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Body-borne load reportedly increases incidence of military-related knee injury by altering trunk and lower limb biomechanics. This investigation determined whether body-borne load impacts lateral trunk flexion during a single-leg cut, and whether greater lateral trunk flexion exaggerates knee abduction biomechanics. Thirty-six participants had trunk and knee biomechanics quantified during a single-leg cut with four body-borne loads (20, 25, 30 and 35kg). To evaluate the impact of load on lateral trunk flexion and its relation with knee abduction biomechanics, peak stance lateral trunk flexion was submitted to a linear mixed model with load (20, 25, 30, and 35kg) and sex (male, female) as fixed effects, and dominant limb peak stance knee abduction joint angle and moment considered as covariates. During the cut, there was a significant sex by load interaction for peak stance lateral trunk flexion ($p=0.038$), and peak stance lateral trunk flexion angle exhibited a significant association with peak stance knee abduction angle ($p<0.001$) and moment ($p=0.014$). Adopting lateral trunk flexion during loaded single-leg cuts may increase knee biomechanics related to ACL injury, but adding load only decreased lateral trunk flexion for female participants and did not further exaggerate knee abduction biomechanics.

China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was formally launched in 2015. From the very outset, skeptics raised doubts about its sustainability and meaningfulness for particularly Pakistani society, economy and the state. Nevertheless, the Sharif government in strategic interaction with its Chinese counterpart ably thwarted such controversies and ensured execution of the CPEC projects in different parts of Pakistan. Though within Pakistan, political opposition and certain nationalist political and social forces voiced their related concerns, for instance, to the “route” alignment, the federal and Punjab government led by the Sharifs held ground and accorded priority to sustain the Corridor by engaging local and provincial stakeholders. However, this was not the case with the Khan government whose commerce advisor doubted the negotiated terms and conditions of the CPEC and, therefore, called for its revision to provide a fair deal to the Pakistani side. Why did the Khan government adopt such a policy? How does such a discourse affect China–Pakistan relation in general and CPEC and the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) in particular? What made the Khan government correct its path ultimately? In other words, does change in government impact CPEC negatively? This paper attempts to address these questions empirically.

Throughout its long years of civil war, Sri Lanka maintained a healthy rate of GDP growth and increasing levels of military spending. Now that the war has ended, Sri Lanka faces the challenge of rebuilding and switching to a peace-time economy with potentially lower levels of defense spending. We employ a cointegration analysis and an error correction model to examine the relationship between non/military spending in Sri Lanka and identify the possible economic benefits of decreased military spending. We find that GDP growth in Sri Lanka is generally not responsive to military spending, but responds positively to non-military spending. Although non-military spending exerts a positive effect upon economic growth compared to military spending, the outcome is still sub-optimal due to the absence of an income multiplier effect. This prefaces potentially good economic news for Sri Lanka in the coming years assuming that hostilities do not resume, that the government can successfully divert resources from the military to the non-military sector and that private sector investment can be effectively encouraged to exert a crowding in effect.

This chapter will aim to present a broader picture of the current situation in the Arctic region, including military, economic, minority security etc. Considerations will be given to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and as a result, this chapter will present a more pessimistic assessment concerning the potential for cooperation and engagement between the western countries and Russia in the light of the Russian aggression. The combination of threats to and in the Arctic region will accelerate global warming and natural disasters in a way that could further increase the security threats and necessitate new and stronger measures form the international community.

As Alvin Toffler noted in his seminal book The Third Wave 40 years ago, we are now entering the third big wave in the human history of the planet. This is transforming the three domains and six vital life systems on which the planet’s and all of humanity’s security rests. In the ecological domain, our global habitat (ecosystem and climate) is transforming and the natural resources on which we depend are diminishing. In the functional domain, our scientific understanding, technological power, and economic systems are increasingly powerful but are also extremely fragile. Their impact is also driving much of the change in the ecological and social domains. Finally, in the social domain, societies across the world are undergoing deep internal change, at the same time as the global political system is shifting to something new. Both of these changes are now generating ever greater social and political tensions. All of these changes also affect the Arctic and the polar policies of Russia as the greatest Arctic power on the planet.

The history of U.S. intelligence and military assessments of the security implications of climate change go back many decades to the 1980s. Since that time, hundreds of analyses of climate change, a massively growing body of literature on the impacts of human-caused climate change, and reports from every U.S. defense, intelligence, and security agency have acknowledged the links between climate and security, with a focus on two key areas: the vulnerability of U.S. military bases and assets to the threats posed by climate change; and the risks that the consequences and impacts of climate change will cause political instability that may lead to increased U.S. military interventions.

This article examines the internal dynamics of the Burmese military, focusing on struggles at the top level. It will explore the nature of and reasons for the struggles and assess the implications, especially for the current political impasse and possible changes in the future.