From the Editors

The planning and building of navies remains one of the most complex, costly and difficult problems for governments. The first two articles in this final issue of volume thirty-nine of The Journal of Strategic Studies offer reflections on this complex problem. The first by Thomas-Durell Young of the US Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, identifies weaknesses in the planning process in the US Navy’s Office of the Chief of Naval Operations and offers a series of policy recommendations for reconnecting planning with strategy and resources. Since the newly elected Republican administration has promised to expand the US Navy in coming years, this article will give American naval planners much to consider.¹

The second essay, by Edward Hampshire of the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London, reconsiders the UK’s 1981 Defence Review and the downsizing of the Royal Navy. Scholars have generally agreed that the cuts to the size of the British fleet under Defence Minister John Nott’s strategic review were primarily driven by budgetary and domestic political imperatives, but Hampshire’s study of recently released archives reveals that the initial scope of the cuts was much greater than those that were implemented and that assumptions about the air threat to surface ships for example were more important in the decision process than other issues.²

In the third article of this issue, Min-Hyung Kim of Illinois Wesleyan University’s Department of Political Science attempts to make sense of North Korea’s strategic behaviour. Kim considers a number of key variables that may influence Pyongyang’s behaviour, including Sino-US competition, China’s rise to power and improving Sino-Republic of South Korea economic ties. He regards Pyongyang’s nuclear brinkmanship as a function of the developing Sino-US competition, which permits North Korea to assert its value as an ally of China, despite Beijing’s opposition to such provocations.³

The final two essays in this issue deal with the connections between technology and war. John Stone of War Studies, King College London, debunks the cultural studies myth that the bayonet is an anachronistic legacy on the modern battlefield. He argues that the reason why infantrymen are still armed with bayonets is that they remain useful in close combat.⁴ In a study of the performance of the USAAF VIII Fighter Command in the Second World War, Nina Kollars and Richard Muller of Franklin & Marshall College and Andrew Santora of the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies identify wartime learning as the critical factor that connects technology and combat effectiveness. The wider significance of their historical case study is nicely summed up by the title of their contribution to this issue: ‘Learning to Fight and Fighting to Learn.’⁵

This final issue of 2016 includes a review essay by William R. Thompson of Indiana University of Arms Races in International Politics: From the Nineteenth to the Twenty-first Century, edited by Thomas Mahnken, Joseph Maiolo and David Stevenson (Oxford University Press, 2016). The editors would like to express thanks to all of our authors, book reviewers and referees. Without them contribution of the journal to the academic and policy debate about strategy and contemporary security would be impossible.

Notes

¹ Thomas-Durell Young, ‘When Programming Trumps Policy and Plans: The Case of the US Department of the Navy’ Journal of Strategic Studies 39/7 (2016) ??. Also see James Manicom, ‘China and American Seapower in East Asia: Is Accommodation Possible?’ Journal of Strategic Studies 37/3 (2014) 345–371.

² Edward Hampshire, ‘Strategic and Budgetary Necessity, or Decision-making ‘Along the Grain’? The Royal Navy and the 1981 Defence Review’, Journal of Strategic Studies 39/7 (2016) ??.

³ Min-Hyung Kim, ‘Why Provoke? The Sino-US Competition in East Asia and North Korea’s Strategic Choice’, Journal of Strategic Studies 39/7 (2016) ??. For a recent related article, see Phillip C. Saunders & Julia G. Bowie, ‘US–China Military Relations: Competition and Cooperation’, Journal of Strategic Studies 39/5–6 (2016), 662–684; Fintan Hoey, ‘Japan and Extended Nuclear Deterrence: Security and Non-proliferation’, Journal of Strategic Studies 39/4 (2016), 484–501.

⁴ John Stone, ‘A Proxemic Account of Bayonet Fighting’, Journal of Strategic Studies 39/7 (2016) ??. On related issues of norms and technology, see Susan B. Martin, ‘Norms, Military Utility, and the Use/Non-use of Weapons: The Case of Anti-plant and Irritant Agents in the Vietnam War’, Journal of Strategic Studies 39/3 (2016), 321–364.

⁵ Nina A. Kollars, Richard R. Muller and Andrew Santora, ‘Learning to Fight and Fighting to Learn: Practitioners and the Role of Unit Publications in VIII Fighter Command 1943–1944’, Journal of Strategic Studies 39/7 (2016) ??. Also Raphael D. Marcus, ‘Military Innovation and Tactical Adaptation in the Israel–Hizballah Conflict: The Institutionalization of Lesson-Learning in the IDF,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 38/4 (2015), 500–528. Also see Nina A. Kollars, ‘War’s Horizon: Soldier-led Adaptation in Iraq and Vietnam’, Journal of Strategic Studies 38/4 (2015), 529–553.