scholarly journals Laser Challenge of China

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (10) ◽  
pp. 939-942
Author(s):  
Victor V Apollonov

Chinese President Xi Jinping, at a meeting with delegates of the People's Liberation Army of China (PLA) during the last session of the National People's Congress (NPC), demanded the introduction of scientific discoveries and innovative technologies in the army. Xi Jinping noted that new technologies are the key to modernizing the Armed Forces. The Chinese leader discussed with the military how to achieve the goals set in the field of national defense and army development and the implementation of the 13th five-year plan for the development of the armed forces. It is safe to say that Laser Weapons (LW) are on the agenda of China/1/

2016 ◽  
Vol 08 (02) ◽  
pp. 68-78
Author(s):  
Lance L P GORE

The overhaul of the People’s Liberation Army will move it away from its Soviet-style command and control structures towards the American model, which is believed to be more adapted to the new security environment and facilitates long distance power projection to protect China’s far-flung national interest abroad. The Communist Party’s organisational presence is reaffirmed to ensure the loyalty of the military as the Party considers it the ultimate source of its power and final defence of its rule.


2014 ◽  
Vol 06 (04) ◽  
pp. 5-12
Author(s):  
Zhiyue BO

Since he became commander-in-chief in November 2012, Xi Jinping has promoted altogether 11 generals in three batches. The promotion of the third batch came in the shadow of expelling Xu Caihou, former vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and Politburo member, from the Party. In the future, Xi Jinping will have to strike a balance between the anti-corruption campaign in the military and the establishment of a core support group in the People's Liberation Army.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (03) ◽  
pp. 99-107
Author(s):  
Nan LI

Restructuring and downsizing of China’s military, its counter-corruption drive and improved supervision, its focus on its professional role and its limited goals may help optimise the use of the defence budget approved recently by the National People’s Congress (NPC). Similarly, the NPC’s decision to establish a Ministry of Veteran Affairs to resolve grievances of military veterans may enhance social stability and boost morale in the People’s Liberation Army as well as help Xi Jinping to consolidate power.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Thibaut Moulin

The emergence of new technologies might challenge our assumptions about biomedical research: medical progress may not only cure but enhance human capacities. In particular, the emergence of brain-machine interfaces will admittedly allow disabled people to move or communicate again, but also has various military applications, such as remote control of drones and avatars. Although there is no express legal framework pertaining to the experimental phase of human enhancement techniques, they are actually constrained by international law. According to international humanitarian law, civilians and prisoners of war may be subjected to experiments only when required by their state of health or for medical treatment. According to international human rights law, experimentations are permissible when they meet two conditions: (i) free consent, and (ii) proportionality (that is, the adequacy of risk and benefit). In light of these conditions, this article assesses the situations in which experimentation involving brain-computer interfaces would be lawful. It also gives specific attention to those experimentations carried out on members of the armed forces. In fact, owing to the military hierarchy and the unique nature of its mission (to protect national security at the risk of their own lives), it is necessary to determine how the military may comply with this legal framework.


Author(s):  
Marco Jowell

The army has been a central part of Rwanda’s political system from the precolonial period until the early 21st century and is intrinsically part of the construction and politics of the state. Civil–military relations in Rwanda demonstrate not only the central features of transitioning a rebel group to a national defense sector but also how some states construct their armed forces after a period of mass violence. Since the civil war and genocide in the early 1990s, the Rwandan military has been the primary actor in politics, the economy, and state building as well as in regional wars in central Africa and the Great Lakes region. Practical experiences of guerrilla insurgency and conflict in Uganda and Rwanda, postconflict military integration, and the intertwining of political and economic agendas with the ruling party have shaped civil–military relations in Rwanda and have been central to how the Rwandan defense sector functions. Contemporary Rwandan civil–military relations center around the two elements of service delivery and control, which has resulted in the development of an effective and technocratic military in terms of remit and responsibilities on the one hand, and the creation of a politicized force of coercion on the other hand. The military in Rwanda therefore reflects the pressures and dynamics of the wider state and cannot be separated from it. The Rwandan army is thus a “political army” and is part and parcel of the political structures that oversee and govern the Rwandan state.


Author(s):  
Andrea Ghiselli

How did the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) react to the securitization act initiated by the civilian leadership? This chapter shows that the PLA was relatively hesitant to accept a more inclusive understanding of security beyond traditional territorial defense, and therefore of a broader role for itself in China’s peacetime foreign policy. The PLA’s approach to non-traditional missions was similar to that of other countries’ armed forces, as they did not look favorably on so-called interventionist uses of force. It was in the aftermath of the 2011 Libyan crisis that the position of the PLA changed in an unequivocal way and the soldiers’ attitude towards the expansion of their peacetime portfolio became very similar to that of the civilians. While the soldiers’ natural desire to contribute to the security of the people played an important role in this process, it is important to emphasize how crucial the establishment of a causal link between non-traditional security threats and inter-state conflict was in the debate within the PLA.


Author(s):  
Maiah Jaskoski

Under Ecuador’s “third wave” democracy that began in 1979, the armed forces have exhibited considerable autonomy vis-à-vis civilians in government, as measured by (a) military intervention in politics and (b) the armed forces’ spread into internal security. Perhaps most noteworthy, military participation in politics and internal security increased significantly during the second half of the 1990s, in a permissive environment: as a result of their rule in the 1970s, the armed forces enjoyed a positive reputation within society as an institution capable of getting things done, without committing human rights abuses. Within that context, a traumatic military role crisis prompted the armed forces to expand their political and internal security roles. The armed forces lost their traditional mission of defending Ecuador’s southern border against Peru in the late 1990s, due to the resolution of that border dispute. In its search for institutional justification, the military proactively intensified its participation in politics and internal security. That extensive internal security work not only served as an indicator of military autonomy vis-à-vis civilians but it also made the armed forces ineffective and unreliable in responding to the civilian government’s basic national defense requirements, as evinced by the military’s response to a new sovereignty threat. When Colombian guerrilla crossings into northern Ecuador became a salient border threat in the 2000s, the armed forces focused on internal security in the north and not border defense.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 175
Author(s):  
Marina Ika Sari ◽  
Yuli Ari Sulistyani ◽  
Andhini Citra Pertiwi

<p>The involvement of the military in the global health crisis has begun since the COVID-19 outbreak broke out in Indonesia, starting from the implementation of Large-Scale Social Distancing to the implementation of the new normal adaptation phase. However, the involvement has received mixed responses. Some parties consider it as natural, while others question the urgency of the military involvement. This study focuses on the role of two defense institutions, namely the Indonesian National Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defense in handling the COVID-19. It employs a qualitative research method and the theory of role, the concept of national defense, and the concept of Pandemic Management to analyze the problem. This study finds that the Indonesian National Armed Forces has a strategic role in several fields such as health, security and socio-economic as part of the efforts to contain COVID-19. The Ministry of Defense also plays a strategic role both internally and externally, by cooperating with other ministries, domestic private companies, state-owned enterprises in the defense industry sector, and with other countries in containing the COVID-19 pandemic.</p><p><strong>Keywords: </strong>role, defense, military, pandemic, COVID-19.</p>


Worldview ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 16-20
Author(s):  
Donald Kirk

The Americans are coming—not merely statesmen and diplomats, not just occasional journalists or teams of scholars or family planners or whatever, but almost anyone with enough money to pay for the privilege and accept some of the nuisance of guided tourism through the People's Republic of China. They jostle for space outside the panda pens of the Peking zoo, madly clicking cameras and shouting greetings at one another. They troop through the courts of the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace, mingling with grinning off-duty People's Liberation Army soldiers and hordes of uniformed schoolchildren. They crowd the orchestras of theatres and concert halls, applauding newly revived “revolutionary” operas and dances, often with more spontaneous verve than do the respectfully restrained Chinese around them.The spectacle of Americans in garish, multicolored dress swirling through the lobbies of Peking's halfdozen hotels for foreigners provides a startling contrast to the normal sight of Ma9-suited Chinese bicycling methodically along broad avenues or crowding sidewalks through districts in which tourists until this year were distinct rareties. The Fifth National People's Congress was in full swing in early March when the first batches of American “friends” with no special professional or political affiliations began arriving. By the end of December some fifteen thousand of them had made the tour—a minuscule figure by the standards of virtually any other nation, but a great leap from the tojal of three thousand American visitors in 1977.


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