President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.
The history of African decolonization is inherently linked with the processes, rivalries, and challenges of the global Cold War. Even those states that saw a pacific removal of colonial authority, such as Ghana or Senegal, did so under the shadow of the rivalry between the capitalist and communist states. However, the process was even more stark in Southern Africa, where the Cold War saw the contests for armed African liberation interpreted as proxy conflicts between the two ideological blocs.
Those who advocate the continued arming of Ukraine should consider making the dual-track argument and approach this strategic conundrum by equaling the Russian pledge, signaling American willingness to deploy nuclear forces to Europe—just as in the Euromissile Crisis—should Putin go ahead with the mooted nuclear force deployment in Belorussia.
Even if universal in human activities, uncertainty is often absent from weapons procurement studies. Despite pioneering works of Scherer and Peck that recognize uncertainty as a main characteristic of weapons acquisitions, academic works that follow often do not investigate this feature in depth. Indeed, weapons procurement studies generally do not consider uncertainty as a crucial factor in explaining why weapon programs fail completely or encounter costs overrun, delays, and deficiencies in delivered capabilities. Explanations range very often from technologically overly ambitious military service’s technological over-ambitions to the deficient procurement strategies of their respective bureaucracy’s deficient procurement strategy. In this paper, we will go further in explaining why some programs fail to produce new weapon systems with in terms of costs, delays and capabilities. As the majority of academic works about weapons acquisition consider the U.S. case, we will bring some change by focusing on the French military establishment.
