Julian Schofield

Militarized Decision-Making for War in Pakistan: 1947-1971

In a balanced, constitutionally governed state, military decision-makers are no more likely to recommend war in a dispute than are civilian leaders. However, in military regimes, there is a tendency to import biases that systematically distort the contribution of a states foreign and interior ministries. Consequently, military governments become overly pessimistic about the scarcity of security and overconfident about the utility of force. Using the case of war decisions in Pakistan from 1947-1971, this article suggests that the process of militarized decision-making increases the tendency of a military regime to advocate war when isolated from civilian counterbalances.

Why Pakistan failed: tribal focoism in Kashmir

The classical repertoire of insurgency types is under-specified, and does not apply well to the case of Pakistans conduct of insurgency in Kashmir. Pakistans approach to insurgency has been a consistent tribal variant of focoism, in which there is a reliance on imported itinerant insurgents to conduct raids to stimulate an uprising. This has its basis in the traditional warfare of the region, learned US insurgency doctrine in the 1960s, and an historical disregard for subject populations, which has led to an aversion to fostering grass-roots political movements.

Modeling Choices in Nuclear Warfighting: Two Classroom Simulations on Escalation and Retaliation

Two classroom simulations—SUPERPOWER CONFRONTATION and MULTIPOLAR ASIAN SIMULATION—are used to teach and test various aspects of the Borden versus Brodie debate on the Schelling versus Lanchester approach to nuclear conflict modeling and resolution. The author applies a Schelling test to segregate high from low empathic students, and assigns them to hard case positions in three simulations to test whether high empathy students can engage in tactic bargaining and whether low empathetic students are necessarily as escalation prone. He has a bipolar nuclear simulation that is an easy case for the Brodie set of assumptions about nuclear war, avoidance, and Schelling-esque tacit bargaining. He expects the system structure and high empathy leader selection to contain escalation, despite the temptation of relying on accelerated Single Integrated Operational Plan solutions and the counterincentive of diminished tacit bargaining through decapitation attacks. The second simulation is a multipolar nuclear simulation set in the near future of Asia, and emulates the Borden-esque logic of nuclear war as artillery exchanges, with a Lanchester square law logic encouraging rapid escalation, coupled with a selection for the most autistic leadership. The author expects rapid nuclear escalation under these structural and decision-making conditions. His conclusions are anecdotal, but seem to indicate, from student feedback during class discussions, that the failure to model fear may be a factor in undermining successful tacit bargaining by players, suggesting that Borden rather than Brodie better conceptualized nuclear conflict. Therefore, peace is about restraining war initiation, as there are great pressures for escalation once war is initiated.

Coercive counter-proliferation and escalation: Assessing the Iran military option

Iran provides a crucial case demonstrating the limits of preventive anti-proliferation policies. Although Iran is a regional power, it exists outside any major alliance structure and should therefore be coercible by the reigning superpower. US President George Bush’s outline of the National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) has focused closely on Iran since the February 2003 discovery of the extent of its nuclear infrastructure. Although both nations have a stated preference for a negotiated settlement, the prospects are not encouraging. Not only do both sides fundamentally differ on Iran’s right to enrich uranium, but conditions for negotiating are becoming more difficult. President Bush insists that a military option has not been ruled out and there is a Congressional belief that if Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons, only military action could stop it. Consequently, a variety of military plans has been leaked from the Pentagon over the last two years, the most recent in August of 2005. The purpose of this discussion is therefore to examine the military feasibility and immediate political consequences of US preventative operations against Iran. The goal is to clearly delineate the conventional military landscape that is the backdrop for continuing US–Iranian negotiations. Military operations against Iran would be problematic. While the surgical destruction of Iran’s known nuclear infrastructure may be attainable, Iran has escalation dominance because of its ability to exacerbate instability in neighboring countries and to block oil exports from the Persian Gulf, and because the US does not have sufficient ground forces to effect a stable regime change should that become necessary. The discussion begins by examining Iranian defensive strategies and capabilities, and then moves on to explore US policy options and their possible outcomes. The discussion will be modular. Each individual operation will be isolated for the purpose of comparison, and arranged longitudinally in the order in which escalation would likely bring each operation about. Defense & Security Analysis Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 141–157, June 2006

War and punishment the implication of arms purchases in maritime Southeast Asia

While there is no arms race currently underway in Southeast Asia, there should still be concern for the effects of a regional arms buildup. No state currently possesses, or is seeking to possess, the capabilities necessary to dominate the core territory of its potential adversaries. However, the types of weapons being procured favour punishment based strategies that are highly unstable and war‐prone. Geographic vulnerability to blockade and interdiction make Southeast Asias security dilemma particularly acute.

Pakistan’s inter-services intelligence directorate: covert action and internal operations

the permeability of political systems (e.g. Van Biezen & Rashkova, 2014). The most valuable contribution of the book, however, may well be as a guide to important ongoing policy debates in Australia. As the editors point out, party regulation is ‘now an area of constant change and debate’ (p. 197). Since the volume was published, yet more new minor parties have emerged, and further regulatory reforms are (at the time of writing) under discussion in Parliament. For those wishing to follow these complex debates in the future, this book is surely essential reading.

Introduction: Nuclear Sharing and Why More May Be Better

We don’t expect states to share nuclear weapons, their technology or their delivery systems, because of the difficulty the donor has in assuring the reliability of the recipient state.1 Nevertheless, nuclear sharing has occurred in a number of instances. It started with France, the UK and the US; then continued with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during the Second World War; the US and its NATO allies; the USSR and China; France, Israel and South Africa; and China and Pakistan. On a lesser scale, other states have also acted counter to the conventional wisdom and shared expertise that enhanced the nuclear capability of recipient states. Most nuclear sharing occurs between allies, but the overwhelming numbers of allies do not share nuclear weapons. Whether they do so depends to a large extent on the prevailing strategic incentives to share, particularly whether adversaries have tacitly negotiated an agreement to manage their competitive nuclear diffusion, whether the allies are democratic, and the stability of their domestic decision-making processes.2 Historically, only grave security threats are likely to overrule the reluctance of states to share the sensitive technology of the most powerful weapons. Iron, which Pliny described as “the most useful and most fatal instrument in the hand of man,”3 was the preeminent capital weapon of pre-modern times, and its sharing was prohibited by most societies, from the Hittites4 and Philistines,5 to Charlemagne.6

Soft Nuclear Sharing

There are instances in which states provided technologies that risked abetting nuclear or missile capability. In none of these cases was there an unambiguous offer or request for technologies leading to a viable strategic capability. This soft balancing or soft nuclear sharing category includes a multitude of sharing cases, whose analysis is complicated by the difficulty of securely linking donors and recipients and identifying political intentions in this phenomenon.1 Some recipients of soft sharing succeed in accumulating an impressive nuclear infrastructure. The treatment below covers those cases whose duration, scale or consequence is worth examination for their potential overall impact on nuclear proliferation in the international system. Most of the recipient cases are states seeking not an immediate nuclear breakout, but the underlying option for a future contingency. In addition, in all of the cases the recipient either does not benefit from an extended nuclear deterrent or does not have permanent confidence in the one it has. The principal cases of soft sharing are US-Japan, US-Israel, US and USSR-India, India-Iran, Russo-Soviet soft sharing and Chinese soft sharing.

Nuclear Sharing and Pakistan, North Korea and Iran

There are instances in which nuclear donor states permissively allow recipients to build up either significant opaque nuclear arsenals or nuclear manufacturing bases that permit them to weaponize during a future contingency. The logic for these policies is based on soft balancing, where instead of directly challenging an adversary, states create the conditions for proxy states to strengthen themselves. The problem with soft sharing is its detection and attribution. In particular, the US gave selected strategically important states including Japan, Israel and India privileged access to missiles and nuclear weapons-related technology. The Soviet Union and Russia have pursued similar permissive policies with regard to Iran and North Korea. The US and China continue to soft share with their respective proxy states in Pakistan and India.

Nuclear Proliferation Races and Nonproliferation Bargains

The perception of threat resulting from nuclear sharing can provoke retaliation in kind, resulting in a competitive nuclear proliferation race between donors.1 Nuclear sharing happens when states face incentives to share, and nuclear proliferation races happen when states fail to resist them. States may seek to infiltrate and roll back another state’s sphere of influence, augment the strength of a neutral or ally whose remoteness might have led it to bandwagon with its adversary, or reinforce the strength of the members of an alliance. However, states anticipate actions and outcomes, and in certain instances they can bargain mutual restraints on nuclear sharing. Typically these bargains become possible when donor states have something to lose, usually because they become concerned with the arming of their enemies. States with nothing to lose will have no incentive to discontinue proliferating. There is little developed theory on proliferation races as they are rare, primarily because those that could have occurred have been arrested by joint state action. It is not at all certain that proliferation races have an equilibrium that is self-terminating and prone to bargains. Nonproliferation bargains provide a better explanation for why states forego nuclear sharing than the intervention model proposition that states seek to preserve their ability to intervene. This is principally because states will sacrifice their ability to intervene for improved security.