Remaking the military industrial relationship: A French-American comparison

Defense industrial complexes in leading Cold War nations have downsized and reallocated resources to other productive activities in the 1990s. In this paper, we analyze the experience of two key countries - the US and France. Comparing the two countries, we find similar outcomes in budgetary retrenchment and large firm restructuring but marked differences in the pace of downsizing and diversification among small and medium-sized firms. We hypothesize that three sets of contextual differences may explain these differences: 1) institutional differences in the way that the State bureaucracies - the Pentagon and the French Delegation generale pour l'armement (DGA) - oversee defense industrial matters, 2) differences in military industry ownership and firm size patterns, and 3) differences in the regional distribution of defense industrial capacity and associated regional policies. In closing, we note that the two countries' defense industrial complexes are becoming more alike and speculate on the significance of invidious competition and interactions between them. We address briefly the future of French/American arms industrial competition and cooperation, given the trend towards transnational security arrangements and defense industry globalizationdefense industry, civil/military integration, defense conversion, military procurement,

Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change

Whether the characteristics of tropical cyclones have changed or will change in a warming climate — and if so, how — has been the subject of considerable investigation, often with conflicting results. Large amplitude fluctuations in the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones greatly complicate both the detection of long-term trends and their attribution to rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Trend detection is further impeded by substantial limitations in the availability and quality of global historical records of tropical cyclones. Therefore, it remains uncertain whether past changes in tropical cyclone activity have exceeded the variability expected from natural causes. However, future projections based on theory and high-resolution dynamical models consistently indicate that greenhouse warming will cause the globally averaged intensity of tropical cyclones to shift towards stronger storms, with intensity increases of 2–11% by 2100. Existing modelling studies also consistently project decreases in the globally averaged frequency of tropical cyclones, by 6–34%. Balanced against this, higher resolution modelling studies typically project substantial increases in the frequency of the most intense cyclones, and increases of the order of 20% in the precipitation rate within 100 km of the storm centre. For all cyclone parameters, projected changes for individual basins show large variations between different modelling studies.West Australian Government Indian Ocean Climate Initiativ