Deployment Of Forces Research Articles

Towing the Line: Migrant Women Writers and the Space of Irish Writing

Towing the Line: Migrant Women Writers and the Space of Irish Writing* Alice Feldman (bio) and Anne Mulhall (bio) The imagining of the nation as a space in which “we” belong is not independent of the material deployment of force, and the forms of governmentality which control, not only the boundaries between nation states, and the movements of citizens and aliens within the state, but also the repertoire of images which allows the concept of the nation to come into being in the first place. sara ahmed, strange encounters (98) The shape of the nation as both real and imagined space depends on the “strangers” who mark the internal and external limits of the “skin” that keeps it in place. From the perspective of the “we” assumed as the constitutive parts of the national body, the “stranger” is she who is already constituted as such on her arrival at the border— whether the physical borders of the juridical state or the internal borders, [End Page 201] material, cultural, psychic, that distinguish the “we” who are “at home” from the “strangers” who are “out of place.” For Sara Ahmed, on whose work we are drawing here, the categorical error in the delineation of the stranger undergirds the logic of migrant reception and multicultural aspiration. Whether the gesture of reception is one that rejects or one that welcomes, it effects an erasure of the specificity of the one who is out of place, as the “stranger” is incorporated into the multicultural “we” “as a figure of the unassimilable” that is now appropriated as “ours”—the sign of “our” inclusivity (Strange Encounters 4). As such, this fetishizing gesture occludes both the histories that have produced the stranger as such and the incorporating desire of the “we” whose self-image is invested in the figure of the stranger. It also elides “the political processes whereby some others are designated as stranger than other others.” (Strange Encounters 6) Elsewhere, Ahmed describes these processes in terms of alignment with a particular direction, of falling in line or being out of line with a lineage, particularly a national lineage that, through repetition, forgets the processes through which its own line has been constituted: Being “in line” allows bodies to extend into spaces that, as it were, have already taken their shape. Such extensions could be described as an extension of the body’s reach. . . . We might speak then of collective direction: of ways in which nations or other imagined communities might be “going in a certain direction,” or facing the same way, such that only some things get our attention. Becoming a member of such a community, then, might also mean following this direction, which could be described as the political requirement that we turn some ways and not others. We follow the line that is followed by others: the repetition of the act of following makes the line disappear from view as the point from which “we” emerge. (Queer Phenomenology 15) In this article, we will explore the confluences of such processes in the context of migrant women writing in Ireland. Our specific focus for this exploration is the Women Writers in the New Ireland Network (WWINI), a network for migrant women writers in Ireland that was initiated as a seed project in 2007 of an Irish Research Council of the Humanities and Social Sciences project hosted by the Migration and Citizenship Research Initiative at University College Dublin. Several of the women writers who comprise the network make explicit that their work involves writing toward their own reorientations and in the [End Page 202] process inevitably—not necessarily but often intentionally—disorienting and reorienting the material and imaginary spaces of “national culture,” spaces that make visible the “out-of-place-ness” of the migrant writer. Thus this article has a doubled focus, exploring the re orientation devices at work in the network and in the writing of the women who comprise it, while making visible the impossible constraints imposed on the migrant woman writer by totalizing constructions of an Irish “national culture” or “shared common culture” in academic and, sometimes, literary proscriptions of the space of Irish writing. The WWINI project was inspired by our...

The Ritualization of Moving and Learning

This article sketches two examples of the ritualization and globalization of knowledge. The first, culminating in New Mexico's Santa Fe Fiesta, traces the deployment of massive military and political forces, the invasion of a continent, and, over centuries, the colonizing of a territory by means of plays and liturgies as well as guns and horses. The other example covers a few years in the life of a single scholar crossing east over one ocean while his daughter prepares to cross west over another ocean. The examples are on radically different scales of importance, and the kinds of ritual they illustrate range from explicit plays and liturgies to tacit ritualization and dramatization processes. These two examples ground four claims: (1) humans live, move, and have their being in dramatic performances and ritual enactments; (2) the knowledge that informs these performances and enactments travels around the globe not only in books and bytes but in human bodies and minds; (3) in being shuttled through occupied spaces, performances and enactments can be transmogrified into commodities that are exported, imported, or exchanged; (4) explicit rites are underwritten by the tacit dramatization and ritualization processes that pervade all human interactions, ranging from violent conquests to polite international exchanges among scholars.

Decline of Western Militaries: USA and UK Case-Studies

Military forces throughout history served as the most dominant and influential instrument of the national power in all security and military challenges. The use of military force changed European and American history as it did the history of many other non-European countries. A decade into the 21st century it is possible to see significant indicators demonstrating the decline of western military organizations. The experience of the USA and UK military forces deployment in Afghanistan and Iraq recognize that western military forces don’t effectively support political forces in the circumstances of irregular conflict.

Coercive Approach and Decision Making Models

Theories of coercion are applications of decision theory to particular circumstances: the use of contingent threats to alter the choices of another. Coercive approach is based on application of pressure on the adversary's decision-makers in order to force them to act in the direction desired by the attacker. The common beliefs regarding the deployment of force are, to a large extent, based on the cost-benefit model. At the root of this model lies the assumption that the adversary makes calculations that take into account the costs, compared to the benefit that, in its opinion, is expected from its move. Evidence from research dealing with decision-making under risk shows that in uncertainty situations, decision-makers fail to act as if they were rational and the ways in which they do act produce very different outcomes from those expected by rational decision maker (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). The adversary's behavior influenced by a variety of factors that goes beyond a simple cost benefit calculation. It is necessary that these factors will be taking into account while planning a coercion campaign.

THE ROLE OF MILITARY PSYCHOLOGY IN PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS: THE SOUTH AFRICAN NATIONAL DEFENCE FORCE AS AN EXAMPLE

This article is an interdisciplinary publication focusing on the role anddevelopment of military psychology in the South African context. Peacekeepingoperations and the results of the first and fifth deployment of the South AfricanNational Defence Force (SANDF) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) areused as background to illustrate the relevance of military psychology in suchoperations. Peacekeeping operations involve military and often civilian personnel.The nature of peacekeeping operations has become increasingly complex andstressful. It is hypothesised that the stressors that members experience may have adestructive effect on their morale and on the cohesion of the force, and that it couldlead to alcohol and drug abuse (Ballone 2000).This article discusses peacekeeping stress theoretically and evaluates thestressors experienced by members of the first and fifth deployment of the SANDF inthe Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The contribution of military psychologyin these and other peacekeeping operations in the South African context is alsoexplored.

Closing the “Care in the Air” Capability Gap for Severe Lung Injury: The Landstuhl Acute Lung Rescue Team and Extracorporeal Lung Support

The success of US Air Force Critical Care Air Transport Teams (CCATT) in transporting critically ill and injured patients enabled changes in military medical force deployment and casualty care practice. Even so, a subset of casualties remains who exceed even CCATT capabilities for movement. These patients led to the creation of the Landstuhl Acute Lung Rescue Team (ALeRT) to close the "care in the air" capability gap. The ALeRT Registry was queried for the period between November 1, 2005, and June 30, 2010. Additionally, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center critical care patient transfers to host nation medical centers were reviewed for cases using extracorporeal lung support systems. For the review period, US Central Command activated the ALeRT on 40 occasions. The ALeRT successfully evacuated patients on 24 of 27 missions launched (89%). Three patients were too unstable for ALeRT evacuation. Of the 13 remaining activations, four patients died and nine patients improved sufficiently for standard CCATT movement. The ALeRT initiated pumpless extracorporeal lung assistance six times, but only once to facilitate evacuation. Two patients were supported with full extracorporeal membrane oxygenation support after evacuation due to progressive respiratory failure. ALeRT successfully transported 24 casualties from the combat zones to Germany. Without the ALeRT, these patients would have remained in the combat theater as significant consumers of limited deployed medical resources. Pumpless extracorporeal lung assistance is already within the ALeRT armamentarium, but has only been used for one aeromedical evacuation. Modern extracorporeal membrane oxygenation systems hold promise as a feasible capability for aeromedical evacuation.

Properties of Self-Expanding Nitinol Stents Treated by Addition of 600°C Heat Setting Process

For its two unique properties of superelasticity and shape memory, nitinol is widely used in medical applications. Traditionally, most nitinol stents are normally heat set at 485°C, which induces the formation of the Ni-rich second phases such as Ti2Ni3 and Ti3Ni4, increases the austenite finish temperature and reduces material strength and fatigue performance. The addition of 600°C heat setting was applied to the nitinol stents after 485°C heat setting process and its effect on the mechanical, dimensional and functional properties of the nitinol stents were investigated. The experimental results showed that the nitinol stent tubes with the addition of 600°C heat setting process had higher elastic modulus, ultimate tensile strength, elongation percentage, inner dimension and outer dimension than those of the nitinol stents with 485°C heat setting process. Moreover, after the addition of 600°C expansion step, the nitinol stents almost had the same average deployment force and deployment accuracy as those of the nitinol stents with 485°C heat setting process and higher average inner dimension (ID) and outer dimension than that of those without the 600°C expansion step. Either treated with the addition of 600°C heat setting process or only 485°C heat setting process, the average austenite finish temperature (Af ) of the nitinol stents was both lower than the body temperature and the average Af of the fomer was 8°C lower than that of the latter.

Somali pirates: villains or victims?

The proliferation of piracy activity off the coast of Somalia has received a fair share of international attention. Its consequences have included a destabilising effect on trade, security and humanitarian aid. This has served to give reason for the deployment of multi-national forces by some of the countries affected by the scourge. While naval patrols have reduced the success rate of piracy attacks in some areas, there has been little respite in piracy incidents with the overall number of attacks and their geographic scope increasing. Piracy off the coast of Somalia has, in fact, evolved into organised syndicates with transnational networks. The problem is that various international actors have largely viewed piracy off the coast of Somalia in terms of threats to their own national interests and security. They have, thus, dealt with the issue in isolation from its wider context, which has not succeeded in ending the attacks. This article argues that to deal with the piracy problem more meaningfully, there is need for a contextual framework beyond addressing the ‘illegal’ activities. Piracy is a complex problem, with political, legal, social, economic, security and even human rights dimensions, and calls for a truly holistic approach that, especially, seeks to address the root causes on land. The article calls for a change in strategies in order to facilitate a ‘local Somali solution’ rather than an international one that is acceptable to the sensibilities of international actors. The article emphasises the need to extend the strong international cooperation demonstrated on the high seas in the fight against piracy to the fight against root causes of piracy onshore.

In Defence of Mercenarism

The recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been characterized by the deployment of large private military forces, under contract with the US administration. The use of so-called private military corporations (PMCs) and, more generally, of mercenaries, has long attracted criticisms. This article argues that under certain conditions (drawn from the Just War tradition), there is nothing inherently objectionable about mercenarism. It begins by exposing a weakness in the most obvious justification for mercenarism, to wit, the justification from freedom of occupational choice. It then deploys a less obvious, but stronger, argument – one that appeals to the importance of enabling just defensive killings. Finally, it rebuts five moral objections to mercenarism.

Optimizing patrol force deployment using a genetic algorithm

Over the past few years property management has become a prominent topic in Mainland China. The proprietors expect the property company to provide a broad range of services and deal with kinds of complaints. One of main duties of the property management is to provide a security patrol on the housing estate so that the security personnel can provide an immediate response to people in need and deal with complaints. The property managers are facing two big challenges: an increase in complaints and manpower shortage. The purpose of this study is to find a systematic method to improve the deployment of security guards in a large property company located in south China. We developed a mathematical model that fits the practical situation. A case study in which the proposed methodology is applied is given in this paper to show how the optimal allocation is determined. In comparison with the current empirical method of allocation the utilization of the optimal allocation obtains a 27.5% improvement.

Characterization of Precurved Needles for Use in Distal Tip Manipulation Mechanisms

Precurved needles are used in a variety of medical applications for both passive and active control of instrument position. In one application, the deployment of a precurved stylet from a concentric outer cannula can be used to achieve lateral positioning of the distal tip of the stylet. This paper outlines how the material and geometry of the stylet can be chosen to ensure that it will not yield and thus repeatedly return to its precurved shape when deployed from a cannula. Using this methodology, we calculate the maximum strain for a range of stylet geometries and show that nitinol is required for the stylet material so that it will not plastically deform. Then, 16 stylets of varying diameters (0.508 mm, 0.635 mm, 0.838 mm, and 0.990 mm) and radii of curvature (10 mm, 20 mm, 30 mm, and 40 mm) were manufactured. Experiments were performed with four different diameter cannulas (20, 18, 16, and 14 gauges) to measure the forces required to deploy the stylets from and retract them back inside the cannulas. Retraction forces were measured between 0.3 N and 13.9 N, and deployment forces were measured between 0.2 N and 7.0 N. For a given cannula, it was found that force increases as the stylet diameter increases and as the bend radius decreases.

Editor's Introduction: The Politics of Troop Withdrawal

Contrary to popular mythology, American politics does not stop at the water's edge, not even during wartime.1 It goes abroad, following the flag onto the battlefield, attending both the commitment and deployment of the nation's fighting forces. But it also follows those forces off the battlefield, for the withdrawal of troops from an ongoing conflict is an inherently political process, even more so when the war is an unpopular one. The current struggles in the Middle East and South Asia are cases in point. From the referendum on Iraq that was the 2006 midterm elections to the question of a withdrawal timetable during the 2008 primary and general election seasons—to say nothing about the congressional vote on the Iraq Resolution in October 2002 and the debate over Senator John Kerry's position on funding U.S. troops during the 2004 presidential race—political considerations have been central to America's handling of the Iraq War. Similar dynamics have also marked more recent debate over the war in Afghanistan. President Barack Obama's December 2009 decision to commit increasing numbers of U.S. troops to that country and then to withdraw them in 2011 has galvanized supporters and detractors on both sides of the aisle and will likely affect both the 2010 midterm elections as well as the president's policy agenda thereafter.2

Counter-insurgency in the Grey: The Ethical Challenge for Military Conduct

This study examines contemporary counter-insurgency (COIN) warfare in terms of military ethics. The intention is to reflect upon the changing face of COIN conduct in the light of serious ethical challenges resulting from modern trends affecting combatant status, and the deployment of military force in a multipurpose framework. It shall engage with what many commentators have termed the ‘grey area’ of the Just War tradition: the ambiguous and challenging interim zone that lies in between the more clearly defined forms of COIN conduct. The resultant analysis shall suggest the need for a more nuanced form of ethical conduct, orientated around restraint, more flexible discriminatory principles and a proportionality framework closer to domestic policing than formal warfare. In particular, this analysis suggests that by hybridizing the military imperative with the policing model of the continuum of force a more effective, less vague and more ethically coherent construct can be produced. By embracing these concepts, military practitioners may overcome ambiguous and unhelpful moral guidance and tailor their conduct more closely to the challenges of the contemporary COIN environment. Such actions will assure they act as justly as possible in the face of ‘grey area’ ethics.

Transnational Subcontracting, Indian IT Workers, and the U.S. Visa System

This essay focuses on visa-enabled immigrant work statuses that constitute the variegated continuum between citizenship and noncitizenship, documented and undocumented immigration, and entitlements and negotiated contractual employment in advanced capitalist economies. Specifically, I look at how temporary nonimmigrant visa categories in the United States are used by the corporate sector to create a flexible immigrant workforce with tenuous legal and work status in racial and gendered terms. Thousands of Indian workers on visas, such as the H-IB, have been incorporated into the U.S. economy as information technology (IT) workers since the 1990s. Few among these professionals, however, work directly for the large U.S. companies where they report to work. As direct employees of either Indian or U.S. -owned subcontracting firms located in both countries, the majority work as temporary contract workers moving from one project to the next at client sites all over the United States. A complex interplay of Indian- and U.S.-owned labor subcontractors, their offshore subsidiaries, and immigration policies has synchronized the required access to immigrant IT workers to meet labor demands in a restructured economy increasingly reliant on technology for success in the global market. Even in a climate of severe anti-immigrant sentiments, the U.S. state has managed to enable the corporate sector to reach out to so-called overseas or foreign workers under the aegis of work visas. In this essay I describe how the deployment of this labor force in the United States is strategically organized around a complex set of stateendorsed categories of visas, among them the H-IB, B-I, and L-I, and how the terms of these visas intersect with the neoliberal mandates of flexible employment. I focus on the terms of the visas and their impact on the lived experiences of these workers, as they negotiate a highly fragmented and decentralized employment regime in late capital as a documented but largely marginalized and segregated workforce. Insights offered here are based on qualitative research, including approximately forty semistructured interviews with Indian IT professionals in the United States and fieldwork conducted both in the United States and in India between 2001 and 2005. Interviews typically varied in duration between one to three hours and were tape-recorded, fully transcribed, and then qualitatively coded. The research also included analysis of government documents, such as transcripts of congressional hearings on U.S. work-visa policies and reports from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Data excerpts selected for this essay represent the forty interviews conducted for this study and reflect some of the central themes concerning visa-related experiences that nearly all the participants addressed during the course of the research. The intricate and varied use of the three visa categories has to be understood in two interrelated contexts in late capital: one, the transnational contours of the IT industrial complex between the United States and India and, two, the system of flexible subcontracting. The logic and practice of flexible accumulation - subcontracting and outsourcing on a transnational scale, the hiring of temporary workers, fragmenting and decentralizing production - have restructured the meaning and content of employment in advanced capitalism (Bonacich and Appelbaum 2000; Ong 1991). The management strategy of just in time (JIT) production and delivery used in manufacturing has spread across factories globally and the doctrine of ready to hire and fire has been transplanted to the entire range of U.S. companies in the ways in which they obtain IT services. In their efforts to keep employee rosters lean and to minimize the obligations associated with maintaining large in-house labor pools, U.S. companies proceeded to externalize their IT projects, sending them to consulting firms to execute and manage. …

Short Shrift for the Long War

BARACK OBAMA'S PRESENT TENSEToward end of President Barack Obama's first year in office it had become a commonplace of commentary in Europe and North America that NATO's nation-building mission in Afghanistan had entered a critical phase. Indeed, informed observers on mission agreed that almost nothing in 2009 was going particularly well. They disagreed, to pick two most divergent nodes of opinion, over whether president should radically increase number of American combat troops dedicated to mission or set a timetable for graduated withdrawal and concede that United States and its NATO allies had no hope of prevailing against an insurgency operating from mountains in east and south ofthe country and increasingly capable of contesting territory assumed hitherto to be under control. On face of it, it seems absurd that NATO could lose a war with mujahid fighters spawned by madrasahs along Afghan- Pakistan frontier, purporting to bring Islamic rule to Afghanistan's people yet contemptuous of a millennium of Muslim spiritual and intellectual achievement. This was nonetheless a valid concern on day Obama was sworn into office, and policy choice before him ever since has been either to salvage mission or to fashion a plan for dignified withdrawal.There is nothing fair about burdens that newly elected leaders inherit from their predecessors. The Afghan circumstance of January 2009 was not of Obama's making, yet he more than anyone will bear responsibility for its rectification. As a candidate for presidency in August 2007 Obama actually embraced that challenge, deriding Bush administration's invasion of Iraq in March 2003 as a rash misadventure in contrast to the war that has to be won on the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan.1 The inclusion of Pakistan testified to an awareness of Afghanistan's regional and strategic significance and simultaneously ratcheted up expectation that Obama would, if elected, attempt a decisive turnaround. Since assuming office he has discovered how difficult such an attempt will be. His predecessor bears a large portion of responsibility for state of affairs, whether or not one agrees that commitment to Iraq was directly responsible for neglect of Afghanistan. A review of mission's origin, however, reveals that this is somewhat beside point. From outset, Afghan mission has enjoyed an political legitimacy that should have ensured robust support not only from United States but more importantly from what we now strain to call international community. This support has gone missing. This article will argue that Afghan mission has been victim of a failure of multilateralism, specifically inability of NATO alliance to evolve beyond strategic debates of early post-Cold War into a community of democratic states prepared to defend democratic way of life on its violent periphery.NATO FROM KOSOVO TO KABULThe opening phase of Afghan mission, operation Enduring Freedom, was immediate response to terrorist attacks in Washington, DC and lower Manhattan on n September 2001 carried out by al Qaeda organization of Osama bin Laden, to whom Taliban regime in Afghanistan had afforded territorial sanctuary. Those attacks prompted NATO to invoke article V of North Atlantic Treaty for first time in alliance's history and United Nations security council to adopt resolution 1368, recognizing the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence in accordance with article 51 of UN charter. Not only were there no legal controversies surrounding American-led action that followed, but it enjoyed blessing of multinational organizations most pertinent to it and met exacting standards of a just war.2 Enduring Freedom was initially a proxy war to topple Taliban regime, combining application of air power with deployment of both limited conventional and special operations forces by United States and United Kingdom, in support of Northern Alliance and anti-Taliban tribal forces. …

A Review of Nurses in Disaster Preparedness and Response: Military and Civilian Collaboration

Every year the world experiences numerous disaster events, both human-made and naturally occurring. These calamitous occurrences are of concern to health care providers for many reasons, not the least of which the reality that their incidence is increasing. Mounting event frequency and magnitude, coupled with increasing world population, results in human impacts that are devastating. Frequently these events call for the deployment of military force, to restore order and secure devastated neighborhoods, or to provide other forms of aid, including healthcare. These military forces often work in concert with community-based, civilian volunteers who participate in disaster response as part of non-governmental agencies. Thus, for health professionals both civilian and military, disaster events are of great concern. This review of the literature provides an overview of disaster studies and anecdotal articles that reveal some of the difficulties and lessons learned over time and recommend research topics for future studies.

Skill sets and competencies for the modern military surgeon: Lessons from UK military operations in Southern Afghanistan

Introduction British military forces remain heavily committed on combat operations overseas. UK military operations in Afghanistan (Operation HERRICK) are currently supported by a surgical facility at Camp Bastion, in Helmand Province, in the south of the country. There have been no large published series of surgical workload on Operation HERRICK. The aim of this study is to evaluate this information in order to determine the appropriate skill set for the modern military surgical team. Method A retrospective analysis of operating theatre records between 1st May 2006 and 1st May 2008 was performed. Data was collated on a monthly basis and included patient demographics, operation type and time of operation. Results During the study period 1668 cases required 2210 procedures. Thirty-two per cent were coalition forces (ISAF), 27% were Afghan security forces (ANSF) and 39% were civilians. Paediatric casualties accounted for 14.7% of all cases. Ninety-three per cent of cases were secondary to battle injury and of these 51.3% were emergencies. The breakdown of procedures, by specialty, was 66% (1463) orthopaedic, 21% (465) general surgery, 6% (139) head and neck, 5% (104) burns surgery and a further 4% (50) non-battle, non-emergency procedures. There was an almost twofold increase in surgical workload in the second year (1103 cases) compared to the first year of the deployment (565 cases, p < 0.05). Discussion Surgical workload over the study period has clearly increased markedly since the initial deployment of ISAF forces to Helmand Province. A 6-week deployment to Helmand Province currently provides an equivalent exposure to penetrating trauma as 3 years trauma experience in the UK NHS. The spectrum of injuries seen and the requisite skill set that the military surgeon must possess is outside that usually employed within the NHS. A number of different strategies; including the deployment of trainee specialist registrars to combat hospitals, more focused pre-deployment military surgery training courses, and wet-laboratory work are proposed to prepare for future generations of surgeons operating in conflict environments.

Communication of the Israeli Leadership with Families of Fallen Soldiers

The article examines the Israeli leadership's attempts to explain and justify the harsh outcomes of deployment of force on behalf of the state. It analyzes Commemoration Day Letters sent by representatives of the State of Israel to the families of soldiers killed in action from 1952 onwards, focusing on significant changes in the relation between the individual and the collective. The major turning point is expressed in Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's letters from the mid-1980s, in which the sanctity of life appears as an ideal guiding the state's political establishment. Applying Roman Jakobson's model of communication, the article claims that this turning point marks a shift from a collective, story-oriented approach in which the national narrative was offered as consolation for the loss to a communication-oriented approach, in which those undersigning the letters are presented as personal communicators rather than national narrators. Against the background of problems of legitimacy embedded in this approach, the article analyzes how recent letters refrain from taking either an individualistic or a collective standpoint.

Optimal Deployment Control of Spinning Space Webs and Membranes

Future solar sail and solar power satellite missions will consider using centrifugal forces for deployment and stabilization. Some of the main advantages with spin deployment are that the significant forces are in the plane of rotation, and a relatively simple control can be used and the tension in the membrane or web can be adjusted by the spin rate. Existing control strategies seem to either consume excessive energy or cause oscillations. In this study, control laws are derived from the solution to relevant optimal control problems and existing controls. The derived control laws are used in deployment simulations with both simple analytical three-degree-of-freedom models and a fully-three-dimensional finite element model. The results indicate that the derived control laws can be used to minimize the energy consumption and oscillations as for an optimal control, yet retain the simplicity of previous control laws.

NATO in Afghanistan: perilous mission, dire ramifications

This paper focuses on analysing NATO's involvement in Afghanistan, a current issue in the interaction between two main constituents of the West, the United States and Europe, with a part of the Muslim world. NATO forces in Afghanistan are engaged in one of the severest battles in the organisation's history. A failure in Afghanistan will have great implications for the transatlantic relationship as well as for the relations between the Muslim world and the West. The Alliance has been able to successfully deal with numerous challenges in the past. Would it be able to overcome the latest challenge? The aim of this paper is to examine this question. The paper starts with analysing the dynamics through which NATO reinvented itself in the 1990s, and then focuses on the post-9/11 era and the deployment of NATO forces in Afghanistan. The challenges posed by the resurgence of the Taliban insurgency are examined next, followed by a discussion of the internal rifts within NATO in general and regarding Afghanistan in particular. The conclusion assesses the chances of NATO's success and makes some policy recommendations.