Naval War College

About: Naval War College is a education organization based out in Newport, Rhode Island, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: International law & China. The organization has 233 authors who have published 519 publications receiving 6652 citations. The organization is also known as: United States Naval War College & U.S. Naval War College.

Just War, Not Prevention

Abstract: The debate over going to war in Iraq has in many quarters become a debate about the ethical implications of preemption and prevention rather than about the war itself. But neither prevention nor preemption can have any moral standing in the abstract, since it is the circumstances, not the concepts, that inform their qualities as strategies. The question, rather, is whether the decision to engage in a new war against the Iraqi regime is just.Indeed, it is surprising to find that so much less has been said about basic principles of just war—that is, a just cause, a right intention, proportionality, and so on—than about the largely legal questions of preemption and prevention. But concepts like preemption and prevention are really about the timing and method of war; they say nothing about the moral content of the conflict itself, and in the end an emphasis on them obscures the fundamental question of justice. Put another way, if a particular military action, including launching war, is just and proper, then the means and scheduling are subject, like anything else, to scrutiny under the guidance of the principles of just war. But they are not separate questions in and of themselves.

Cyber Attacks and Cyber (Mis)information Operations during a Pandemic

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by reprehensible cyber operations directed against medical facilities and capabilities, as well as by a flood of misi

On Naval Power

Abstract: : All too often, the terms naval power and sea power are used interchangeably. But naval power, properly understood, refers to a direct and indirect source of military power at sea. Obviously, the main components of a naval power are the navy, coast guard, and marines/naval infantry and their shore establishment. The term sea power (coined in 1849) originally referred to a nation having a formidable naval strength. Today, this term's meaning is much broader; it now describes the entirety of the use of the sea by a nation. Specifically, a sea (or maritime) power comprises political, diplomatic, economic, and military aspects of sea use. Naval power played an extremely important and often vital role in the lives of many maritime nations. This scenario is not going to change in the future despite claims to the contrary by some influential thinkers. The threat of major conflict at sea might look distant or even unlikely today. Yet it would be unwise to exclude the possibility altogether. Very often, the fact that naval power might play an important part in conventional deterrence- or, in the case of blue water navies such as the U.S. Navy, in nuclear deterrence-is either overlooked or ignored. Navies, and coast guards in particular, perform important and diverse tasks in peacetime and in operations short of war.

Good Times and Bad Apples: Rebel Recruitment in Crackdown and Truce

Abstract: Even in long-running civil con icts, governments may permit rebels to recruit and gather resources freely during years-long truce periods. Scholars and policymakers assume that these periods of forbearance allow rebel organizations to gather strength unchecked. Instead, with innovative evidence from ve con ict zones in Northeast India, I show how leniency can actually undermine rebel organizations in the long run. Despite rebel leaders' best e orts, safety and comfort attract sel sh opportunists who may later desert in battle, defect to the enemy, or abuse civilians. First, I show experimentally that the bene ts of leniency disproportionately attract low-commitment recruits. By sampling in local recruitment hotspots, I gathered nearly 400 likely rebel recruits, testing their motivations with attitudinal questions and a conjoint survey experiment. Second, I conducted dozens of qualitative interviews with rebel leaders, rebel soldiers, and civilian observers, tracking how truce periods altered rebel recruitment and behavioral patterns over time. Veri cation Materials: The data and materials required to verify the computational reproducibility of the results, procedures and analyses in this article are available on the American Journal of Political Science Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network, at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/CL0RU2 Word Count: 10,000