Patent Related Indicators for Assessing Knowledge-Generating Institutions: Towards a Contextualised Approach

This contribution aims at examining the extent to which patent related indicators are relevant for shedding light on the notion of excellence within knowledge-generating institutions. Traditionally, excellence has been looked upon as the ability to create interesting and valuable new scientific concepts, theories and data. From such a perspective, scientific excellence can be assessed through scientometric measures of publication output and impact. The recent interest in the entrepreneurial phenomenon within knowledge-generating institutes justifies efforts to examine the relevancy of broadening the set of indicators used to assess such institutions into the direction of entrepreneurial excellence. In this paper we will examine the relevancy of using patent data in order to delineate such additional, more entrepreneurial oriented, indicators. The arguments and findings presented in this respect will lead us to a plea for the use of these indicators in a contextualized manner.     

Defense Industries and Global Dependency

The global defense industrial sector is a remarkably accurate indicator of the distribution of power in the post-Cold War international system. However, the defense industrial sector as a policy tool has received relatively little scrutiny, even though it not only reflects the international order, but also provides the United States with the ability to influence the foreign policy behavior of other states. The defense industrial sector is a powerful, if undervalued, diplomatic tool in the United States’ political arsenal.     

China, Nuclear Security and Terrorism: Implications for the United States

This article outlines Chinese strategic nuclear forces and the Chinese philosophical approach to nuclear security. It then focuses on the domestic conditions in China which could precipitate vulnerabilities to its nuclear forces. From information about internal security conditions in China, specific internal threats to Chinese nuclear security will be derived. Based on these threats, several outsider and insider scenarios will be outlined involving a variety of terrorist or terrorist related behaviors. These notional scenarios will include everything from overrun or attack, to diversion, to cyber terrorism, to sabotage. The article will then cover what these scenarios and the possible Chinese reaction to them may mean for the security, military and diplomatic strategies of the United States.     

Reassessing U.S. Strategy in the Aftermath of the Korean War

This article examines the reassessment of U.S. strategy that Dwight D. Eisenhower directed after replacing Harry S. Truman in the White House in January 1953, as he worked to bring the Korean War to an end and then confronted the problems remaining in its aftermath. Despite much of the rhetoric of the early Eisenhower administration, the outcome of that reassessment fit more closely the objective of containment than key strategic formulations of its predecessor. Why was this so? How did the orientation apply to ending the war in Korea and sustaining the U.S. position there and elsewhere after the armistice? What insights, if any, do the process of reassessment and its outcome provide for the present? Answers to these questions serve to emphasize the dynamic and contingent nature of American strategy in the early Cold War and the importance of flexible, engaged leadership in the White House.     

Innovation or Inertia: The U.S. Military and the Learning of Counterinsurgency

Following its encounter with insurgent violence in Iraq, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has sought to improve the U.S. military's ability to conduct counterinsurgency. This effort suggests a potential turning-point in the history of the U.S. military, which has traditionally devoted its attention and resources to “high-intensity” or “conventional” combat. Given this institutional culture, what are now the prospects of the U.S. military ‘learning counterinsurgency’? In many ways, the ongoing reorientation is promising and targeted, informed directly by the U.S. campaign in Iraq. At the same time, Pentagon priorities still reveal a remarkable resistance to change, and this in spite of the radically altered strategic environment of the War on Terror. Given this intransigence - and the eventual fall-out from the troubled Iraq campaign - the ongoing learning of counterinsurgency might very well fail to produce the type of deep-rooted change needed to truly transform the U.S. military.     

History, War, and the Future

This article aims to delineate several issues raised by an historically based approach to understanding the present and the future. Beginning with a discussion of the profound impact that drastic changes have had on the international environment, the article then outlines what history suggests about human nature's influence on the course of future events; the future of war; the nature of governance and the United States. This essay does not attempt to provide answers, but rather suggests how policy makers, strategists, and military leaders might think through the complex political and cultural questions they need to be asking in the making of strategy. This is the essential first step for Americans. If they fail to ask the right questions, most answers will prove irrelevant to the challenges of the future.