British naval assistance at the twilight of empire: The case of Abu Dhabi, 1966–1968

Britain long sought to establish, develop and utilise local military capabilities across its empire. In its informal empire among the Arab Gulf Sheikhdoms of Eastern Arabia, Britain increasingly encouraged – and often cajoled – its protégés to build up their own security forces as London's moment in the Middle East was coming to an end. The scholarly literature on imperial assistance to local forces is invariably army-centric; little attention is given to how powers such as Britain helped establish local naval forces. This article seeks to address this imbalance by describing how British naval institutions supported the establishment of the local naval force in Abu Dhabi in the years immediately before British withdrawal from the region in 1971. This case study expands the historiography of British military assistance to cover naval forces and describes the repertoire of support provided by the Royal Navy and Navy Department.

Carriers and Amphibs: Shibboleths of Sea Power

This article argues that American naval force packages built around aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships no longer serve maritime security interests as effectively as in the past. It further claims that the current commitment in the published maritime strategy of the United States to the twin shibboleths of “carriers and amphibs” comes from a variety of attitudes held by senior decision makers and military leaders. This commitment betrays both cultural misunderstanding or even ignorance of seapower—“sea blindness”—as well as less than rational attachments to two operational capabilities that served the United States well in the past, but in doing so engendered emotional commitments that are little grounded in the facts.

Fairy Tale Futures: Critical Reflections

This article provides critical reflections on Stijn Praet and Anna Kérchy’s edited collection, The Fairy Tale Vanguard: Literary Self-Consciousness in a Marvelous Genre (2019). Vanguard can be defined as “the foremost part of an advancing army or naval force,” with established and emerging critics marching in defence of the fairy tale against the genre’s complicated reception throughout the ages. The form’s self-consciousness and intertextual complexity is foregrounded, with fairy tale experiments ranging from those of 17th-century French female conteuses, to modernist short stories and contemporary films, which all combine into a celebration of the genre’s sophistication and continued relevance. The book engages with the generic complexity of the fairy tale, defying any kind of neat categorisation. ‘Fairy tale’ often functions as a ‘catch-all’ term for different fairy tale narratives, but this study paves the way for reflections on new subgenres such as the ‘anti-tale’. Finally, it is suggested that Rikki Ducornet’s idea of the ‘deep magic’ of fairy tales opens us up to a possibility, to an embrace of the unknown and all of its potentiality, providing us with an imaginative space within which to envision a new and better reality. This is foregrounded as a central tenant to The Fairy Tale Vanguard’s privileging of experimentation, which highlights that the fairy tale harnesses a deeply political potential in challenging current oppressions. Perhaps it is not us, fairy tale scholars, who are marching to the aid of the fairy tale then, rather it is the tales fighting for us in an unjust world.

Normas, Isomorfismo Institucional E Demanda Militar: O Projeto Do Submarino Nuclear Da Marinha Do Brasil

Um extenso corpo da literatura sobre transferência e aquisição de armamentos dedicou-se a analisar os diversos elementos, endógenos e exógenos, que orientam a demanda dos Estados por tecnologia militar. À luz dessas considerações teóricas, diferentes trabalhos buscaram compreender o fenômeno de modernização militar em países da América do Sul e suas potenciais implicações para a dinâmica de segurança regional. Buscamos avançar o argumento de que a demanda por sistemas de armas modernos está vinculada a um processo internacional de isomorfismo das organizações militares. Nesse sentido, nosso objetivo é compreender a demanda da Marinha brasileira pelo submarino de propulsão nuclear. A partir da perspectiva do neoinstitucionalismo sociológico, nossa hipótese é que a demanda da força naval brasileira foi historicamente conformada pela difusão de normas constitutivas sobre o que representa o poder militar moderno.Palavras-chave: Tecnologia militar; submarino nuclear; Marinha do Brasil.ABSTRACTAn extensive literature on arms transfer and acquisition analyzed different elements, endogenous and exogenous, that drive States' demand for military technology. In accordance with these theoretical considerations, different studies sought to understand the phenomenon of military modernizations in South American countries and its potential implications for regional security dynamics. We sought to advance the argument that military demand for modern weapon systems is linked to an international process of isomorphism in military organizations. In that sense, our objective is to comprehend the Brazilian navy demand for a nuclear-powered submarine. In line with the sociological neo-institutionalism framework, we hypothesize that the Brazilian naval force demand has been historically shaped by the diffusion of constitutive norms concerning what constitutes a modern military power.Keywords: Military technology; nuclear submarine; Brazilian Navy.