The Culture and Content Review (Journal), 2007-2012

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The Culture and Content Review (Journal), 2007-2012

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Serial publication

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Center on Contemporary Conflict (CCC)

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 47

Radiation as a Cultural Talisman Nuclear Weapon Testing and American Popular Culture in the Early Cold War
(Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.), 2012-06-01) Jacobs, Robert; Center on Contemporary Conflict (CCC); Operations Research (OR)
"Radiation embodies some of the most paradoxical iconography of the early Cold War. Its abstract nature (invisible, odorless, tasteless), when combined with its true dangers (genetic mutation, cancers, death), allows it to evoke impossible worlds emerging from the ordinary one. Able to kill silently and invisibly at a distance and, by the late 1950s, widely reputed to be present in mother's milk and human bones, radiation represented a threatening technological world that seemed to exist beyond reach of the senses. Radiation was a tool-in-trade for television, radio, movies, novels, and short stories as the strange force that authenticated any departure from normal space and time. It was the magic bullet of science-fiction plots: passing a clicking Geiger counter across a scene was as good as waving a magic wand; be it giant bugs or bug-eyed aliens living in a vast underground city, the clicking made any plot twist believable. Radiation came to symbolize a break in the normal structure of everyday reality; it was a narrative marker to indicate that a boundary had been crossed and that from this moment on, anything was possible."
International Economic Influence on Iranian Behavior An Analysis
(Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.), 2010-04-01) Anderson, David A.; Renfro, Robert S.; Center on Contemporary Conflict (CCC); National Security Affairs
"This paper serves as a proof-of-concept testing analytic tools for better understanding the efficacy and consequences of economic influence in terms of sanctions and other similar macroeconomic regimes. The underlying concept developed is a calculation of economic threat rings describing the propensity and utility of countries to participate in such regimes. [â€¦] The existence of national economies inside such rings shows that sanctions are an imprecise weapon. Sanctions necessarily require countries other than the targeted country to accept losses in the global economy in order for sanctions to be effective. When such loses are suffered by countries un-desirous of supporting sanctions for political, economic or other reasons then the prospect for influencing the targeted country is reduced. In this paper the economic threat ring technique is applied to the case of modern day Iran. Iran is used as a case study as it has a long standing record of sanctions being imposed upon it by the United States and others since its 1979 revolution. Iran continues to be of contemporary interest in American foreign policy owing to concerns with respect to its known sponsorship of terrorism and suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons. Based on analysis of the results, conclusions are drawn with respect to the risk opportunities present to American decision makers in terms of international support and the potential success of economic coercion targeted against Iran. Statistical analysis of publicly available balance of trade data for Iran and its interconnected network of related global trading partners are central to this study."
Security of Ecology in Afghanistan
(Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.), 2008-06-12) De Joannis, Jeffrey; Center on Contemporary Conflict (CCC)
"Homer-Dixon refers to five 'tectonic stresses' synergistically confronting the modern world: Population growth and urbanization, lack of reliable energy sources, environmental damage, climate change, and increasing economic inequity. The premise of this essay is that nowhere are these stresses more extreme than in Afghanistan. A geographic, political, economic, and cultural nexus, today the country is profoundly dysfunctional. The environmental threat to its existential viability is widely ignored, given the focus on internal military security. The latter is important for nation-building, Ã¡ la Weber's monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Yet the purpose of this essay is to explore an alternative view of security; long term economic prosperity of its people based on land sustainability. This essay identifies direct and indirect impacts from 30 years of war on Afghan ecology, as well as non-war-related impacts. Afghanistan is beset with multiple layered problems that have accumulated over decades and cannot be solved sequentially or independently. Success in military security without addressing environmental crisis may still result in a profoundly failed state. Most analyses of Afghanistan discuss the ecology of security, but this essay is about security of the ecology."
Re-examining the Environment-Conflict Linkage In What Way Can the Environment 'Cause' Conflict?
(Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.), 2011-04-22) Clausen, Daniel; Center on Contemporary Conflict (CCC)
"This article will discuss exactly how the environment--and the various variables that have been considered under this label--might be understood to 'cause' conflict. As this article will show, one of the particular complications of studying the environment-conflict linkage is that the relationship between environmental factors and conflict is rarely straight forward, and thus, is left open to interpretation by scholars from different backgrounds and theoretical orientations. Sometimes acrimony between different schools can take place on either definitional grounds or even on differences on what is worthy of study. Environmental factors can encompass anything from environmental degradation, to renewable resource scarcity, to non-renewable resource scarcity, to resource abundance (having a commodity that is highly valued on the world market). Scholars have disagreed on which if any of these variables is important in conflict onset and intensity. In addition, there is disagreement about how to study environmental factors, whether the environment or resources can or should be theorized outside of the political institutions that are established to manage it, or even outside of larger world patterns of consumption that condition environmental processes. The paradox of the environmental security literature is that the environment is often acknowledged as an increasingly important factor in understanding the unfolding dimensions of world politics even as it is identified as a potential source misunderstanding and obfuscation."
Biodiesel from Poppies An Alternative Strategy to Combating the Opium Trade in Afghanistan
(Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.), 2011-10-01) Wheatley, Omar J.; Center on Contemporary Conflict (CCC)
"Despite efforts to eliminate cultivation, it appears that poppies will continue to remain a major crop for Afghanistan. This article focuses on an alternative use of poppy to address the second pillar, specifically examining the feasibility of using non-opium producing poppy as an economic alternative for Afghanistan. There are several licit uses for poppy-based consumables, primarily for medical based opiates such as morphine and codeine. While poppies are also used for their seeds in food products, there is an increasing interest in poppy oil which itself has multiple potential uses, one of which is as a biofuel. The poppy plant is a very rugged plant, requiring very little water compared to food-based biofuels such as corn, rapeseed, palm, and soy. Poppies are a proven crop in Afghanistan. In recent years, a genetically modified poppy variant has been created that contains no opium or the alkaloids necessary for the production of medicinal opiates. If there are varieties that provide the benefits as a biofuel or even for food without the inherent alkaloids that are necessary to produce opium, could they not be considered an alternative economic resource for Afghanistan?"
Coalitional Insights A Post-Jihad Era? Arab Spring Brings West and Islamists into an Unexpected - and Potentially Transformative - Alliance
(Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.), 2011-10-01) Zellen, Barry; Center on Contemporary Conflict (CCC)
"With the Arab world continuing to experience an unprecedented wave of people-powered revolutions that caught both the West and its Islamist opponents in the War on Terror off guard, we are beginning to see the strategic principles articulated and successfully implemented by Gandhi in his liberation struggle against the militarily more powerful British raj supersede the more bellicose but perhaps less effective efforts by both terrorist and counterterrorist, insurgent and counterinsurgent, in their deadly but inconclusive dance. Tired of this long fight, and its endless use of force and violence by both sides with the civilian populace caught in between as if in a deadly vise, the popular mass of the Arab street has risen up to set things right, using methods overlooked by combatants on both sides, alienated as equally from the nihilistic violence of the terrorists as from the unholy alliance of the West with the repressive dictatorships which stood at the West's side, using Western funds and Western arms to repress their own people. Osama Bin Laden long sought to bring his war to the far enemy, and by striking fear in the hearts of the West, to cut off the benefactors of the 'apostate regimes' he sought to overthrow. And in many ways he has succeeded, putting into a motion a dynamic and cascading series of strategic interactions that empowered the very people he sought to liberate. The irony is, however, that these newly liberated peoples reject not only the tyrannies of these apostate regimes, but the Islamist vision and the violent means employed in the global jihad. What we are seeing, in short, is the start of the post-jihad era, where the polarized bifurcation of secular and Islamist is as unnatural and unsustainable as the ideological split that defined the Cold War."
GWOT Reconsidered
(Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.), 2009-07-01) Zellen, Barry; Center on Contemporary Conflict (CCC)
"Around the same time, Pentagon staff received a memo from DoD's [Department of Defense] Office of Security Review explaining the White House 'prefers to avoid using the term 'Long War' or 'Global War on Terror' (GWOT). Please use 'Overseas Contingency Operation.'' This new, less catchy phrase has been publicly used by several top officials -- from the DoD to the OMB [Office of Management and Budget]. But frustration with the GWOT's terminology is not new. Even President Bush came to regret the one-size-fits-all simplicity of the term he made famous, admitting in 2004, 'We actually misnamed the war on terror, it ought to be the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world.' Obama's rhetorical re-assessment of the GWOT into a series of nameless, and seemingly disconnected, Overseas Contingency Operations (or OCOs) has as much to do with the GWOT's controversial verbiage as it does with his desire to reshape the conflict along a more logical, and sustainable, axis."
Ridicule as a Tool for IO/PSYOPS in Afghanistan
(Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.), 2010-04-01) Cohn, Michael; Sims, Paul; Center on Contemporary Conflict (CCC)
"Appreciating what Afghans find funny and shameful allows us to develop a much needed sense of cultural intuition regarding what constitutes ridicule amongst Afghans. With a proper sense of the absurd, in the Afghan context, we increase our ability to relate to populations and disseminate messages that resonate in a more engaging and memorable way. Operationalizing the use of humor and ridicule as a tool of IO/PSYOPS in Afghanistan could increase the coalition and GIRoA's [Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan] ability to undercut Taliban leadership in the eyes of their followers and supporters, provoke them into rash and hurried decisions, mock or trick combatants into laying down their arms, create divisions and doubts in multiple forms in the enemy camps, lessen their power to intimidate and weaken their omnipotence in the eyes of the rest of the population. In order to do this, there needs to be some culturally specific guidelines as to what is funny and what constitutes ridicule in the Afghan context. It is to this end that this paper is dedicated."
Can You Hear Me Now? Telecommunications Remain Resilient in War Torn Afghanistan
(Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.), 2009-07-01) DuPee, Matthew C.; Center on Contemporary Conflict (CCC)
"The power of telecommunications, brought to Afghanistan six years ago, has helped connect millions of Afghans while effectively transcending regional, religious, and ethnic divides to do so. Unlike most development projects in Afghanistan which tend to be focused on the major urban centers, (Kabul alone receives 50 percent of all reconstruction aid), both urban and rural Afghan communities have benefited significantly from the implementation of reliable communications. During the Taliban regime's reign of power only a single telecommunications company existed. There are now six major telecom firms competing in Afghanistan's expanding digital market place. Telecommunications is the largest legitimate enterprise in Afghanistan's economy and it continues to expand at a break neck speed. Roshan, Afghanistan's largest wireless provider, now provides coverage to over 226 cities and towns across 33 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces in Afghanistan, according to a statement issued on Roshan's webpage. MTN, the second largest telecommunications company in Afghanistan, currently provides service in 27 provinces and 241 cities and towns, according to MTN spokesperson Ms. Nozipho January-Bardill."
Engaging Afghans KLE Keys to Success
(Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.), 2009-11-01) Moss, Don; Center on Contemporary Conflict (CCC)
"A pillar of Coalition Force/United States Government (USG) efforts in Afghanistan is to separate the people of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan from insurgent groups such as the Taliban, Haqqani Network and Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HiG) and unite the same populace with their fledgling government. In order to do this, the men and women undertaking this effort have access to the latest in information, training and hightech equipment. But possibly the most important asset any soldier, airman, marine, sailor or civilian can possess is the ability to engage. Not the enemy on the field of battle but the Afghan civilians he or she encounters on a daily basis. It is through mastering the art of the Key Leader Engagement (KLE) that strong relationships, which are the cornerstone to victory in COIN [Counterinsurgency] operations, can be truly fostered. Believe it or not [...] your time in Afghanistan is short and the quicker you can establish a strong relationship with the populace of your area the greater the results you'll see in a shorter period of time. Your actions during the longest of meetings or the shortest of convoy stops will leave an impression that will last much longer and spread much farther than you can imagine and may be the key to success or failure for you or other units during future"