Each and every day, dedicated national security professionals devote themselves to preparing for future events—the defense of allies and partners, response to cyber attacks on infrastructure and critical networks, humanitarian crises, etc. As Donald Rumsfeld once opined, these are the “known knowns.” 

For the second quarterly series of 2022 on The Strategy Bridge, we asked our contributors to ponder the equally important “unknown unknowns” and, insofar as this is possible, to characterize potential U.S. national security weaknesses and the threats most likely to blindside the U.S. and its allies…to make them “known unknowns,” as it were.

As usual, our community leapt to answer the challenge, responding with a dizzying array of topics to consider. We have organized the responses into three weeks of topics.

Week One: Cognitive Challenges

In the first week, we consider intriguing cognitive challenges that prevent us from properly viewing and assessing troubling problems—the explicit and implicit models that shape our strategic thinking. First, John Sullivan returns once again to offer a nuanced interpretation of Chinese strategic thinking, arguing that while the Chinese national security community studies the West, we have been notoriously lax in studying Chinese strategic history in any rigorous way beyond the most superficial studies of Sun Tzu. Then we welcome David Degenhardt, who argues the Department of Defense’s preparations for climate change are seriously flawed. Degenhardt notes that while the Department of Defense takes seriously the threat of climate change, it relies on highly-conservative emissions-based models that do not prepare for especially dangerous scenarios that are more likely than the models can accommodate. First-time Strategy Bridge contributor Bryan Terrazas then points out another highly-problematic flaw in the thinking of the Department of Defense: prioritizing the physical destruction of an opponent’s material at the expensive of the true object in war, which is convincing an enemy to change its mind in ways favorable to one’s own political objectives. Closing out a week based on cognitive frameworks and their challenges and limitations, David Benson provocatively argues that we do not correctly understand the limitations of fiction as a tool for preparing for the future. This tendency is especially evident in considering artificial intelligence, where limited fictional frames can have a negative effect on our capacity to consider all potential aspects of a strategic challenge.

• Shackled by Doctrines: Why Western Strategists Need to Start Taking Ancient Chinese Texts Seriously by John F. Sullivan

• Unwelcome Surprises: How the Department of Defense Fails to Adequately Prepare for Climate Shocks by David Degenhardt

• The Human Element: The Other Half of Warfare by Bryan Terrazas

• AI in Fiction and the Future of War by David C. Benson

Week Two: Where Will Challenges and Opportunities Happen

Bridging the gap between cognitive challenges and action, Andrew Lund and Will Turner point out that we may become so caught up in preparing for peer conflict that we miss opportunities and risks on what seems the strategic periphery, areas that may hold high leverage for impacting global security and stability. They offer a model for dealing with Ethiopia that policymakers can apply to other areas of the world. Then H. Brandon Morgan argues there are limitations to how completely the U.S. can and should pivot to the Indo-Pacific. While it might be important for the U.S. to shift more of its resources and attention to the Indo-Pacific, it must also continue to pursue economic and diplomatic opportunities in the Middle East to help bring stability to that regional fulcrum. While the Middle East has been the focus of much attention in recent decades, China and Russia have been exploring new possibilities in the Arctic, and Colin Mahle and Amanda Chronkhite explain why the U.S. must move quickly to secure a way forward in this region or risk becoming irrelevant. Michael P. Ferguson then takes us on a journey in cognitive geography, exploring the social media and information landscape being created by Vladimir Putin while we watch, suggesting that even those efforts to shape perception we might be tempted to label as absurd are dangerous and warrant comprehensive response. Finally, Jeffrey Bristol closes out the week with a reminder that while the U.S. often takes for granted the security of its own hemisphere, that security is a dangerous assumption, and the U.S. must pay close attention to Russian and Chinese inroads in the region.

• Optimizing U.S. Strategic Policy: A Regional Approach to Ethiopia by Andrew Lund and Will Turner

• The Imperative of Middle East Regional Order and U.S. Diplomacy by H. Brandon Morgan

• The U.S. Risks Arctic Irrelevance by Colin P. Mahle and Amanda B. Cronkhite

• Putin’s Jedi Mind Trick in Ukraine: How Truth Decay Shapes the Operational Environment by Michael P. Ferguson

• Hungry Like the Wolf: Territorial Conquest and Great Power Competition in the New World by Jeffrey Bristol

Week Three: Domains and Doctrine 

From cognitive frameworks and broad regional considerations, we then turn to a narrower focus on specific domains and doctrinal challenges, welcoming Wesley White to kick off this week by charting a holistic path for the U.S. to take in the space domain. Among other points, White argues that the U.S. must integrate the U.S. Space Force into its revitalized efforts to compete with China. We follow this look at space with Michael Trimble and Jobie Turner, who return to The Strategy Bridge to remind us of the extent to which logistics is the most significant asymmetric advantage of the U.S. military, even if it is rarely appreciated as such. First-time contributor Robert T. Wagner then argues that with the end of the Cold War the U.S. put away nuclear concerns, suggesting the U.S. is overdue in making adequate preparations in the realm of civil defense in anticipation of this and other potential threats. Another new contributor, John Stanczak then argues the U.S. military needs a new mindset for thinking about complex problems. If the traditional, analytical approach to planning is rendered irrelevant, what should drive the paradigm replacing our legacy methods? It is this question Stanczak explores. Finally, Noah Thurm takes a similarly contrarian approach to current U.S. military doctrine, pointing out that low-intensity conflict could occur in the future against increasingly competent actors for which the U.S. may be unprepared based on its extant doctrine. 

Limitations and The Strategy Bridge’s Next Quarterly Series

Our contributors have raised an array of issues and themes that merit deep consideration. Still, there is a cautionary tale underlying all of these perspectives. As Susan Colbourn pointedly explains, “The scholarly obsession in the United States with centering the United States is stunning our ability to analyze foreign affairs, leading too many of us to assume the United States can influence everything.”[1] Following a break to recognize outstanding student writing on strategy in the third quarter, we will return to this theme in our final quarterly series of the year, attempting to shift the framing of our frameworks more fundamentally.

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Header Image: Weakest Link (Career Intelligence)

Notes:

[1] Susan Colbourn (@secolbourn) on Twitter, 19 May 2022, 12:05 PM, https://twitter.com/secolbourn/status/1527334581275222019