The US counternarcotics strategy has changed emphasis across program areas over time to align with the overarching counterinsurgency campaign. The 2005 US counternarcotics strategy focused on five program areas: elimination/eradication, interdiction, justice reform, public information, and alternative livelihoods. Since then, US Department of Defense policy and rules of engagement were changed to allow greater military involvement in Afghanistan counternarcotics efforts due to the ties between traffickers and insurgents. Furthermore, the US counternarcotics strategy has shifted to align more closely with counterinsurgency efforts by de-emphasizing eradication, focusing more on interdiction efforts, and increasing agricultural assistance.

The “Comprehensive Approach” represents a new methodology of planning and performing military operations. The selection of actions is subject to an evaluation of the cumulative effects to reach the desired final condition: an entity that represents an asymmetric opponent in peace and war.

Insurgency-related threats have undoubtedly become the biggest security threat to the nation-state system in current times, far outweighing the diminishing risk of inter-state conflict. Whether or not one accepts the characterization of modern insurgencies as conforming to the 4th Generation Warfare model, one must admit the evolving and highly diffused and diversified nature of such insurgencies. Faced with this new threat to their existence, nation- states have also tried to evolve new counter-insurgency measures.

International cooperation in the area of high technology is one of the most important features of the current state of innovation around the world. Russia, which has declared its intention to regain (on a new footing) its former leadership role in science and technology, is also looking at international cooperation in the area of high technology as a powerful and important instrument for the development of national networks of innovation and a strong innovative economy, in hopes of securing a significant future market share in global sales of high-technology goods and services. But unlike many other nations, Russia’s path, strategies, and modes of cooperation are still in transition.

This article compares the defense and security policies of two of Europe’s smallest states: Ireland and Slovenia. This essay aims to add to the theoretical understandings of the major security decisions—especially with respect to the civil-military dynamic—that small states make. This comparison is key in understanding overall patterns of democratic governance and civil-military relations.