The Political Economy of U.S. Military Strategy

Rapid economic growth in emerging economies since the end of the Cold War has driven debate on American ‘relative decline’; the relative diminution of US material capabilities with respect to other states. Such relative decline poses potential constraints on US power and has thus manifested itself in arguments over the economic merits of the United States’ expansive military commitments. Contributing to this literature, my thesis answers the following question: does American military strategy generate economic benefits? I argue that that there is significant evidence to suggest that US military strategy has influenced international economic relationships in ways beneficial to US national interests. Principally, my analysis shows American military strategy acts as a ‘underwriter’ for the extant international economic system. I explore two logics associated with this. Firstly, a general ‘status quo’ logic which sees military power as both a guarantor and promoter of specific structural configurations of the international political economy. And secondly, a more specific ‘utility’ logic operating on other states either bilaterally or multilaterally. This pathway assumes that US military strategy, particularly its security guarantees, may alter the utility of other states decisions in America’s favour. This thesis also shows that specific results often prove far more tentative and circumstantial than commonly articulated by scholars in the literature. Nearly all specific and ‘utility’ pathways through which the United States is hypothesized to derive economic benefit suffer from foundational generalisability issues, irrespective of methodology. This suggests that specific avenues and instances of US military strategy influencing international economic relationships are not likely to be a reliable or prudent source of future policy making. Rather, the principal political-economic influence to consider is the role US military power plays in underwriting the contemporary American centred international order, which is the prerequisite for other specific pathways to emerge.Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC

Testing of improved polyimide actuator rod seals at high temperature and under vacuum conditions for use in advanced aircraft hydraulic systems

Polyimide second-stage rod seals were evaluated to determine their suitability for applications in space station environments. The 6.35-cm (2.5-in.)K-section seal was verified for thermal cycling operation between room temperature and 478 K (400 F) and for operation in a 133 micron PA(0.000001 mm Hg) vacuum environment. The test seal completed the scheduled 96 thermal cycles and 1438 hr in vacuum with external rod seal leakage well within the maximum allowable of two drops per 25 actuation cycles. At program completion, the seals showed no signs of structural degradation. Posttest inspection showed the seals retained a snug fit against the shaft and housing walls, indicating additional wear life capability. Evaluation of a molecular flow section during vacuum testing, to inhibit fluid loss through vaporization, showed it to be beneficial with MIL-H-5606, a petroleum-base fluid, in comparison with MIL-H-83282, a synthetic hydrocarbon-base fluid

Beyond balancing? Intrastate conflict and US grand strategy

ArticleThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis (Routledge) via the DOI in this record.Grand strategic theorists share an historical emphasis on interstate conflict. However, of some two hundred and seventy-three US military deployments since 1900, only seven were interstate conflicts. The rest were intrastate, domestic level engagements. We argue that these intrastate conflicts limit the utility of regional balances of power in mitigating forms of conflict that the US may consider inimical to its national security interests. When considering potential changes to US force posture and grand strategy, American coercive statecraft should be theorised along a broader strategic continuum encompassing the full range of conflict

Security Leverage, Structural power and US Strategy in East Asia

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from OUP via the DOI in this record.What is the utility of US military power when seeking to generate international economic arrangements conducive to its national interests? Developing the concepts of positive and negative structural power we argue that regional American primacy in East Asia has allowed it to leverage its military power into generating political-economic institutional outcomes that have reinforced its broader leadership role. The US may well continue its deep engagement or follow a path of retrenchment under President Trump. Both grand strategic options will impact on its capacity to leverage its positive and negative structural power and have implications for US hegemony and the region’s political economy

Model for Folding and Aggregation in RNA Secondary Structures

We study the statistical mechanics of RNA secondary structures designed to have an attraction between two different types of structures as a model system for heteropolymer aggregation. The competition between the branching entropy of the secondary structure and the energy gained by pairing drives the RNA to undergo a `temperature independent' second order phase transition from a molten to an aggregated phase'. The aggregated phase thus obtained has a macroscopically large number of contacts between different RNAs. The partition function scaling exponent for this phase is \theta ~ 1/2 and the crossover exponent of the phase transition is \nu ~ 5/3. The relevance of these calculations to the aggregation of biological molecules is discussed.Comment: Revtex, 4 pages; 3 Figures; Final published versio

Quantification of the differences between quenched and annealed averaging for RNA secondary structures

The analytical study of disordered system is usually difficult due to the necessity to perform a quenched average over the disorder. Thus, one may resort to the easier annealed ensemble as an approximation to the quenched system. In the study of RNA secondary structures, we explicitly quantify the deviation of this approximation from the quenched ensemble by looking at the correlations between neighboring bases. This quantified deviation then allows us to propose a constrained annealed ensemble which predicts physical quantities much closer to the results of the quenched ensemble without becoming technically intractable.Comment: 9 pages, 14 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Exact solution of the Bernoulli matching model of sequence alignment

Through a series of exact mappings we reinterpret the Bernoulli model of sequence alignment in terms of the discrete-time totally asymmetric exclusion process with backward sequential update and step function initial condition. Using earlier results from the Bethe ansatz we obtain analytically the exact distribution of the length of the longest common subsequence of two sequences of finite lengths $X,Y$. Asymptotic analysis adapted from random matrix theory allows us to derive the thermodynamic limit directly from the finite-size result.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

Knowledge discovery in corporate email : the compliance bot meets Enron

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-107).I propose the creation of a real-time compliance "bot" - software to momentarily pause each employee's email at the moment of sending and to electronically assess whether that email is likely to create liability or unanticipated expense for the corporation. My thesis describes the confluence of historical events making such a product necessary and desirable - increase in corporate regulation, explosive growth of email, acceptance of email as evidence in litigation. The cautionary tale of Enron provides the backdrop for the thesis. The government released hundreds of thousands of Enron management emails and they have become research fodder for those interested in "Knowledge Discovery," a computer science discipline that gleans meaningful information from data otherwise indecipherable due to its sheer size. CEO's and other C-level corporate managers are my intended audience, so I have attempted to counter the weightiness of the technical topics by focusing on the search for readily understandable management headaches such as the loss of productivity due to high participation in the fantasy football pool or the potential for dirty jokes to become evidence in an employment law claim.by K. Krasnow Waterman.M.B.A