Security Arrangements Research Articles

Maritime Security under the Lens: Evaluating its effectiveness in Deterring Piracy and Armed Robbery at Sea

Piracy is a significant threat in maritime zones, severely disrupting navigation and exerting a detrimental impact on global trade and commerce. This research critical examines the effectiveness of current maritime security measures, arrangements, and regulatory frameworks specifically designed to combat piracy and armed robbery at sea by exploring a range of strategies employed by both individual nations and international bodies, to counter the persistent maritime threat of armed robbery. Current research identifies key gaps and limitations within these existing measures of maritime securities, offering valuable insights into their practical efficacy and highlighting areas where improvements are necessary. The study evaluates the capacity of the existing frameworks by utilizing qualitative research methodology to theoretically address and prescribe effective mitigation strategies to deter piracy and armed robbery in today’s complex maritime environments, thereby contributing to the ongoing discourse on strengthening and enhancing global maritime security.

Operational and production determinants contributing towards commercialization among female Agripreneurs in Vhembe district

This study investigates operational and production determinants that significantly influence small-scale transitioning to commercial farming among female agripreneurs, the implications for food security and gender equality with various elements impacting the commercialization of agricultural production in emerging economies. A quantitative research design was used in this research. This study was conducted in the emerging economic zone, the Vhembe district of Limpopo province where agricultural activities dominate. A purposive sampling was used to select 149 female agripreneurs. Structured questionnaires were handed to the participants during the in-person interview sessions. The study results reveal that the sample was dominated by elderly agripreneurs who primarily relied on permission to occupy arrangements for land security. The study findings exhibit that operation determinants such as type of farming and record keeping were positive contributors towards commercialization among female agripreneurs. Meanwhile, production elements such as commodity types regressed the commercialization effort among female agripreneurs. The study findings imply that policy tools should advocate for land security among female agripreneurs as they enhance the implementation of their long-term agricultural plans. The study findings suggest that emerging female agripreneurs should be made aware of various farming types that propel commercialization within a shorter period due to their lifecycle.

Poland’s External Security in the Political Thought of Selected Extra-parliamentary National Circles: The Period of Full-scale Ukrainian-Russian Conflict

The author of the article presents his definition of the external threat, then he analyses the political thought of two nationalist political circles (the circles of the “Myśl Polska” weekly magazine and the periodical “Polityka Narodowa”) during the full-scale Ukrainian-Russian conflict and in the years immediately preceding it. It should be emphasised that both circles consider themselves to be continuators of the same nationalist movement, namely, the National Democracy and its leader Roman Dmowski. The main objective of the article is to identify the most important external threats to the Polish state. Threats in the form of other state actors are taken into account. The author concludes that the attitude towards Russia, and by extension the conflict in Ukraine, has become a fundamental axis of contention between the two communities. This affects the perception of Poland’s external security arrangements.

An Investigation of AI-Enabled Comprehensive Survey of Phishing Attacks detection techniques

Phishing is an online criminal activity which traps regular online customers to reveal their sensitive information into fake destinations by disguising themselves as original website. Because of the short life expectancy of phishing sites and the fast progression of phishing systems the current anti- phishing solutions are either unfit to manage the rising changes or in fit for assuming a successful part against this attack.Natural language handling and machine learning – these are the centre usage of the multi-stage approach proposed to identify phishing attacks and to perceive the substance/association that has been misused by the attackers to execute the phishing attacks. In this technique the primary stage is the revelation of named elements (names of areas, individuals and associations) and afterward the disclosure of concealed topics and for this the strategies that backings both phishing and non-phishing information therefore, Conditional Random Field (CRF) and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) is utilized. Next stage is the AdaBoost arrange where the named elements and the concealed subjects are dealt as features and the messages are ordered into phishing or non-phishing. proposed techniques are planned to alleviate the effect of phishing attack. The principal strategy proposes is to identify Wi-Fi phishing utilizing Association Rule mining. A Wi-Fi hotspot which associates such hand held gadgets has turned into a transitory archive of delicate data, in this way giving an open door for programmers to gather money related gain .Consequently data security arrangements tending to Wi-Fi hotspots (Wi-Fi phishing attack) has turned into the need of great importance. The conceivable approaches to attack the security of Wi-Fi hotspots and counter-attack methodologies have been tended to in this strategy. Key works: Phishing, LDA,AI

Crude Oil Theft, Illegal Bunkering and Pipeline Vandalism in Nigeria’s Niger Delta: Effects and National Responses to Curb the Menace.

Against the backdrop of the fact that Nigeria lost large scale of petroleum resources valued as huge financial losses to the nation, individuals, and other institutions, this paper examined crude oil theft, illegal bunkering, and pipeline vandalism in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria; effects and national responses. The findings show that crude oil theft, illegal bunkering, and pipeline vandalism have caused adverse effects such as socio-economic losses to Nigeria, environmental pollution and degradation, a threat to national and international security, and caused huge losses to national and international oil companies and individuals. To ensure the smooth operation of the country’s oil industry, various administrations have carried out various national responses to curb the menace. These include enactment of laws, arrest, and prosecution of perpetrators, strengthening security arrangements, the establishment of the Inter-Agency Maritime Security Task Force (IAMSTF) and the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), granting of amnesty to ex-militants and collaboration with regional and international partners to curb the menace of crude oil theft, illegal bunkering and pipeline vandalism in the Niger Delta. Therefore, the paper concluded that it is due to faulty implementation of such national responses that the phenomenon is unabated.

Transparency in Arms Control: The Collapse and Future of the Open Skies Treaty

After Ukraine, the need for robust mechanisms to rebuild trust and ensure transparency among states would become more pressing than ever. Renowned for its transparency and trust-building capabilities, the Open Skies Treaty (OST) could serve as a cornerstone for post-conflict security arrangements. This article examines the potential for revisiting the Open Skies framework to adapt to innovative surveillance technologies, assist with verification of arms control agreements, and enhance diplomatic efforts to foster a collaborative deterrence between former enemies and include agreeable neighboring states. Utilizing a qualitative methodology involving the analysis of public statements, policy documents, and related scholarship, the study underscores the OST's critical role in establishing a transparent military environment. This recognized framework can foster trust among former adversaries, supporting broader goals of international peace and stability.

Relationships of mental budgeting of the self-employed without personnel with tax compliance, pension, and disability arrangements

IntroductionSelf-employed people without personnel mostly behave like consumers in managing their business finances, frequently leading to ill-management of the company finances. Ill-management may lead to inability to fulfill important financial obligations and making financial arrangements for the future. Here, we investigate the hypothesis that financial management is related to tax compliance.MethodsWe use having an overview of expenses, making ends meet, occurrence of a business bank overdraft, and how long the business could survive without income, as indicators of financial management. Four measures of tax compliance, i.e., the OECD measure of tax compliance, measures taken by the tax administration, enforced tax compliance, and voluntary tax compliance, and two measures of social security, i.e., pension and disability arrangements, are included. We use survey data from a sample of 1,191 Dutch self-employed people without personnel, roughly equally divided between starters ( ≤ 3 years in business) and non-starters (>3 years in business).ResultsWe found both significant direct and indirect effects of mental budgeting on tax compliance and social security arrangements, thus showing incomplete mediation effects of financial management.DiscussionThe mediation effects of having an overview of expenses were relatively strong for the OECD and voluntary compliance measures, whereas the mediation effects of not making ends meet and bank overdrafts were relatively strong for measures taken by the tax administration and enforced compliance, thus indicating different financial management processes matching different motivations of tax compliance.

Giving Women the Benefit of the Doubt? Examining Gender Differences in Schools’ Management of Sexual Allegations Against Employees

ABSTRACT Comparing women’s and men’s sexual offending patterns in educational settings is a relatively recent empirical endeavor. Accordingly, gender-based examinations of schools’ management of sexual allegations are lacking. We address this gap by drawing on a unique administrative dataset from an Australian jurisdiction that captures alleged improper sexual conduct by educational employees. We compare 809 female- and male-perpetrated cases reported between 2015 and 2019 with respect to event, location, victim, and perpetrator characteristics, as well as the ensuing risk management strategies and sanctions. Compared to men, reported women were younger, employed on more secure employment arrangements, and less often had a relevant discipline history. Most alleged event characteristics did not significantly differ based on perpetrator gender. Women’s alleged perpetration, however, more often occurred in places external to school and involved more serious sexual victimization of comparatively older male students. After controlling for event, victim, perpetrator, and allegation characteristics there was nearly no support for a gender bias in institutional responses. However, a lack of any action was more often observed in female-perpetrated cases under very specific and limited conditions. Resultant implications for the management and oversight of employee-related allegations are discussed.

Dangerous winds: Criminal threats and the indigenized security of wind power in Colombia

AbstractGlobal energy companies have regularly depended on state and private security for sustaining their operations, often with deadly consequences for union leaders, environmental defenders, and local communities. This article examines how these security arrangements are mutating amid the rapid expansion of renewable energy in Latin America. It uncovers how wind energy companies in Colombia rely on Indigenous knowledge, social networks, and legal norms to safeguard themselves in La Guajira, a border region reputed by outsiders as haunted by criminality and (il)legal practices. Through long‐term ethnographic research of corporate spaces, I argue that Wayúu lifeways are mobilized by green energy capital to craft a hybrid security apparatus that, though failure‐prone, is crucial for Colombia's low‐carbon future. This case reveals how corporate and Indigenous configurations of protection and risk prevention work in tandem across sites that are being demarcated for the energy transition and climate change mitigation in Latin America.

Conceptualising a Heterarchical Regional Security Complex: The Case of the QUAD

ABSTRACT The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) is one of the most prominent security arrangements to have emerged in the Indo-Pacific during the 21st century. This dialogue provides its founding members – the United States (US), India, Japan and Australia – with a platform to counteract the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) rising regional and global stature. The QUAD can be conceptualised as a Heterarchical Regional Security Complex (HRSC), a novel theoretical construct that involves the formation of regional clusters of like-minded states against a competitor because of its contrasting political system, security outlook and worldview. Indeed, the Quad is a heterarchical minilateral security arrangement that is based on a ‘diffusion of power’ logic against the PRC whose global projection is causing mini-superpower rivalry in the Indo-Pacific region.

The AUKUS agreement: a new form of the plurilateral defence alliance? A view from downunder

ABSTRACT In 2021, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States announced a multi-decade programme – dubbed AUKUS – for tripartite collaboration in the development of nuclear-powered submarines and other advanced military capabilities. This article explores the extent to which AUKUS signals a departure from a spectrum of US-centred international security arrangements ranging from a plurilateral model, as exemplified by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), to the bilateral (hub-and-spoke) model more common in the Indo-Pacific. The paper argues that AUKUS complements US-centred protective arrangements along NATO and hub-and-spoke lines. In leveraging US technological leadership and military investments to enhance partner-specific military capabilities, and AUKUS breaks new ground, being less about deterrence of, and military responses to, an attack aggression on one or more of its members, and more about enhancing interoperability, combined operational s/synergy, and reciprocity in new capability formation by the parties. The work concludes that the AUKUS arrangements stand to provide less scope for free-riding by the parties, while giving them greater incentive to invest in interoperable military capabilities, thereby creating more contingent (real) deployment options for the future, US-led combined military operations, to be exercised by the parties in response to emergent military contingencies.

Penanggulangan Terhadap Tindak Pidana Pertambangan Mineral Dan Batubara di Wilayah Hukum Kepolisian Daerah Gorontalo

Community Service Activities to examine countermeasures against mineral and coal mining crimes in the jurisdiction of the Gorontalo Regional Police and the Inhibiting Factors. The activity method is field study, the research method used in the research is empirical with qualitative descriptive data analysis which describes and describes field data and facts. Based on the results of the research, the handling of mineral and coal mining crimes in the jurisdiction of the Gorontalo Regional Police is carried out by carrying out repressive efforts. This activity includes a series of actions aimed at uncovering cases that have occurred, where the stages start with a series of inquiries, inquiries and other coercive measures authorized according to the law. Carrying out preventive efforts, including a series of activities aimed at preventing crimes before they occur, where investigators make arrangements for security, including conducting patrols at locations thought to contain indications of criminal acts. In relation to criminal acts, especially mining, the Gorontalo Regional Police provides guidance and encouragement to the community to actively participate in efforts to prevent and ward off crime, by reporting suspicious incidents; and Carrying out pre-emptive efforts, starting from conducting an analysis of regional conditions and potential vulnerabilities, collaborating with related elements, to anticipate violations or crimes. The inhibiting factors in dealing with mineral and coal mining crimes in the Gorontalo Regional Police are: Legal Content Factor, where the imposition of sanctions does not include the threat of a minimum sentence, thus affecting the police, public prosecutors and judges' decisions to be less strong; Law Enforcement Factor, where officials can be a supporting factor in the implementation of the law, or actually become a protector for the perpetrator; Community Cultural Factors relate to the basic values ​​of what is good and what is bad, in order to support the implementation of law, which originates from the community's legal understanding and attitudes or behavior. Facilities and facilities factors, where the police have constraints in terms of the number of competent human resources, thereby maximizing the role of PPNS investigators from other agencies.

Collective Security and the African Regional Integration

The end of the cold war and the marginalization of Africa, coupled with the vicious cycle of poverty, underdevelopment, disease and internecine conflicts are reasons for the aggressive support for African regional integration and security mechanism. Meanwhile, commitments to African regional integration have been constrained by a highly ambivalent critique of the colonial heritage of sovereignty, and unwilling to transfer any of such freedom to supra-national bodies. Yet this has the potential of enhancing their ability to coordinate the implementation of collective security. The objective of this research therefore is to place the relationship between the African regional integration and the efficacy of collective security within the region. The study adopted the Survey research design. The main instrument for data collection was structured questionnaires. The Spearman rank order correlation coefficient was used in testing the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. Findings revealed that, there is a significant relationship between African regional integration and collective security/ effective deterrent to aggression, and also that, there is a significant relationship between the failure of African regional integration and the security dilemma confronting the region. The researcher therefore recommends that for the purpose of conflict management, the partnership between the UN and the AU, with its corresponding sub-regional organizations, should be akin to a pyramid. Regional security integration should rest on concepts of good governance, sound civil-military relations and commitments to democracy and human rights, and that regional security arrangements need to focus on modest measures for the prevention and containment of conflicts, rather than utopian ideas and complex institutional mechanisms.

American Presidential Elections 2024: The Core Point of Future Geopolitical Changes

Purpose: This research is focused on the ongoing Russia – Ukraine military conflict, which has already caused some significant changes in foreign policy priorities of major players of international political system. Objective: The objective of this study is to investigate the impact of U.S. 2024 elections to the Russia – Ukraine military conflict outcomes with the aim of analyzing different foreign policy philosophies the two potential candidates have, that can have an effect not only on current Russo-Ukrainian conflict but on the whole global geopolitical situation in the current world. Theoretical Framework: realism as an international relations theory with the system level analysis is used to explain current global geopolitical issues. Method: The issue of methodology is decided according to the necessities of tasks of this article and is mostly based on data analyses, comparison of similarities or differences and case study. Results and Discussion: the current work claims that the major war on the European continent disrupts the core security arrangements which has a shattering effects of unipolar liberal order and how much will this order be changed, is mainly depended on the dedication to it by the U.S.A, European union countries and their liberal democratic allies around the globe. Research Implications: the research findings contribute in raising awareness of the current Ukraine conflict and accumulate the type of knowledge that enriches the political science with theoretical and practical value.

Breaking the Strategic Glass: The Carter Administration and Oman, 1977–1980

Abstract When Jimmy Carter became the U.S. president in January 1977, the United States and Oman did not have any formal security arrangements, apart from occasional landings of U.S. military aircraft on Oman's Masirah Island. Although Oman's leader, Sultan Qaboos bin Said, hoped to establish closer security ties with the United States, the Carter administration chose to continue President Richard Nixon's policy of relying on the “twin pillars” of Iran and Saudi Arabia to reinforce Western security in the Persian/Arabian Gulf region. Oman remained mostly a strategic afterthought until a series of crises unfolded in the greater Middle East: a Communist coup in Afghanistan in April 1978, the fall of the Shah of Iran in January 1979, and a war between Marxist South Yemen and North Yemen shortly thereafter. In November 1979, Iranian terrorists backed by the Islamic regime stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and seized dozens of hostages. This was followed a month later by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. With the fall of the Shah and the collapse of the “twin pillars” policy, the Carter administration began a sustained effort to create a Rapid Deployment Force for the Middle East and to gain access to Oman's strategic military facilities. After several months of arduous negotiations, Carter and his team were able to conclude a Facilities Access Agreement with Oman in June 1980, a transformative process that gave Washington the ability to insert U.S. military personnel into the Gulf and Indian Ocean on a contingency basis. The Carter administration's effort stands as a significant achievement, converting Oman into the most reliable U.S. ally in the Gulf region in the 1980s.

Insufficiency of informal alignment: why did Finland choose formal NATO membership?

Abstract In May 2022, less than three months after Russia started its war of aggression against Ukraine, both Finland and Sweden applied for membership in NATO, thereby revoking their longstanding policies of non-alliance. What led to this shift? And what made formal NATO membership more attractive to these countries than their previous relationship with the alliance, which already amounted to informal alignment between them and NATO? To answer these questions, this article reviews the process and debates preceding the Finnish NATO application, which also proved decisive for Sweden's alliance bid. In doing so, the article contributes to the existing literature on Finland's NATO process as well as the broader scholarly debate about alliance formation. It argues that two factors prompted the Finnish NATO application: first, a dramatic shift in Finnish public opinion on NATO membership and, second, the emergence of a broadly shared view among Finland's elites of the insufficiency of Finland's existing security arrangements in view of Russia's increased threat potential, with NATO membership seen as the only viable remedy. The article duly highlights the role of public opinion in shaping a state's alignment preferences. Moreover, it finds strong evidence for realist (threat) and rationalist (efficiency) explanations for alliance formation.

Evolving security motifs, Olympic spectacle and urban planning legacy: from militarization to security-by-design

ABSTRACT This paper examines the form, function and impact of previous Olympic security arrangements and their intersection with planning practice. Drawing from prior and ongoing empirical research investigating the security practices at summer Olympic Games, the paper argues that wider shifts towards ‘total' security models comprising continually reproduced security motifs can be observed that are increasingly standardized, mobile, globalized and planned-in. For most Olympic organizers, preparations now necessarily include attempts to equate spectacle with safety and to ‘design-out’ terrorism by relying on highly militarized tactics and expensive and detailed contingency planning. Such securitizing practices have intensified in form and scale since 9/11, with such intensification set to continue at the XXXIII Olympiad in Paris, where a vast security infrastructure is being embedded into the large-scale and long-term master-plans for the central city. This represents a high point in spatial planning practice through embracing principles of security-by-design where Games-time security infrastructure, whilst providing effective protection, becomes a less visible but permanent, physical legacy that can also contribute to local programmes of regeneration, climate resilience and crime prevention. The paper concludes by reflecting upon what the continual evolution of security infrastructure means for the balancing of planned-in security and spectacle at future Olympiads.

An Investigation of AI-Enabled Comprehensive Survey of Phishing Attacks detection techniques

Phishing is an online criminal activity which traps regular online customers to reveal their sensitive information into fake destinations by disguising themselves as original website. Because of the short life expectancy of phishing sites and the fast progression of phishing systems the current anti- phishing solutions are either unfit to manage the rising changes or in fit for assuming a successful part against this attack.Natural language handling and machine learning – these are the centre usage of the multi-stage approach proposed to identify phishing attacks and to perceive the substance/association that has been misused by the attackers to execute the phishing attacks. In this technique the primary stage is the revelation of named elements (names of areas, individuals and associations) and afterward the disclosure of concealed topics and for this the strategies that backings both phishing and non-phishing information therefore, Conditional Random Field (CRF) and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) is utilized. Next stage is the AdaBoost arrange where the named elements and the concealed subjects are dealt as features and the messages are ordered into phishing or non-phishing. proposed techniques are planned to alleviate the effect of phishing attack. The principal strategy proposes is to identify Wi-Fi phishing utilizing Association Rule mining. A Wi-Fi hotspot which associates such hand held gadgets has turned into a transitory archive of delicate data, in this way giving an open door for programmers to gather money related gain .Consequently data security arrangements tending to Wi-Fi hotspots (Wi-Fi phishing attack) has turned into the need of great importance. The conceivable approaches to attack the security of Wi-Fi hotspots and counter-attack methodologies have been tended to in this strategy.

Containing the ‘Suspect’ Other: Perpetuating Colonial Spaces Through a Global Counterterrorism Regime in Nairobi

ABSTRACT Global counterterrorism has deeply influenced urban arrangements in cities across the world, so too in Nairobi. After the Westgate attack in 2013, new modes of security governance have appeared and actively changed neighbourhoods in the capital. These new urban security arrangements build on and perpetuate, however, existing security dispositifs in the city rooted in British settler colonialism. This article therefore discusses how global counterterrorism structures manifest in and sustain racialised local security arrangements, investigating the role of spatiality within counterterrorism narratives. Taking the case of the postcolonial city of Nairobi, the article explores the two neighbourhoods of Karen and Eastleigh where security arrangements manifest in distinct ways, namely through safeguarding affluent communities from the ‘suspect’ Other who needs to be surveilled and policed. To that end, two historical security systems are embedded in urban space: Private security guarding in Karen and Nyumba Kumi in Eastleigh. The authors hence critically analyse how space governs communities, shapes subjectivities and contributes to sustaining racialised violence in the postcolonial city of Nairobi.

The Institutionalisation of Security Norms in the Context of Cyber Alignments: The Transatlantic Alignment in the Cyber Domain

Realists argue that security alliances are established to confront military threats posed by one state to others. In contrast, this study argues that nonmilitary cyberthreats have become a factor in establishing new security arrangements that do not necessarily take the form of an alliance, but rather emerge in the form of alignments. Cyberthreats lie in the political, economic, societal and military repercussions caused by the employment of cyber technologies, not these technologies themselves. Therefore, alignments are not automatic reflections of cyber capabilities, but depend on common perceptions and meanings that identify a certain behaviour as a security threat. The transatlantic alignment in the cyber domain, having been produced by common EU and US cyber norms, represents this type of security alignment. These norms have constructed common meanings and perceptions of cyberthreat patterns, which are primarily embodied in Chinese and Russian policies and behaviour in the cyber domain, involving a set of alternative and competing norms to those adopted by the former two, and through which China and Russia seek to alter the structure of the prevailing international order.