SurvivalPub Date : 2023-09-03DOI: 10.1080/00396338.2023.2261249
Jeffrey A. Larsen, James J. Wirtz
{"title":"The Meaning of ‘Strategic’ in US National-security Policy","authors":"Jeffrey A. Larsen, James J. Wirtz","doi":"10.1080/00396338.2023.2261249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2023.2261249","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractHow is the term ‘strategic’ used today within the US Department of Defense? To address this question, the article explores the evolution of the term ‘strategic’ from the interwar period to the end of the Cold War era, when Strategic Air Command was responsible for anything deemed strategic. The contemporary use of the term is a manifestation of a growing need to integrate the activities of various commands, capabilities and operations across the Defense Department that can produce significant military or political effects. Several problems could emerge due to a lack of clarity, integration and synchronisation across the US defence establishment. The Pentagon should and could establish greater clarity in defining strategic threats, operations, systems, command relationships and deterrence.Key words: Able ArcherCold Warcyber operationsintegrated deterrencenuclear deterrencespacestrategic deterrencestrategic effectsUS Strategic Command Notes1 Colin S. Gray, The Future of Strategy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015), p. 26, emphasis in original.2 See White House, ‘National Security Strategy’, October 2022, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/8-November-Combined-PDF-for-Upload.pdf; and US Department of Defense, ‘2022 National Defense Strategy’, 27 October 2022, https://media.defense.gov/2022/Oct/27/2003103845/-1/-1/1/2022-NATIONAL-DEFENSE-STRATEGY-NPR-MDR.PDF.3 See Gray, The Future of Strategy, p. 22.4 See Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, 4th ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp. 1–15; and Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 3–9.5 See Giulio Douhet, Command of the Air (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 2019).6 See Michael E. Brown, Flying Blind: The Politics of the US Strategic Bomber Program (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), pp. 35–62; and John T. Correll, ‘Daylight Precision Bombing’, Air & Space Forces Magazine, 1 October 2008, https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/1008daylight/.7 See George Quester, Deterrence Before Hiroshima: The Influence of Airpower on Modern Strategy (New York: John Wiley, 1966), p. 52.8 See Brown, Flying Blind, pp. 61–5.9 This paradox is known to undergraduates from the ‘Sagan–Waltz Debate’. See Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate, 3rd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2012).10 See Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospect of Armageddon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989).11 Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982).12 See Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), pp. 1–34.13 See Gregory S. Gilmour, ‘From SAC to STRATCOM: The Origins of Unified Command Over Nuclear Forces’, MA Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, June 1993, pp. 60–2, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA268609.pdf.14 Some theatre commanders also retained the authority for ","PeriodicalId":51535,"journal":{"name":"Survival","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134948820","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SurvivalPub Date : 2023-09-03DOI: 10.1080/00396338.2023.2261267
Erik Jones
{"title":"Economy","authors":"Erik Jones","doi":"10.1080/00396338.2023.2261267","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2023.2261267","url":null,"abstract":"Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten van Zanden. Ian Cressie, trans. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2022. £35.00/$39.95. 280 pp.","PeriodicalId":51535,"journal":{"name":"Survival","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134948822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SurvivalPub Date : 2023-09-03DOI: 10.1080/00396338.2023.2261260
Steven Feldstein
{"title":"The Consequences of Generative AI for Democracy, Governance and War","authors":"Steven Feldstein","doi":"10.1080/00396338.2023.2261260","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2023.2261260","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractThe potential impact of generative AI across politics, governance and war is enormous, and is the subject of considerable speculation informed by few hard facts. Yet it is possible to identify some major challenges. They include threats to democracies by privately controlled models that gain tremendous power to shape discourse and affect democratic deliberation; enhanced surveillance and propaganda dissemination by authoritarian regimes; new capacities for criminal and terrorist actors to carry out cyber attacks and related disruptions; and transformed war planning and military operations reflecting the accelerated dehumanisation of lethal force. While new innovations historically require time to take root, generative AI is likely to be adopted swiftly. Stakeholders must formulate pragmatic approaches to manage oncoming risks.Key words: Artificial intelligence (AI)chatbotsChatGPTcyber attackslarge language model (LLM)military planningpropagandasurveillance AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Tom Carothers, Matt O’Shaughnessy and Gavin Wilde for their valuable comments and feedback, and Brian (Chun Hey) Kot for his research assistance.Notes1 See Rishi Bommasani et al., ‘On the Opportunities and Risks of Foundation Models’, Center for Research on Foundational Models, Stanford University, 12 July 2022, https://crfm.stanford.edu/assets/report.pdf; and Helen Toner, ‘What Are Generative AI, Large Language Models, and Foundation Models?’, Center for Security and Emerging Technology, Georgetown University, May 2023, https://cset.georgetown.edu/article/what-are-generative-ai-large-language-models-and-foundation-models/.2 See Kevin Roose, ‘How Does ChatGPT Really Work?’, New York Times, 28 March 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/28/technology/ai-chatbots-chatgpt-bing-bard-llm.html.3 See Jordan Hoffmann et al., ‘An Empirical Analysis of Computeoptimal Large Language Model Training’, Google DeepMind, 12 April 2022, https://www.deepmind.com/blog/an-empirical-analysis-of-compute-optimal-large-language-model-training; and Pranshu Verma and Kevin Schaul, ‘See Why AI Like ChatGPT Has Gotten So Good, So Fast’, Washington Post, 24 May 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2023/artificial-intelligence-tech-rapid-advances/.4 See Tom B. Brown et al., ‘Language Models Are Few-shot Learners’, 34th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (Neur IPS 2020), Vancouver, Canada, 22 July 2020, https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper/2020/file/1457c0d6bfcb4967418bfb8ac142f64a-Paper.pdf.5 See Lukas Esterle, ‘Deep Learning in Multiagent Systems’, in Alexandros Iosifidis and Anastasios Tefas (eds), Deep Learning for Robot Perception and Cognition (Cambridge, MA: Academic Press, 2022), pp. 435–60; and David Nield, ‘Supercharge Your ChatGPT Prompts with Auto-GPT’, Wired, 21 May 2023, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/chatgpt-prompts-auto-gpt. It is worth noting that the autonomy of an AI system sits on a spectrum, rather than being binary. Whi","PeriodicalId":51535,"journal":{"name":"Survival","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134948832","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SurvivalPub Date : 2023-09-03DOI: 10.1080/00396338.2023.2261274
Dana H. Allin
{"title":"Not Fade Away: The Children of the 1930s","authors":"Dana H. Allin","doi":"10.1080/00396338.2023.2261274","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2023.2261274","url":null,"abstract":"A generation of scholars, writers and diplomats, mostly born in the 1930s, who grew up in depression and war but became young adults at the advent of a new era of security and comfort, is fading away. John le Carré, one of the great post-war writers of any genre, rendered in his spy fiction Britain’s post-imperial reckoning, and brought back in 2017 George Smiley, his most acutely realised spy, to lament the folly of Brexit. Five more children of the 1920s, 30s and 40s who were important contributors this journal have died in recent years. Michael Howard (1922–2019), Ronald Steel (1931–2023), Pierre Hassner (1933–2018), David Calleo (1934–2023) and James Dobbins (1942–2023) each reflected shrewdly and profoundly on war and peace, global politics, and the US and Europe. At a time when the world appears to be regressing, we might best honour this generation by holding to the fictional Smiley’s vision ‘of leading Europe out of her darkness towards a new age of reason’.","PeriodicalId":51535,"journal":{"name":"Survival","volume":"253 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134948833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SurvivalPub Date : 2023-09-03DOI: 10.1080/00396338.2023.2261269
Teresita C. Schaffer
{"title":"South Asia","authors":"Teresita C. Schaffer","doi":"10.1080/00396338.2023.2261269","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2023.2261269","url":null,"abstract":"Adam Michael Auerbach and Tariq Thachil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2023. £100.00/$120.00. 288 pp.","PeriodicalId":51535,"journal":{"name":"Survival","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134948834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SurvivalPub Date : 2023-09-03DOI: 10.1080/00396338.2023.2261247
Dallas Boyd
{"title":"Challenging Nuclear Bromides","authors":"Dallas Boyd","doi":"10.1080/00396338.2023.2261247","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2023.2261247","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractDespite the universal implications of nuclear weapons for humanity, broad knowledge of nuclear policy is curiously absent from the public sphere and even among many senior figures in government. Nuclear strategists have nourished the belief that the principles of nuclear deterrence are so esoteric as to exempt them from non-expert scrutiny, creating an intellectual vacuum within which a number of fallacies about nuclear strategy have taken root. These fallacies in turn find expression in the configuration of several states’ nuclear postures, from the number of warheads posited as necessary for deterrence to the selection of adversary targets. Puncturing the myth of complexity that surrounds nuclear policy is a necessary starting point to assess its more questionable features. This essay evaluates some of the prevailing tenets of nuclear strategy to expose for non-experts the many misconceptions that shape the major powers’ strategic postures.Key words: counterforcecountervaluedeterrenceintercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)launch-on-warningnuclear deterrencenuclear weaponspre-emptionsubmarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs)‘use or lose’ AcknowledgementsThanks to James Acton, Rick Christensen, James Crabtree, John Maenchen, Jessica Mathews, Aaron Miles, Michael Molino, Joshua Pollack and Alex Wood for helpful comments.Notes1 Douglas Martin, ‘Roger C. Molander, Nuclear Protest Leader, Dies at 71’, New York Times, 31 March 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/us/roger-c-molander-dies-at-71-stirred-nuclear-protests.html.2 See Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, Defense Science Board Task Force, ‘Nuclear Deterrence Skills’, Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force, September 2008, https://dsb.cto.mil/reports/2000s/ADA487983.pdf.3 Ashley J. Tellis, ‘India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture: Between Recessed Deterrent and Ready Arsenal’, RAND Corporation, MR-1127-AF, 2001, p. 19.4 Victor D. Cha, ‘How to Disarm a Nuclear North Korea’, Washington Post, 9 October 2011, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-to-disarm-a-nuclear-north-korea/2011/10/09/gIQAlaZeYL_story.html.5 See Sheena Chestnut, ‘Illicit Activity and Proliferation: North Korean Smuggling Networks’, International Security, vol. 32, no. 1, Summer 2007, pp. 80–111.6 ‘Bush: Don’t Wait for Mushroom Cloud’, CNN, 8 October 2002, https://edition.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/10/07/bush.transcript/; and White House, ‘Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Rutte at Opening Session of the Nuclear Security Summit’, 1 April 2016, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/04/01/remarks-president-obama-and-prime-minister-rutte-opening-session-nuclear.7 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Yearbook 2022: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security (Stockholm: SIPRI, 2022), p. 342.8 Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983), pp. 259–61.9 See Austin ","PeriodicalId":51535,"journal":{"name":"Survival","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134948827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SurvivalPub Date : 2023-09-03DOI: 10.1080/00396338.2023.2261266
Adrian Johnson
{"title":"Tough Lessons for UN Peacekeeping OperationsThe Political Economy of Civil War and UN Peace Operations, Mats Berdal and Jake Sherman (eds). Abingdon: Routledge, 2023. £34.99/$44.95. 350 pp.","authors":"Adrian Johnson","doi":"10.1080/00396338.2023.2261266","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2023.2261266","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractWith the future of UN peacekeeping once again up for debate, it’s worth reflecting on the lessons of the past 30 years. UN operations in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali and elsewhere have had to contend with complex local and regional systems of power and governance that have major influences on missions’ prospects for success. In The Political Economy of Civil War and UN Peace Operations, Mats Berdal and Jake Sherman pull together an excellent set of essays that identify the signal lessons of UN peacekeeping in dealing with these systems, and offer a credible set of policy prescriptions. The book makes a compelling case for a better understanding of the political economy of conflict, and less expansive mission mandates that are attuned to the local context.Key words: Africacounter-insurgencygovernanceorganised-crime networkspolitical economyUN peacekeepingUN reformUnited Nations Notes1 See UN Security Council, ‘Resolution 2666’, 20 December 2022, paras 38–42, https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/S_RES_2666.pdf; and UN Security Council, ‘Resolution 2659’, 14 November 2022, para 58, https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N22/691/48/PDF/N2269148.pdf?OpenElement.2 See Mats Berdal, Building Peace After War (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), pp. 173–5; Christine Cheng, Jonathan Goodhand and Patrick Meehan, ‘Synthesis Paper: Securing and Sustaining Elite Bargains that Reduce Violent Conflict’, UK Stabilisation Unit, April 2018, p. 4, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/765882/Elite_Bargains_and_Political_Deals_Project_-_Synthesis_Paper.pdf; and Elizabeth Cousens and Chetan Kumar (eds), Peacebuilding as Politics: Cultivating Peace in Fragile Societies (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001), p. 187.3 See Severine Autesserre, Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 249.4 See Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 388–91.5 Cheng, Goodhand and Meehan, ‘Synthesis Paper: Securing and Sustaining Elite Bargains that Reduce Violent Conflict’, p. 20.6 See Alex de Waal, The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015).7 See Sarah von Billerbeck and Oisin Tansey, ‘Enabling Autocracy? Peacebuilding and Post-conflict Authoritarianism in the Democratic Republic of Congo’, European Journal of International Relations, vol. 25, no. 3, 2019, pp. 698–722; and Adam Day and Charlie T. Hunt, ‘A Perturbed Peace: Applying Complexity Theory to UN Peacekeeping’, International Peacekeeping, vol. 30, no. 1, 2023.8 See, for example, ‘One Dead in Fresh Anti-UN Mission Protests in Eastern DR Congo’, Al-Jazeera, 6 September 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/6/one-dead-in-fresh-anti-un-mission-protests-in","PeriodicalId":51535,"journal":{"name":"Survival","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134948819","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SurvivalPub Date : 2023-09-03DOI: 10.1080/00396338.2023.2261270
Melissa K. Griffith
{"title":"Cyber Security and Emerging Technologies","authors":"Melissa K. Griffith","doi":"10.1080/00396338.2023.2261270","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2023.2261270","url":null,"abstract":"Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2023. $28.99. 288 pp. Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology Chris Miller. London and New York: Scribner, 2022. £20.00/$30.00. 464 pp. The Ransomware Hunting Team: A Band of Misfits’ Improbable Crusade to Save the World from Cybercrime Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022. $30.00. 368 pp.","PeriodicalId":51535,"journal":{"name":"Survival","volume":"84 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134948824","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}