Hugo Meijer

Arming China : major powers’ arms transfers to the People’s Republic of China

ABSTRACT The rise of China has been fuelled by a massive military modernisation programme relying, in large part, on the acquisition of foreign military equipment. The question of how the world’s major powers define their arms transfer policies towards China is therefore crucially important. This article makes two original contributions. First, drawing on neoclassical realism, it proposes an explanatory framework integrating international and domestic factors to explain variations in major powers’ arms transfers. Second, based on a large body of elite interviews and diplomatic cables, it offers the first comprehensive comparison of American, British, French and Russian arms transfer policies towards China since the end of the Cold War.

Reflections on Politics, Strategy and Norms in Outer Space

This article focuses on the underestimated discrepancy between recent optimistic theoretical attempts aimed at providing US policymakers with a coherent “astro-strategy” for space dominance, and the destabilizing consequences for international stability deriving from their implementation. Important intellectual references supporting US current space doctrine and strategy can be found in the US Air Force’s élite School of Advanced Air and Space Studies – which develops and tests the Air Force’s doctrines, concepts and strategies. Accordingly, this article will begin by analyzing the central thoughts expressed in the book that, for the Joint Force Quarterly journal, is “the first book that can legitimately claim to present a comprehensive theory of space-power”: Everett Dolman’s Astropolitik: Classical Geopolitics in the Space Age. This major work discusses and provides suggestions for an American grand strategy in outer space by explaining how the physical attributes of outer space and the characteristics of space systems ought to shape the application of space power. It is striking to see how close the steps taken by the US in devising an ambitious missile defense program and in revitalizing plans for space weaponization and dominance are to Everett Dolman’s prescriptions for the “astropolitik plan”. In conclusion, it is argued that US strategy via outer space should be critically reexamined and, without giving up the imperatives of national defense, states should work on an international legal framework avoiding an offense-defense spiral toward space dominance and, potentially, war. Defense & Security Analysis Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 89–97, March 2009