Voluntary organizations and society–military relations in contemporary Russia

The 2014 crisis in Ukraine has refocused attention on Russia as a European security actor. Despite showing renewed military capability, compared to the post-Soviet period, Russian society–military relations have remained the same. This relationship (between society and the security organs) provides the key context for assessing security. Analysis of everyday militarization and the role of voluntary organizations (such as DOSAAF [Dobrovol'noe obshchestvo sodeistviya armii, aviatsii i flotu] and Nashi [Molodezhnoe demokraticheskoe antifashistskoe dvizheni]) in supporting the military can provide an important insight into Russian behaviour as a security actor. These organizations generate a pro-military outlook and at the same time provide training and activities, thus contributing to military effectiveness by developing the competency of young people prior to military service as well as increasing public knowledge of military affairs. However, strong support for the military, a lack of independent information, and an absence of a shared vision on how society–military relations should be developed and also represent political challenges in terms of everyday militarization. This dynamic is important for understanding both Russia's security posture and wider security implications for Europe.     

Gunning for security governance in a resource-rich African state? Interrogating militarisation in a democratic Nigeria

ABSTRACT

This article examines the socio-historical factors that underpin the political sociology of militarism in Nigeria. In spite of subscribing to a democratic constitution and several regional mechanisms that advance democratic values, security governance in Nigeria has been marked by the increasing use of military force in responding to perceived threats posed by armed militias in the oil-rich Niger Delta. I argue that the securitisation of oil is fuels militarisation, facilitated by local, national and international actors. The turn to democratisation and changing conceptions of security have reinforced rather than reined in militarism, which results in a competitive and often violent politics between national, local and global security and military actors over access to and control of oil resources. These dynamics also result in dangerous socio-economic and political consequences for Niger Delta communities.     

Defensive development,combative contradictions: towards an international political sociology of global militarism in Africa

ABSTRACT

Drawing on international political sociology, this article shows how the merger of development and security has become part of the ideational architecture that facilitates a new ‘feel-good’ militarism in Africa. Contemporary international reform efforts are designed to restrain military power in the name of development, democracy and civilian oversight, but also to strengthen the coercive capacities of African security institutions and make them more efficient in the global fight against violent extremism. Such defensive development efforts have implications for the historically problematic relationship of the African state with modern forms of organised force, reconfiguring and recalibrating relations and dynamics between the state, military forces and external actors. The article concludes that defensive development is fraught with combative contradictions and risks becoming the handmaiden not only of increased militaristic violence, but also of oppression and the restriction of freedom and democracy.     

Militarism,states and resistance in Africa: exploring colonial patterns in stabilisation missions

ABSTRACT

The article explores how stabilisation missions reproduce the patterns that constituted colonial states. Following African historiography, the article argues that stabilisation’s militarised approach to neutralising resistance, its racialisation of targets and its aim to constitute and reform state authority evoke how colonial states were forged by the inseparable relationship between authority, force, race, production and resistance. However, it will be shown that those patterns cannot be fully understood without an account of the broader structure of coloniality and imperialism. In so doing, the article aims to contribute to bring together different literatures on contemporary peace-building interventions and contemporary militarism by examining the relation between militarism, coloniality and imperialism. It focuses on the Democratic Republic of Congo to show how an intensified use of force against resistance, added to frames that see Congolese politics as deviant, has guided the goal of restoration of state authority, and with it, different economic reforms, all of which have reinforced the military and economic power of national and international elites, without reporting significant benefits to the population at large.     

Competitive Engagement: Upgrading America's Influence

America's instruments of foreign policy are weak. As a result, Washington depends much more on its military power than it should. The militarization of foreign policy is neither good for American interests nor sustainable, since many political, economic, and ideological outcomes are not attainable through the use of military force. Yet ongoing discussions about America's non- military power miss one important factor: in virtually every theater of the world, local, regional, and strategic competitions affect America's ability to exert influence through its aid and diplomacy. From Pakistan to the Middle East to Africa, ideas about how to develop economies, shape educational systems, administer health care programs, and build political institutions, are contested. Until the competitive nature of aid and diplomacy is deliberately and explicitly considered, Washington's ability to achieve outcomes using its non-military power—often called “soft” or “smart power”—will remain fundamentally limited.     

世界粮食危机与中国粮食安全

世界粮食危机预示着高粮价时代的到来,各国开始重新审视自己的粮食安全。全球人口膨胀和消费需求不断增加打破了供需之间的平衡,而美国推行的生物燃料政策和美元霸权进一步加剧了这种不平衡。因此,美国要为世界粮食危机的加剧负主要责任,但美国同时也是世界粮食危机的最大受益者,国际粮价的高涨体现了美国粮食武器的威力。面对形势严重的世界粮食危机,中国应该保证自给自足,高度重视粮食安全,力保粮食主权,实现经济和社会的可持续发展。     

Fresh Thinking on U.S. Engagement with Africa: Probing the Limits of Engagement

The Biden administration faces the opportunity to reset U.S. policy towards Africa and possesses a variety of tools to use in doing so, including traditional diplomacy, economic statecraft, development assistance, and military engagement. With the increased militarization of U.S. foreign policy over the past few decades, there is an unfortunate tendency to default to military engagement when confronted with even remote threats to U.S. national security interests, and Africa is no exception. With vital security interests in Africa, it can be argued that military engagement should be limited in its application and targeted to those situations that do not lend themselves to solution through traditional diplomacy or development assistance.     

Security and informality in Libya: militarisation without military?

ABSTRACT

The article interrogates the analytical purchase of the concept of militarism in the case of Libya, and its relationship to securitisation. While Libya is often associated with widely securitised threats to the international order, its military institutions have been viewed with suspicion and ambivalence across different phases of Libyan history, making of Libya an uneasy fit for standard categorisations of militarism. This prompts the question of whether and under what circumstances militarism can occur without and even against the military. Drawing on a historical-sociological analysis, the article shifts the focus to micropolitical dynamics and extra-institutional agency with a view to unpacking the complex entanglement of formal and informal armed actors in Libya’s hybrid security governance. The concepts of informalisation of militarism and militarisation of informality are used as analytical lenses to reconstruct the partial, failed, contested and hijacked attempts to build ‘modern’ military institutions in Libya. I suggest that the repertoire of militarism is not so much an end in itself, but a resource mobilised by local and international actors in a contentious field of state-building practices.     

African security and global militarism

ABSTRACT

This Special Issue asks: what is the current place of militarism in relation to security where Africa is concerned? It aims to contribute to emerging debates interested in critical inquiry of the relation between militarism and security, and to explore its diverse articulations in African settings. We advance an international political sociological (IPS) approach to militarism in order to explore militarised security politics as a field of contested practices and logics. We discuss why this approach enables us to uncover the interconnected historical patterns and power relations in which practices and logics of security and militarism become linked and grounded in simultaneously local and transnational African settings.     

试论新世纪日本对东盟的外交政策

新世纪日本对东盟的外交政策,摆脱了经济外交的单一性,在发展经济关系的基础上,取得了区域合作的突破性进展,并加强与东盟的政治对话、安全合作以及军事交流,旨在主导亚洲经济一体化,扩大在东南亚地区的政治势力和军事安全影响,并争取成为安理会常任理事国和国际社会的重要一极,逐步实现政治大国的目标。     

Openness, Welfare Spending, and Inequality in the Developing World

How does government social spending affect inequality in this era of globalization? This article investigates the relationship between openness, government social expenditures (i.e., education, health, and social security and welfare), and income distribution through a time-series cross-sectional panel data set for 35 less developed countries (LDCs) from 1972 to 1996. I compare these findings to the redistributive effects of social spending in 11 advanced industrialized economies. The results show that while all categories of social spending help improve income distribution in richer countries, the effects of social spending are much less favorable in LDCs. Only spending on education in LDCs encourages a more favorable distribution of income in the face of globalization. I argue that the pressures of a more competitive global economy increase incentives for more redistributive education spending, whereas publicly sponsored health programs and, particularly, social security and welfare programs confront greater political lobbying and clientelism.     

Food and poverty in the Americas: Institutional and policy obstacles to efficiency in food aid

This article reviews trends in poverty, hunger, and food security in the Americas; examines some of the principal processes, institutions, and policies which generate unsustainable development; and speculates on reforms required at all levels in order to improve food security. While food aid offers opportunities for alleviating poverty and hunger, it may contribute to intensifying rather than resolving livelihood crises. Since the World Food Programme is a major player in the context of food aid, some issues crucial for WFP policies in the Americas are considered.     

俄罗斯食品安全的外部因素

作为关系国计民生的食品安全问题产生于20世纪70年代。近年来,世界饥饿人口的数量始终保持在8亿人的水平。美国、日本、欧盟等发达国家也存在着食品安全问题,为此,各国都制定了相关的法律、措施和发展纲要。     

Russian military strategies in the Arctic: change or continuity?

This paper examines the nature of Moscow’s military strategies in the Arctic. It is argued that the roles of military power have radically changed since the Cold War era. According to Russian strategic thinking, instead of being a coercive instrument in a global confrontation between two superpowers and capitalist and socialist systems, now military power has new functions, such as to ascertain Russia's sovereignty over its (not their) exclusive economic zone and continental shelf in the region, protect Moscow’s economic interests in the North, prevent illegal migration and potential terrorist attacks against critical industrial and infrastructural objects, fulfil some dual-use functions (such as search and rescue operations, monitoring air and maritime spaces, providing navigation safety, mitigating natural and man-made catastrophes), help academic community in developing Arctic research, and carry some symbolic functions. These new roles, however, do not preclude military power from fulfilling its traditional functions, such as territorial defence, power projection, deterrence, and containment. Russia’s military modernisation programmes are described. The authors arrive at a conclusion that these programmes do not provoke an arms race or undermine the regional cooperation. To prevent negative security trends, a system of arms control and confidence- and security-building measures should be developed in the region.     

俄罗斯空天防御体系建设研究简

近年来,随着空天技术的飞速发展,空天安全日益成为世界主要大国关注的焦点.为维护国家安全利益,俄罗斯于2011年组建了空天防御部队.作为俄军“新面貌”军事改革的重要成果,俄空天防御体系建设有其独到之处：一是理论研究持续升温,提供了扎实的决策基础;二是体系建设多管齐下,综合推进空天作战能力形成.同时,俄空天防御体系发展中还存在一些亟待解决的问题：经济实力有限、军兵种之间利益纠葛不断、人才出现断层、顶层设计尚不成熟.     

印度新军事战略的经济意图

印度是一个科技实力较雄厚、经济发展较迅速的发展中国家 ,也是南亚和印度洋地区首屈一指的军事大国。 90年代以来 ,印度的军事战略发生了改变 ,与此同时 ,印度经济开始加快发展步伐。本文将通过研究印度的新军事战略类型 ,来分析印度实行这种新军事战略下的经济意图。     

试析冷战后印度对非洲的外交政策

印度和非洲国家长期以来一直保持着密切的联系。冷战结束以后，随着国际体系和非洲形势的变革，印度对于非洲的政策出现了新的趋向。印度加强了与非洲在能源、经济、政治、军事等领域的合作。印度试图通过加强双边合作，旨在确保本国的能源安全、促成政治大国的目标实现以及巩固军事安全。     

The Politics of Threat Perception and the Use of Force: A Political Economy Model of U.S. Uses of Force, 1949–1994

A growing body of empirical research addresses the influence of domestic political and economic circumstances on the use of force. Most models explain the use of force as a function of various domestic and international demands for military force. This article uses data on U.S. uses of force between 1949 and 1994 to test a model that also considers the influence of these conditions on the supply of this policy instrument. Conditions that have complementary demand and supply effects—making military force both more useful and less costly to employ—are associated with frequent U.S. uses of force in the postwar era. These conditions include high unemployment, strong investor confidence, wartime presidential election years, and the absence of ongoing wars. Some of these same conditions contribute to a motivated bias in international threat perception, leading U.S. decision makers to perceive more opportunities for the use of force when it is most convenient for them to employ it.     

中美在亚太地区的安全矛盾：演变与逻辑

近年来,中美在亚太地区的安全矛盾持续发酵,逐渐形成安全利益、理念和地区安全秩序构想的全面对立态势,成为影响中美和平共处的重要因素。秩序疑虑与热点问题的对立是中美在亚太地区安全矛盾的主要表现。中美亚太安全矛盾的全方位突显,根本上源于两国力量对比的变化以及由此引发的权力转移态势,是中美总体力量差距背景下局部力量平衡的表现。这种力量平衡表现为:中国作为地区经济中心与美国作为地区安全中心的“二元结构平衡”;中国作为陆权大国与美国作为海权大国的“陆海权力平衡”;在中国近海区域,中美权力均衡态势初步形成。在此过程中,中美对既有安全矛盾管理的失效以及彼此安全威胁认知的反复塑造,客观上增强了矛盾对立的烈度,安全困境逐步形成。随着权力消长和政策互动,中美在亚太地区的安全困境,逐步呈现出从经典安全困境转向“国家引导型的安全困境”加剧的趋势。未来,中美亚太安全矛盾仍然会受到结构性因素的影响,而经济相互依存趋势、技术发展引发的军事威慑变化、意识形态竞争以及非传统安全合作等因素,则将决定既有安全矛盾是否会走向冲突。     

Saudi Arabia’s Reluctant Regionalism

Saudi Arabia’s turn to regionalism during the past three years, principally in partnership with Egypt, is an expression of both its weakness and its power. Its role as the world’s swing producer in the global oil markets makes it an international power. This economic power, in turn, has allowed the Kingdom to help stabilize weaker economies in the region, like Egypt, that have been hard hit by global recession, inflation, and food insecurity. On the other hand, its military failure in Yemen and the US’s attenuating security commitment have forced it to build regional and inter-regional partnerships for protection and defense. Under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), Saudi Arabia would prefer to impose its will on the region without having to build a regional consensus for its initiatives. But its lack of independent military power has constrained the Kingdom. The Saudi-Egyptian partnership therefore represents a mutual recognition of the limits of their respective power. It also raises the question not merely about who leads whom, but whether the carefully cultivated interdependency between them will hold.