This paper clarifies the malfunctions and insufficiencies of the education policy and system of the Japan Defense Ministry and Self-Defense Forces (SDF). Currently, there is a low number of SDF officers who hold Master’s degrees compared with foreign armed forces, so this paper also addresses the reason why an SDF personnel cannot enjoy the opportunity of attending Professional Military Education (PME) as the same level of higher education (i.e., above Master’s degree level courses) outlined by the Council for Examination of Drastic Reforms in the Personnel Field of the Defense Force. I analyzed personal biography data of 91 Marine Generals and discovered the following three findings: (1) the excellence of the United States Marine Education Policy and system (similar to PME); (2) the efficient education system of the United States Marine Corps (USMC) University, which includes Marine Corps War College, School of Advanced Warfighting, and Marine Corps Command & Staff College; and (3) the healthy competition in promotional systems in the USMC that will contribute to the Japan Defense Ministry and SDF policy-making in the education system reforms.

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Since the Gulf War, the United States has built up a joint information system, which is interoperable among the military services--the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. The application of information technology to the military system has contributed to maintain the prominent position of the United States in international politics. According to Kenneth Waltz’s theory, however, the United States cannot sit on its laurels. His balance-of-power theory leads us to expect states to emulate the successful policies of others.
João Resende-Santos has developed a “neorealist theory of emulation.” This theory contains two noteworthy points. First, the timing, speed, and scale of military emulation vary in accordance with the level of threat in the surrounding security environment. Second, when the option of relying on the capabilities of other states through alliance formation (external balancing) is available, the perception of reduced threat weakens the timing, speed, and scale of military emulation. In other words, emulation, as well as innovation, is regarded as one form of arms buildup relying on one’s own capabilities (internal balancing).
However, is the level of threat in the surrounding security environment a really decisive factor of emulation? Do the timing, speed, and scale of military imitation vary with the region of the world? Moreover,don’t states emulate others for the formation and strengthening of an alliance? By verifying these questions,it is possible to contribute theoretically to research on the international diffusion of military technology and ideas, especially the diffusion of information revolution in military affairs, on which little research has been conducted.
This article attempts to refute Resende-Santos’ arguments, by analyzing the diffusion of the joint information system of the U.S. Armed Forces to two allies, the United Kingdom and Japan. As a result of this analysis, I make two points. First, even in regions where the levels of threat in the surrounding security environment are different, the military emulation of similar timing, speed, and scale may occur. Second, states emulate others not only for their own military buildup but also for the enhancement of their alliance through ensuring interoperability.
The body of this article is divided into three sections. First, I describe the development of the joint information systems in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan during the post-Cold War period. Second, I suggest the diffusion of the joint information system from the United States to the other two countries and present a framework for analyzing emulation, a concept that is similar to but different from diffusion. Third, I consider the emulation of the U.S. military system by the United Kingdom and Japan in more detail.

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This article examines Ne Win’s attempt to construct a party-state in Burma. Previous studies have argued that Ne Win built the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) in 1962 as a political organization to camouflage his dictatorship and military rule. In this article I suggest that Ne Win tried to construct a partystate in the 1970s by changing the rules governing appointment to top state positions, but failed.
 From 1962 to 1970, the Revolutionary Council consisted of military officers favored by Ne Win, directors of the Ministry of Defense, and regional commanders of the Army. It began to change in 1971, when Ne Win formed the Central Executive Committee (CEC) within the BSPP for top decisionmaking. In 1972, he compelled most CEC members to retire from the military and did so himself. Many CEC members who concurrently held ministerial posts resigned in 1973, effectively separating the CEC from the military and the government. At the third Party Conference in February 1977, Ne Win began to change the type of people appointed to the CEC. Five new members of the third CEC were retired officers who had transferred from the military to the party in the 1960s and rose in the party. They were not former directors of the Ministry of Defense or former regional commanders, but party leaders. This means Ne Win began to shift his power base from the military to the BSPP.
 But in an attempt that came to light later, some party leaders tried to unseat Ne Win in the election of the Central Committee at the third Party Conference. Ne Win then purged 113 party members including new CEC members and appointed the fourth Central Committee in November 1977. Ne Win never again appointed people to the CEC who had risen through the party. Subsequently, until 1988, the BSPP functioned primarily to camouflage his military dictatorship.

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Opinions vary as to whether the Soviet Union has accepted the concept of deterrence in formulating its national security policy. In the author's opinion, the Soviet Union may have in the past rejected deterrence theory as developed in the United States, but it has not only accepted the classical meaning of deterrence as defined by George and Smoke, but also such a concept has until recently become the foundation of its military policy. This article attempts to trace the evolution of Soviet deterrence policy since World War II.
During the post-war Stalin period (1945-1953), Soviet deterrence policy was determined by two factors: belief in the inevitability of war and strategic inferiority. Stalin believed that the United States would start a war against the Soviet Union by launching a surprise nuclear attack, and that such a war could be prevented only by raising the cost that the US would have to pay in such an eventuality. Stalin thus took three specific measures to deter such war: he developed Soviet nuclear weapons, took an offensive strategy against Western Europe with the superior Soviet conventional forces, and strengthened strategic defense.
The second period was a transitional period, in which Stalin's military doctrine was attacked from two directions. First, the theory of the inevitability of war was rejected by the political leadership. The rejection of this Marxist cannon was first proposed by Malenkov, but later taken up by Khrushchev. The long process of decimation of the Marxist approach to war had thus begun. Nevertheless, Khrushchev attempted to salvage Marxist orthodoxy by insisting on the Soviet quest for military superiority as the guarantee of peace and on belief in victory in nuclear war. Secondly, Stalinist military doctrine was attacked by military theorists who began to assess positively the role of a surprise attack with the use of nuclear weapons at the beginning of war.
The crack created in Stalinist military doctrine in the transitional period led to the nuclear revolution in the third period (1959 to 1966/67). Nuclear weapons were recognized as the most decisive weapons in modern warfare, while the Strategic Rocket Force was created. During this period, however, Soviet deterrence policy moved in the opposite direction of that of the US, in a direction that emphasized deterrence through damage limitation by adopting a first-strike counterforce strategy.
The Soviet recognition of the possibility of limited war around 1966/67 had a profound impact on the evolution of Soviet strategy. For the first time there emerged a possibility of sparing the Soviet homeland from a US attack even in case of a world war. This led to the idea of keeping its strategic weapons as strategic reserves to be used as second-strike retaliatory weapons. Also, this contributed to lowering the importance of strategic defence, leading to the Soviet acceptance of ABM ban. These factors set the stage for arms control with the US. At the same time, however, Soviet NATO strategy began to move in a more offensive direction. This time, Soviet strategy envisaged destruction of NATO theater nuclear weapons by conventional means, while leaving its own theater nuclear weapons as reserves in case NATO decided to go nuclear.
In the last half of the 1970s, the Soviet leadership moved to accept mutual deterrence by removing the two pillars of Khrushchev's military doctrine: the quest for military superiority and the belief in victory in nuclear war. Yet, the notion that the correlation of forces was inexorably moving in favor of the Soviet Union led the Soviet Union to overemphasize the military factor in its foreign policy and to pursue an activist policy in the Third World, whereby contributing to the perception of a Soviet threat among its adversaries.
Brezhnev's policy invited a backlash from the West. Particularly, the US decision to deploy INF in Europe and to launch SDI threatened what the Soviets had gained in the pr

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