Security and Defence Quarterly

25-48

Authors: Oysseus Katsaitis, George Andrew Zombanakis

This paper proposes a method for assessing the cost of friction between North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies and highlights internal threats. This is applied to the Greek–Turkish conflict within the NATO context and concerns the functioning of defence expenditure in Greece, modified in such a way as to focus on the causes of friction between these allies. The analysis concentrates mainly on the issue of internal threats to the long-run equilibrium of NATO. The ARDL methodology used modifies the typical error correction model by introducing a mechanism that accelerates the process that leads back to the long-run equilibrium. Along with assessing the cost to an ally in relation to an internal threat, the method proposed allows the time required for the long-run equilibrium of NATO to be restored. The paper concludes that dynamic incidents of friction between allies expressed as an internal threat disturb NATO’s static equilibrium, destabilise an individual ally’s defence policy and contribute to cost being incurred.

69-88

Authors: Dadang Mas Bakar, Syamsunasir Syamsunasir, Agus Adriyanto

Several studies that focus on the willingness to participate show that trust is a vital variable in mediating a person’s disposition to do so. This study examines the role of public trust in national security as a mediating variable of a sense of security and knowledge of the willingness to participate in state defence efforts. The data was collected via a questionnaire distributed to 435 respondents across Indonesia. We used a simple random sampling method; we then analysed using LISREL with Structural Equation Model (SEM). We found that trust cannot mediate a sense of safety and knowledge on the willingness to participate. An exciting finding was that knowledge affects trust, but sense of safety does not affect trust. This is interesting because it contradicts many studies related to political trust, when the willingness to participate is directly influenced by a sense of security and knowledge related to national security. Thus, to increase the willingness to participate in state defence efforts, it is necessary to increase the community’s sense of security and knowledge related to national security. In this case, we recommend providing education related to defence and security to the community and increasing the community’s sense of security.

107-131

Authors: Oluwasola Festus Obisesan

The culture of children begging for alms in Northern Nigeria is long-established and is propelled by poverty, ‘parentlessness’, the absence of parental care and, most importantly, the Islamic doctrines of ‘giving’ to children who are made to seek for qur’anic education outside their parents’ homes. The prevalence of these ‘almajirai’ in Northern Nigeria has begun to create new security dimensions as a result of their mobility given the context of their recruitment into terrorist sects such as Boko Haram and ISWAP. Almajirai have also indulged in drug addiction, street pickpocketing, and other urban crimes. Their mobility has constituted threats for transmission of dangerous communicable diseases such as Corona Virus-19 or what is known as COVID-19. This paper examines the non-military security dimensions associated with the mobility of wandering children beggars or what are often regarded as the Almajiris in Nigeria’s northern states. It examines the level of security threat that the Almajirai pose to the Nigerian state and what implications their mobility has for Nigeria’s internal security, especially in the age of international migration and globalisation. Further, the article analyses the dynamic ways in which the mobility of the Almajiris has threatened the security of the neighbouring states of Chad and Niger as well as West Africa’s regional security in general given its proximity and socio-cultural linkages. The paper employed secondary sources of data collection. It concludes that the mobility of Almajirai poses serious internal security challenges for Nigeria as it serves as a fertile ground for terrorist breeding and radicalization. Disease contraction and transmission, urban crimes such as car-hijacking tactics, pickpocketing, and criminal surveillance of potential innocent targets have become associated with their mobility; hence, regional security is endangered as a result of their increasing crossing of the loosely guarded Nigerian border to the Lake Chad area and West Africa.