The challenges confronting US extended nuclear assurance in Asia

This article aims to explore the credibility of future US extended nuclear assurance in Asia. Extended nuclear assurance, all too frequently confused with extended nuclear deterrence, faces a daunting series of challenges: a US strategic mainstream fractured on the roles and purposes of nuclear weapons; an Asia where assurance demands are high during a period of strategic uncertainty; and a US theatre‐ and tactical‐range nuclear arsenal much depleted from its heyday. Meanwhile, nuclear latency is growing in Asia as more countries reach the technological level that the US attained in 1945, as nuclear skill sets become more prevalent, and as delivery vehicles appropriate to nuclear weapons become more typical in regional arsenals. The US now provides extended nuclear assurance to nearly 40 countries worldwide, agreeing to run nuclear risks on behalf of its allies and friends. The bulk of those assurances derive from the NATO alliance, but it is the non‐NATO‐related assurances—and settings—that seem likely to be the more controversial ones over the next decade or two. Asia is coming into its own at a time when extended nuclear assurance needs reinvigoration as a key ingredient in US strategic policy.     

Spatially Disaggregated Modelling of Voting Outcomes and Socio‐Economic Characteristics at the 2001 Australian Federal Election

This study uses GIS and spatial modelling to relate voting outcomes at the 2001 federal election for polling booths across Australia with the socio‐economic characteristics of polling booth catchment areas. The data and analysis used are more detailed and comprehensive than previous studies. It is conducted at a fine level of spatial disaggregation across the whole nation to examine voting outcomes for both major and minor political parties. Because the aim of the paper is to distinguish voting outcomes between political parties rather than to predict voting outcomes for particular political parties, a discriminant analysis is used rather than regression analysis. The statistical discriminant analysis identifies two main socio‐economic dimensions that are able to predict polling booth outcomes with a relatively high degree of accuracy. That analysis shows how, at the 2001 federal election, the middle ground, in terms of socio‐economic characteristics, was being claimed by the Liberal Party, Country Liberal Party, The Greens, and, to a lesser extent, by the Australian Labor Party. However, the Australian Democrats, National Party and One Nation had more distinctive constituencies, with the National Party and One Nation Party competing for areas with similar socio‐economic characteristics. Using GIS mapping tools, examples of actual and predicted polling booth voting outcomes are given, along with selected socio‐economic characteristics of booth catchments.