysis with Stata version 12.0. Results: Twenty-two articles that included 3369 patients were ultimately included in the meta-analysis. According to analysis of the included studies, patients with COVID-19 had significantly low T/LH, FSH/LH, and SHBG levels and high levels of LH, and E2/T, but their levels of FT, FSH, PRL, E2, and progesterone were not affected. Publication bias was not found according to funnel plots and Egger's regression and Begg's rank correlation tests. Conclusion: Low T/LH, FSH/LH, and SHBG serum levels and high LH, and E2/T levels may increase the risk of COVID-19. Additionally, the greater is the clinical severity of COVID-19, the higher is the probability of increases in LH, and E2/T serum levels and decreases in T/LH, FSH/LH, and SHBG levels. COVID-19 may have unfavourable effects on gonadal functions, which should be taken seriously by clinicians. Routine monitoring of sex hormone levels might help clinicians to evaluate disease severity in patients with COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Word Mover's Distance (WMD) is a method of measuring text similarity.It defines the difference between two texts as the minimum distance between the word embedding vectors of the text.WMD uses the vocabulary to represent the text as a normalized bag-of-words vector.Since the words of the text occupies a small proportion in the corpus,the document vector gene-rated by the bag-of-words model is very sparse.Multiple documents can form a high-dimensional sparse matrix,such a sparse matrix will generate a lot of unnecessary operations.By calculating the WMD of a single source document for multiple target documents at once,the calculation process can be highly parallelized.Aiming at the sparsity of text vectors,this paper proposes a GPU-based parallel Sinkhorn-WMD algorithm,which uses compressed format to store target text to improve memory utilization,and reduces intermediate calculations based on the sparse structure.The pre-trained word embedding vector is used to calculate the word distance matrix,the WMD algorithm is improved,and the optimization algorithm is verified on two public news data sets.The experimental results show that the parallel algorithm on NVIDIA TITAN RTX can achieve a speedup of up to 67.43× compared with the CPU serial algorithm.

The international community witnessed a significant development in the field of nonconventional weapons. Nations sought to invent weapons of immense destructive power. This paved the way for an arms race among the supremacy nations. By using doctrinal legal research methodology, this article aims to examine weapons of mass destruction (hereinafter referred to as "WMDs"). For this reason, this article identifies the concepts of WMDs, the nature of WMDs, and the legal perspective of the International Court of Justice (hereinafter referred to as "ICJ") on the threat or use of WMDs. Primary and secondary data are critically and analytically examined using content analysis method. It is discovered that regardless of the efforts made by the international community to disarm WMDs and avoid their dangers, WMDs suffer from the problem of the domination of superpowers. This article introduced several recommendations to achieve the objectives of the ICJ in providing a safe environment and avoiding the catastrophic impact of using WMDs on the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current wargaming techniques are effective training and research instruments for military scenarios with fixed tools and boundaries on the problem. Control cells composed of officiants adjudicating and evaluating moves enforce these boundaries. Real-world crises, however, unfold in several dimensions in a chaotic context, a condition requiring decision-making under deep uncertainty. In this article, we assess how pedagogical exercises can be designed to effectively capture this level of complexity and describe a new framework for developing deeply immersive exercises. We propose a method for designing crisis environments that are dynamic, deep, and decentralized (3D). These obviate the need for a control cell and enhance the usefulness of exercises in preparing military and policy practitioners by better replicating real-world decision-making dynamics. This paper presents the application of this 3D method, which integrates findings from wargame and negotiation simulation design into immersive crisis exercises. We share observations from the research, design, and execution of "Red Horizon," an immersive crisis exercise held three times at Harvard University with senior civilian and military participants from multiple countries. It further explores connections to contemporary trends in international relations scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microblog hot topic discovery is one of the research hotspots in the field of text mining. The distance function of traditional K-means leads to low clustering accuracy, which leads to poor hot topic discovery. Three definitions are proposed in this paper: title words and body words, positional contribution-based weight and fusion similarity-based distance. The short text clustering algorithm based on BTM and GloVe similarity linear fusion (BG & SLF-Kmeans) is further proposed. BTM and GloVe are used to model the preprocessed microblog short texts. JS divergence is adopted to calculate the text similarity based on BTM topic modeling. WMD of improved word weight (IWMD) is used to calculate the text similarity based on GloVe word vector modeling. Finally, the two similarities are linearly fused and used as the distance function to realize K-means clustering. Specific word sets of 6 hot topics can be obtained, and microblog hot topics can be discovered. The experimental results show that BG & SLF-Kmeans significantly improves clustering accuracy compared with TF-IDF & K-means, BTM & K-means, and BTF & SLF-Kmeans.

United States exposure to attack from a nuclear weapon of mass destruction (WMD) optimized to generate a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) is a concern in national security forums. Such an attack could lead to widespread damage to the electrical components of many critical infrastructures. The purpose of this study was to develop a framework to better understand the hazard risks from a HEMP attack on non-military (non-MIL), “electronics-heavy” automotive ground vehicles that could inform an effective emergency management response and recovery plan. A hybrid emergency management and engineering hazards risk analysis utilizing a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) format helped visualize the critical vehicle electronics subsystems and components, and their respective potential failure modes. A design of experiments test plan was developed to quantify the risks, and to develop a pathway to validate cost-effective mitigation countermeasures based on present-day best practices for HEMP hardening. The proposed emergency management plan emphasized strategic implementation of HEMP mitigation countermeasures to support continuity in emergency services and delivery of community lifelines to the public. The results of this study will serve as a foundation for future HEMP projects with automotive ground vehicles that will support the FEMA National Preparedness Goal, Presidential Executive Order 13865, and the recent FY2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) legislation. The methodologies can also apply to other critical infrastructure segments.

The aim of this article is to explore the European Union's (EU) attitude toward the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) - shape of nonproliferation policy, perception of the WMD threat and the EU's responses to it - through the Social Constructivism paradigm of International Relations. In providing the explanation author uses the notions of identity, historical experiences, institutional evolution, and lessons learned, as well as comparative method and content analysis. This paper argues that the EU's position toward the WMD (policy, threat, responses) is mainly the result of the EU's evolution and lessons learned in the field of foreign, security and defence policy after the Cold War, as well as its search for the global power identity role which has separate and different security interest from those of the USA and with its own vision of global order based on rules. Historical experiences of the World War II regarding the balance of power in Europe, lessons learned from the use of force without United Nations (UN) mandate in tackling the crisis after the Cold War and conditionality policy mainly used in the process of enlargement, as well as the search for distinct EU identity and associated world order and institutional development are all embedded in the EU non-proliferation policy, perception of the WMD threat and the responses to it. These policy, threat perception and response are also largely defined in terms of functionalism, multilateralism, comprehensiveness and strategic autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The potential effect of a digital, or cyber, weapon used against a network is directly proportional to how much a given population relies upon that network. The widespread denial of essential services caused by a network attack, the author writes, could lead indirectly to bodily harm and loss of life, through rioting or other violence. As of now, however, a cyber weapon cannot directly injure or kill human beings as efficiently as guns or bombs, and there is no evidence to support a claim that cyber weapons meet the legal and historical definitions of weapons of mass destruction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Efficient document classification techniques are crucial to current legal applications, such as case-based reasoning, legal citations, and so on. However, Chinese judgment documents are large and highly complex, so the traditional machine leaning-based classification models are often inefficient to Chinese document classification due to the fact that they fail to incorporate the overall structure and extra domain specific knowledge. In this paper, we propose an ontology-driven knowledge block summarization approach to computing document similarity for Chinese judgment document classification. First, the extra semantic knowledge for Chinese judgment documents is adopted from the perspectives of the top-level ontology and domain-specific ontologies, where how to merge the different kinds of ontologies together in an extensible manner is further represented. Second, the core semantic knowledge residing in Chinese judgment documents can be summarized into knowledge blocks by ontology-based information extraction. Third, we use Word Mover's Distance (WMD) is to calculate the similarity between different knowledge blocks instead of their original Chinese judgment documents. At last, the KNN-based experiments for Chinese judgment document classification were made to illustrate that our approach is more effective in achieving higher classification accuracy and has faster computation speed compared to the original WMD approach.

After the killing of most powerful Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, in US drone strike in Iraq on January 3, 2020, the tensions in the Middle East are growing. Tehran retaliated by firing ballistic missiles at US troops stationed in Iraq. The General's death attracted a lot of concerns from the world as global economy gets directly affected by Middle Eastern tensions. The US forces based in Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan surround almost all of Iran. The situation remains volatile and lot depends on how Iran responds? Any prospect of war would unleash sufferings across the region. This study investigates the challenges posed by the killing of Qassem Soleimani and the role that regional politics and sectarian fault-lines may play in exacerbating the problems. It also discusses the US approach regarding regime change and Pakistan's place in the given context and suggests that Islamabad should pursue a balanced approach that would serve its geopolitical interests as well as domestic stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As one who has led inspection teams in North Korea, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and other nations, Olli Heinonen says he cannot discount the possibility that a nuclear weapon will be used in the next 10 years. He asserts that the verification regime of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty may need an overhaul to contend with current developments such as the nuclear ambitions of non-state actors. He offers perspective on North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, Israel’s bombing of a suspected nuclear facility in Syria, Iran’s ambition to enrich uranium, the challenges of stopping proliferation, and the need for closer international cooperation and firmer action against proliferators. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author highlights Burma and recent events surrounding its nuclear program to present a case for the development of a UN technical body to investigate countries suspected of having weapons of mass destruction (WMD). International verification organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) have no expertise in evaluating technologies outside their core missions, which, he writes, means no international organization can assess the technology of missile delivery systems. Using Burma as a backdrop, the author makes the case for an international technical body, which he outlines in structure, function, and scope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the fluctuating nature of the Customary International Law, emerging customs have had good potential to appear in several forms during the past decade. In other words, there are various legal mechanisms indicating the genesis of CIL. One of these forms is the internationally known unilateral act of State which can be potentially recognized as a customary rule. The best example of a unilateral act of State would be Truman Proclamation which was transformed into a customary international rule concerning law of seas. With regards to the same legal framework and acts like Truman Proclamation, this research tries to answer the question that how the sui generis of fatwa in a custom-construction process concerning international law of WMD and through the modernized methodology can contribute. Illustrating the superiority of fatwa over the sui generis treaties on one hand and restricting mechanisms like NPT on the other, it can be indicated that the first steps concerning the genesis of a new customary approach in the field of international law of WMD has been derived from nuclear fatwa.

Of late, nuclear weapons have been multilaterally outlawed similar to the other weapons of mass destruction. But the nuclear weapon states, barring North Korea, and the sole victim of nuclear weapons Japan, have remained outside the treaty process. This does expose the usual clarion call of the nuclear weapon states for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. This study attempts to enquire the policy approach of the three nuclear weapon states in Southern Asia – China, India and Pakistan who proclaim themselves as ‘responsible’ nuclear states – regarding the ban treaty comparatively. While China’s stated position seem to be based more on realism than on morality as it points to the unmindful of the strategic upheaval it would cause, India highlights its reservations on the procedural aspects of the initiative. Pakistan in line with China’s realistic consideration links the issue with fissile material stockpile, conventional force disparity and India’s upper hand in this domain. However, one thread found common in the positions of the three countries is their assertion for a graduated, step-by-step approach towards nuclear disarmament. All of them believe that elimination of nuclear weapons cannot be achieved overnight. It requires sustained global efforts taking into consideration the strategic vulnerabilities and thriving security deficit in respective strategic theatre. While China and India provide somewhat alternative procedures like the universal NFU treaty, Pakistan’s position seems only reactionary. At the end, the study proposes an out-of-the-box suggestion for a tripartite regional NFU treaty as the harbinger to onset the goal for a universal NFU treaty eventually.

In this paper, to improve the accuracy of long sentence similarity calculation, we proposed a sentence similarity calculation method based on a system similarity function. The algorithm uses word2vector as the system elements to calculate the sentence similarity. The higher accuracy of our algorithm is derived from two characteristics: one is the negative effect of penalty item, and the other is that sentence similar function (SSF) based on word2vector similar elements doesn't satisfy the exchange rule. In later studies, we found the time complexity of our algorithm depends on the process of calculating similar elements, so we build an index of potentially similar elements when training the word vector process. Finally, the experimental results show that our algorithm has higher accuracy than the word mover's distance (WMD), and has the least query time of three calculation methods of SSF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Dilemas Contemporáneos: Educación, Política y Valores is the property of Dilemas Contemporaneos: Educacion, Politica y Valores 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.)

A study of the anti-formulaic and potentially comedic editing of All the Devil's Men. The death of nearly all of the cast of a film typically signifies a tragedy, but pointless slaughter has been used in dark comedies and satires to inspire release of pent up desires, if not a laugh. The analysis describes the presentation of the War of Terror's contracted mercenaries, questioning if their greed and ruthlessness is being lightly satirized in this plotline, or if this is another example of a propagandistic military film. Have weapons-of-mass-destruction ticking-bomb suspense-building plot twists been overused to the point of absurdity? Laura Little and Sigmund Freud's explanations for the "release theory" of humor are utilized in the philosophical discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The neuromuscular disorder, spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), results from insufficient levels of the survival motor neuron (SMN) protein. Together with Gemins 2–8 and Unrip, SMN forms the large macromolecular SMN-Gemins complex, which is known to be indispensable for chaperoning the assembly of spliceosomal small nuclear ribonucleoproteins (snRNPs). It remains unclear whether disruption of this function is responsible for the selective neuromuscular degeneration in SMA. In the present study, we first show that loss of wmd, the Drosophila Unrip orthologue, has a negative impact on the motor system. However, due to lack of a functional relationship between wmd/Unrip and Gemin3, it is likely that Unrip joined the SMN-Gemins complex only recently in evolution. Second, we uncover that disruption of either Tgs1 or pICln, two cardinal players in snRNP biogenesis, results in viability and motor phenotypes that closely resemble those previously uncovered on loss of the constituent members of the SMN-Gemins complex. Interestingly, overexpression of both factors leads to motor dysfunction in Drosophila, a situation analogous to that of Gemin2. Toxicity is conserved in the yeast S. pombe where pICln overexpression induces a surplus of Sm proteins in the cytoplasm, indicating that a block in snRNP biogenesis is partly responsible for this phenotype. Importantly, we show a strong functional relationship and a physical interaction between Gemin3 and either Tgs1 or pICln. We propose that snRNP biogenesis is the pathway connecting the SMN-Gemins complex to a functional neuromuscular system, and its disturbance most likely leads to the motor dysfunction that is typical in SMA.

The article deals with topic of Islamic State and chemical weapons. The issue is analysed in three dimensions: origin of used chemical weapons and possibility of independent production; known chemical attacks and tactical regularities in their execution; and traits of future chemical terrorist attacks. By providing a thorough examination of the problem, the article aims at predicting the future development of the group’s chemical program as well as describing any prospective chemical terrorist attacks in Europe