The Ambiguous Host-Citizen Contract: An Evolving Notion of Duty in the U.S. Military Quest for Local Legitimacy

The article explores how the recent quest for local legitimacy in Iraq and Afghanistan has shaped the U.S. military notion of duty toward host citizens. It argues that military duty is conceptualized as a “host-citizen contract.” Based on a qualitative comparison of the 2006 and 2014 versions of FM3-24, the U.S. counterinsurgency field manual, it finds that U.S. forces are obligated to suppress insurgents, build host-nation agency, and protect the host population in exchange for legitimacy. The article's main finding is that the notion of legitimacy has changed in ways that fundamentally limit the scope of duty and justify a breach of contract should the host nation fail to comply.     

Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq

The United States has long been frustrated in fighting insurgencies. An almost unbroken string of mostly ill-fated experiences in effectively prosecuting this unique blend of political-military operations can be traced backward over nearly half a century from the situation in Iraq today to the early 1960s when the U.S. became heavily engaged in Indochina's wars. Vietnam and Iraq thus form two legs of a historically fraught triangle—with America's experiences in El Salvador in the 1980s providing the connecting leg. The aim of this article is not to rake over old coals or rehash now familiar criticism. Rather, its purpose is to use the present as prologue in order to understand in counterinsurgency terms where we have gone wrong in Iraq; what unique challenges the current conflict in Iraq presents to the U.S. and other coalition military forces deployed there; and what light both shed on future counterinsurgency planning, operations and requirements.     

From Medusa Past Kantolo: Testing the Effectiveness of Canada's Enemy-Centric and Population-Centric Counterinsurgency Operational Strategies

Canada's counterinsurgency in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, involved two distinct operational strategies: an initial enemy-centric strategy and, after 2009, a population-centric strategy. Using insurgent-initiated attacks against civilians as a measure for the level of control and security provided by the counterinsurgency, this article tests the effectiveness of these two strategies using a quasi-experimental research design. This article finds that a population-centric counterinsurgency strategy that aimed to provide security to the population rather than destroy the insurgency resulted in the most controlled and secure environment for the civilian population. To the extent that a secure civilian population is important for successful counterinsurgency, the post-2009 population-centric operational strategy of the Canadian Forces, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), and the United States increased the chances of a successful counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.     

Terrorism: A strategic perspective

This paper compares the U.S. national security strategy's vision for counter‐terrorism missions to the political realm in which conventional military forces and terrorists operate. Terrorist acts and state responses are analyzed to demonstrate that they have differing political effects, which calls into question the political utility of a conventional military counterterrorist response. Terrorism is placed within context of the present era as, according to Martin van Creveld, evolving historical conditions are wrenching warfare out of the political realm in which Clausewitz's analysis originally posited warfare's extension of political activity based on state power. The article also discusses terrorism's nebulous placement within the levels of war to reveal another aspect of terrorism's different relationship to the political realm. Ultimately, this challenges the U.S. national security strategy's conclusion that conventional military force used in “punitive” or “counterterrorism” operations is an effective political response to terrorism.     

The changing nature of the transatlantic link: U.S. approaches and implications for Central and Eastern Europe

This article examines the changing security, economic and diplomatic components of the transatlantic link, with a particular focus on Washington's approach and implications for Central and Eastern Europe. The United States continues to play an essential role as security underwriter in the region, but the military dimension of the transatlantic relationship is transforming and will result in greater burdens on Europeans. Economic links between the U.S. and Central Europe are developing more strongly than generally understood, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is likely to drive both political and economic ties. Unconventional gas developments are enhancing U.S. engagement in European energy markets. Finally, the U.S. remains keen to engage its European partners on a broad agenda of global and regional issues and retains its own interests in working particularly with Central and Eastern European countries to lend stability to ‘wider Europe’.     

Financial investment via ADRs in Mexico and South America

American depository receipts (ADRs) are dollar-denominated, negotiable instruments issued by a depository bank to represent ownership of a foreign security in the bank's possession. They are the primary method employed by Latin American corporations to raise equity capital in the United States. One flequently overlooked aspect about ADRs is that their investment performance provides a gauge not only on management's performance but also a measure of the foreign government's ability to provide a political, legal, economic and social climate that is conducive to international investment. This paper investigates the returns and risks associated with foreign investment in Mexico and South America. First, we show that the weekly returns to Latin American stocks are weakly correlated with the U.S. stock market which suggests that they can reduce the risk of a portfolio that is fully diversified within the U.S. market. Second, we find that ADRs from this region are more risky than U.S. common stocks. However, we find little evidence that foreign exchange rate risk should be a major factor in the investment decision. Third, we examine the effects of the devaluation of the Mexican peso and show that political factors can significantly increase the risk and reduce the return to foreign investment. Finally, the results show that investors do not pay a significantly larger relative transaction cost premium for investing in Mexican and South American equity vis-à-vis U.S. common stock. We conclude that ADRs provide the ability for the U.S. investor to realize potentially superior gains from companies located in these emerging economies. However, the willingness by the U.S. investor to disinvest means that politicians and managers have a powerful incentive to continue reforms that lead to improved standards of living for their citizens and employees.     

Agents for Stability or Chaos: Conceptualizing Intelligence “Relevance” in Counterinsurgency

Recent discussions among U.S. officials about how the intelligence community can demonstrate its “relevance” to counterinsurgency have been dominated by an ideology that presupposes large-scale military intervention, and in which the role of intelligence is limited to improving analysis in support of current military activities, with little debate of future requirements. This article will highlight a number of alternative conceptions of intelligence “relevance” to counterinsurgency, based on a study of several historical and contemporary U.S. and non-U.S. cases, and by applying a wider definition of counterinsurgency that includes cases where the military plays a subordinate role relative to the intelligence services.     

Health in the United States.

On the whole, the American people consider themselves healthy and, according to the major health indicators, they are becoming healthier all the time. The expectation of life at birth is one and one-half times what it was at the beginning of the century. Many of the leading causes of death have experienced significant declines in rates in the last decade. Nevertheless, the minority populations frequently lag behind the white population with respect to health indicators. Prevention in the health field is being stressed through immunization programs and programs to influence individuals to change their habits. Nutrition is playing a larger role in public life; considerable publicity has been given to dietary goals for promotion of good health. The health service industry has grown rapidly. Health care has expanded and its costs have trebled since 1970. In the 1980s, interest will undoubtedly focus on minority populations and health, on how the economically disadvantaged may better be served, on the effects of an aging population on the health care system, and on how life-styles which undermine health care can be changed. The U.S. Surgeon General has established national health goals for the 1980s that will improve the nation's health if they are achieved.     

Persuasion and Predation: The Effects of U.S. Military Aid and International Development Aid on Civilian Killings

ABSTRACT

Powerful states frequently employ foreign aid to pursue international security objectives. Yet aid's effectiveness will be undermined if it exacerbates the effects of conflict on civilians within recipient states. This article investigates how international development aid and U.S. military aid influence recipient governments' incentives and ability to target civilians. U.S. military aid has a persuasion effect on state actors, which decreases a recipient state's incentives and necessity to target civilians. Development aid flows, however, trigger a predation effect in some environments, exacerbating civilian targeting. An analysis of aid flows in 135 countries on civilian killings between 1989–2011 provides support for both the persuasion and predation effects associated with aid.     

The debate over the U.S. government's role in health care financing:"deja vu,all over again"

Yogi Berra's famous quote captures the continuing debate over the legitimate role of the U.S. government in health care financing. The issues of individual choice, equity of access, and concern about income security are just as unresolved today as they were in the early twentieth century. Until we engage in an explicit national debate on these issues and come to a national consensus on the human and political values underlying our current health care situation, a “solution” to the health care financing problems will never be found. This article discusses the history of the issue of government's involvement in health care financing, American ambivalence about government regulation, and the role of American business as a major health care insurer.     

Securing the Transatlantic Maritime Supply Chains from Counterterrorism: EU–U.S. Cooperation and the Emergence of a Transatlantic Customs Security Regime

This article offers an analysis of the cooperation between the European Union (EU) and the United States on customs security in the context of the two actors' fight against terrorism. While other aspects of EU–U.S. counterterrorism cooperation have received some scholarly attention, not so much research has focused on security cooperation in the EU–U.S. customs and supply chain. To investigate the emergence of transatlantic cooperation in this field this article employs regime theory in examining the 2004 EU–U.S. customs security agreement, the 2012 EU–U.S. mutual recognition decision, and the transatlantic disagreement on the U.S. 100 percent scanning rule.     

Making the Sky Relevant to Battle Strategy: Counterinsurgency and the Prospects of Air Power in Nigeria

One of the most important roles in counterinsurgency (COIN) is to maintain adequate security presence to protect lives and properties of the affected population and restore law and order in the society. Accordingly, the state of affairs in Nigeria's COIN theater has been affected by the quantity and quality of security presence, most especially the ability of the operatives to gather timely and relevant information and mobilize for prompt response. Although the roles of the ground operatives have dominated public attention, the local air force and the complementary air powers have affected the security situations with the level of their presence or absence in the sky for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; firepower; and transportation in the theater. This study examines the relevance of security presence to achieve the objective of COIN and the prospects of air power in this arrangement in Nigeria and the Lake Chad region.     

The Strategic Hub Concept: Plan C for Iraq?

This article will apply what shall be termed a “strategic hub” concept of counterinsurgency to the war in Iraq. This concept posits that the development of insurgent and militia nodes or “hubs” of activity could provide a more relevant way to address the key dilemmas of the Iraq equation in light of the Coalition and Iraq government's inability to secure Iraq. The article will argue that ceding the insurgency and militias ground on a temporary basis may be required to maintain both military and political momentum in the post “surge” Iraq given the draw down of U.S. forces, the immaturity of the Iraqi Security Forces, and the present state of American and Iraqi politics.     

Analysing managerial perceptions of when and how to structure public involvement in public-private partnerships

Previous research highlights what managers perceive to be the purposes of public involvement in public-private partnerships (PPPs) and the need for addressing stakeholder concerns unique to PPPs. Yet, we have little evidence of how particular modes of participation benefit particular goals of participation in this context. Through canonical correlation analysis (CCA) of survey data collected in the U.S., this study examines the modes and sequencing of 14 public involvement activities in respect to 10 goals of public involvement in this context. The results indicate that selections among modes of participation are contingent upon when they are introduced. Respondents prefer widening stakeholder involvement early in the project development phase and during the contract implementation phase, but not during the later phases of contract design. Respondents also assign more value to engaging local citizens than their respective political leaders, particularly at mature stages of the PPP’s implementation phase.     

The united states naval blockade of Iraq: A foreign policy and international law analysis

The current Persian Gulf crisis may signal a new period in human history in which the United Nations is viewed as the forum of first resort for the resolution of international harms and disputes. This is particularly striking since the Security Council, because of east-west divisions, has been unable to act in a collective manner to addresses serious international breaches of the peace. This two part essay deals with the events leading up to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the step-by-step reaction by the U.S. Government, the imposition of the U.S. Navy blockade of Kuwaiti shipping, and the legal justification for the introduction of forces. The reader is left to decide whether the Rule of Law and Charter ideals of collective security, are the real victors in the current conflict.

Part 1 of the essay examines the detailed economic and political causes for the Iraqi invasion. Even though some commentators have characterized Saddam Hussein's entry into Kuwait as “naked aggression” which was driven by Saddam Hussein's hamartia to become the new Nasser, OPEC production disputes, allegations of excessive Kuwaiti pumping of the Rumalia oil field (straddles both countries), the need for an Iraqi coastline, and large Iraqi debt to Kuwait are seen as “rational” reasons for the invasion. A historical examination of the Iran-Iraq conflict is grafted into part one to assist the reader in appreciating the fact that belligerent conduct is viewed in Iraq as a normative mode of conflict resolution and that in the context of all current and future military and diplomatic interchanges, the proven bellicosity of Iraq should figure prominently in the approaches which are taken.

The U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf must be viewed in the context of the U.S.'s diplomatic and economic interests in the region. The essay concludes that the actions of the United States in the first forty days after the Iraqi invasion were masterful because of the skilled use of the U.N. security council (to build a broad political base) as well as the introduction of limited force (imposition of a naval blockade) to signal to Saddam Hussein that the international community was serious in its resolve. The shooting which is taking place is most unfortunate; but U.S. efforts were properly tailored to keep the world coalition intact and prevent a shooting war. Until approximately 3 weeks into the actual conflict, the level of anti-U.S. rhetoric was noticeably small- a triumph for U.S. foreign policy makers in forming a world-wide consensus and maintaining it and a triumph for international respect for law.

The final portion of Part 1 deals with the history of blockades before and after the 1945 U.N. Charter. Blockade actions have been used since the Middle Ages but the 1856 Pact of Paris and the 1909 Declaration of London are the modern sources for the Law of Blockade. Becuase of the sheer intensity of conflict in the First and Second World Wars, the normative rules contained in the two written sources of law fell into disuse. Even so, most of the substantive provisions from the 19th and early 20th century doctrines are incorporated into contemporary law and policy. Commander Rosen argues strenuously for a modernization of the international conventions to codify the rules of blockade since, given the utter destructiveness of modern warfare, blockades remain a relatively benign use of force in those situations in which use of force is legally justified. But, however laudable the U.N. Charter ideals are to sharply restrict the use of force to exceptionally limited circumstances and make state aggression illegal, situations will arise in which use of force will be necessary to respond to illegal aggression. Resurrection of the old concept of pacific blockade (similar to the naval action taken in connection with the Cuban Missile Crisis) is urged because unanimity in the U.N. is transitory and nations, particularly superpowers, need the legal flexibility to react to illegal aggression with limited uses of force--below the threshold uses of force authorized by the U.N. Charter.     

Instrumentalizing Counterterrorism for Regime Consolidation in Putin's Russia

Since the late 1990s, Russia has been among the countries most painfully affected by terrorism and President Putin has shown little doubt and even much enthusiasm in joining the U.S.-led "war" against terrorism. Intertwined as they are, counterterrorism and Chechnya are still significantly different matters in Russian security policy, and this article aims at examining how the struggle against terrorism shapes essential features of Russia's foreign and domestic policies during Putin's first presidency. Internally, the struggle against terrorism provides for a sufficient mobilization of the dysfunctional society around the "mutant" regime that has consolidated its control over mid-term political agenda. Internationally, high-profile counterterrorism strategy has helped Russia to secure for itself a more prominent role than the sheer size of its "assets" would justify. This war is fundamentally not about victory; it is about many "collateral" benefits for the regime that Putin is presiding over.‐     

Bole to Harlem via Tel Aviv: networks of Ethiopia's musical diaspora

ABSTRACT

One of the fastest growing sources of domestic labor in the Global North is Ethiopia, whose female population travels to North America, Europe, and the developed Middle East to work for remittances to send home. Once these migrants settle in cities such as London, Abu Dhabi, Tel Aviv, Rome, or Toronto, they organize themselves into cultural enclaves that navigate their positionality, namely the state, religious practice, and their bodies. While scholars are occasionally interested in the explicit security ramifications of absorbing these migrant workforces, they pay less attention to the cultural forces propelling citizenship, and to migrants' relationship with their home culture. This gap in knowledge is counterproductive, because scholars and policy-makers will have trouble assessing the Ethiopian migrant population's perspective through interview material alone. The Ethiopian values of honor and respect for authority dictate a hesitance to criticize explicitly, so the population's feelings about marginality rarely emerge in discussion about labor. This taboo curtails the effectiveness of typical ethnographic methods (e.g. interviewing). Rather, this article examines Ethiopian music as a prism through which migrant musicians navigate the complex web of religious, ethnic, national, and embodied identities in their new surroundings. In this article, I present findings based on participant-observation of Ethiopian live music in North American and Middle Eastern diaspora cities (New York, Washington, DC, Tel Aviv, and Dubai), and argue that the populations are linked through the multidirectional cultural influences of Ethiopian diasporic popular music. I will argue that Ethiopian migrants' music offers a stable, alternative form of political discussion to more overt discussions of contested identities, and that these discussions reshape cultural boundaries. By considering performance techniques such as choice of language for lyrics, and the incorporation of Ethiopian or local dance style into music videos that are distributed over the Internet, one begins to understand how the rapidly expanding transnational network of Ethiopian migrants conceptualizes itself as an emerging global source of labor in cosmopolitan urban centers.     

Russia says no: Power,status, and emotions in foreign policy

Since 2003, Russian foreign behavior has become much more assertive and volatile toward the West, often rejecting U.S. diplomatic initiatives and overreacting to perceived slights. This essay explains Russia's new assertiveness using social psychological hypotheses on the relationship between power, status, and emotions. Denial of respect to a state is humiliating. When a state loses status, the emotions experienced depend on the perceived cause of this loss. When a state perceives that others are responsible for its loss, it shows anger. The belief that others have unjustly used their power to deny the state its appropriate position arouses vengefulness. If a state believes that its loss of status is due to its own failure to live up to expectations, the elites will express shame. Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has displayed anger at the U.S. unwillingness to grant it the status to which it believes it is entitled, especially during the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, and most recently Russia's takeover of Crimea and the 2014 Ukrainian Crisis. We can also see elements of vengefulness in Russia's reaction to recognition of Kosovo, U.S. missile defense plans, the Magnitsky act, and the Snowden affair.     

Partner reciprocity,telecommunications flows and balance of trade patterns between the United States and latin America

From 1982 to 1994, the balance of trade deficit for U.S. telecommunications services increased by tenfold. The Central and South American countries contributed greatly to this increase. Our analysis identifies partner reciprocity as a core issue of the international long-distance industry. We apply an economic anthropology perspective to suggest that the antecedent conditions of cultural distance, economic nearness and relative country-risk will affect a foreign partner's reciprocity and examine U.S.- Latin American contracts over 11 years to test our respective hypotheses.     

The Leaderless Nexus: When Crime and Terror Converge

This article argues that the breakdown of hierarchical structures in illicit organizations is creating new opportunities for criminals and terrorists to collaborate. The rise of networked organizations has given greater independence to criminals and terrorists who previously answered to a clear chain of command. These members are now willing to engage in operations that before had been off-limits because the leadership believed the activity would hurt the organization's broader mandate. The result is that a “leaderless nexus” is beginning to emerge between criminals and terrorists. The phenomenon has far-reaching and dangerous implications for U.S. security, and should be thoughtfully considered as lawmakers debate homeland security reform.