Alessandra Nisch
Putin’s Wars: Testing Boyd’s Strategy of ...

President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.

Putin’s Wars: Testing Boyd’s Strategy of Applied Friction

#WritingContest2020

Détente Under Fire: Contrasting Approaches to Cold War Strategy and Crisis Management in Africa

Détente Under Fire: Contrasting Approaches to Cold War Strategy and Crisis Management in Africa

While Africa had been a sleepy backwater of the global Cold War at the time of Richard Nixon’s first inauguration on 20 January 1969, the continent became a central battlefield of the conflict by the time of Nixon’s resignation in 1974. Africa leaped to the front page of major American newspapers as issues of decolonization, race, and regional rivalries interacted dynamically with Cold War imperatives, accelerating both the intensity and complexity of African conflicts. This period from 1969-1980 spanned the tenures of three American presidents: Nixon, Ford, and Carter and witnessed two explosions of violence—the Angolan Civil War and the Ogaden War between Ethiopia and Somalia—that ended with successful and large-scale interventions by the Soviet Union and its Cuban allies. How did successive American administrations formulate strategies for great power competition in Africa during this period, and how effective were those strategies for meting these Cold War crises?

Beyond Strategic Empathy

Beyond Strategic Empathy

The United States acts upon the world, but not within the world. The United States understands other state or non-state actors to be working towards the United States, or not at all. Most give little thought to the agency of America’s international peers, their worldview, and the complex system of attitudes and events that shape their foreign policy decisions. The United States must go further than rediscovering strategic empathy.

An Evolutionary Approach to Problem Framing and Strategy

An Evolutionary Approach to Problem Framing and Strategy

To maintain national survival a state must develop strategies that avoid cumulative change to the point of extinction or speciation. Essential to this feat, national adaptedness recognizes not only the infinite potential of the state, but the importance of resiliency or fitness within a constant state of change. Past controversy notwithstanding, biological metaphors have served for millennia as effective comparative devices. Modified contextually to fit within international relations, modern biological evolutionary theory and ecology offer an objective theory of change that supports a systemic and holistic grasp of problem framing and strategy.

The Common Good: Ethical Strategy Between States and Partner Forces

The Common Good: Ethical Strategy Between States and Partner Forces

A realist calculus of transactional security fails to take account of the moral reality of war. It results in unjust war and moral injury to those who engage in war. It tarnishes the state’s way of war by reducing groups of persons into means rather than recognizing their proper dignity as ends in themselves. Strategists working today must formulate the common good among those political communities that agree to partnership in war. At a minimum, this must include the analogy of political communities as persons who retain inherent human dignity as ends in themselves. It must also include the deliberate effort to formulate a positive good that is not narrowly the destruction of an enemy but is a basis of trust leading to a mutual, better peace.

Logic and Grammar: Clausewitz and the Language of War

Logic and Grammar: Clausewitz and the Language of War

Clausewitz’s concepts of grammar and logic have stood the test of time. His dictum that war is indeed “the continuation of policy by other means” holds true today, and while the character of war has evolved, the higher logic and the influence of policy has remained a constant. This article will first address some key definitions, before exploring the concept of logic and grammar as introduced in On War and as they relate to his own experiences. These concepts will then be explored through the prisms of two contrasting case studies: industrialised warfare on the Western Front during the First World War, and the new logic of war in the face of the unprecedented existential threat of the Nuclear Age.

Autonomous Systems in the Combat Environment: The Key or the Curse to the U.S.

Autonomous Systems in the Combat Environment: The Key or the Curse to the U.S.

The U.S. military has already begun to incorporate artificial intelligence into its operations. However, the use of autonomous machines in the U.S. could be said to be quite conservative in comparison to its adversaries. Although artificial intelligence assists in providing risk predictions and improving time available to react to events, some believe artificial intelligence and autonomous systems will drastically distance humans from a direct combat role. Observations regarding the complexity of warfare, regardless of the technology, force scientists and military leaders to question the potential consequences of implementing artificial intelligence and autonomous systems in the next military conflict.

Sleepwalking into Risk: Learning from the U.S. Navy Surface Fleet

Sleepwalking into Risk: Learning from the U.S. Navy Surface Fleet

Producing new fighter pilots is not an overnight proposition. Increasing the capacity of production pipelines is a costly and long-term endeavor; as a result, the Air Force has proposed short-term capacity gains by operating the fighter pilot training systems at surge tempo and shortening time in the pipeline through syllabus reductions. Correspondingly, an oversupply of new fighter graduates with less-developed airmanship skills transfers risk to front-line units. Recent incidents within the U.S. Navy’s surface fleet offer a cautionary tale of unacknowledged systemic risks. What can the Air Force learn from the fleet as it attempts to reverse the downward flightpath of the fighter pilot force structure, modernize for peer competition, and continue armed-overwatch in U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility?

Flawed Assumptions and the Need for a Radical Shift in the Next National Security Strategy

Flawed Assumptions and the Need for a Radical Shift in the Next National Security Strategy

The 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) serves as the keystone document of America’s strategic posture. Considering how the world has changed since it was first published, and in response to how our adversaries have reacted to U.S. actions on the world stage, the next National Security Strategy must shift to meet evolving threats. The next National Security Strategy must remain grounded in principled realism, but also must pivot away from the insular tone that has isolated the U.S. from its friends and has needlessly provoked its enemies. America must engage with the world and shift from a policy maintaining peace through strength of arms to a posture of peace through strength of engagement.

Towards an Epistemology of Grand Strategy: Stereotype, Ideal Type, and the Dematerialization of the Concept

Towards an Epistemology of Grand Strategy: Stereotype, Ideal Type, and the Dematerialization of the Concept

Over the last decade, as grand strategy has become all the rage in international relations, foreign policy and security scholars have also started criticizing the concept in the common understanding in their field. Whereas this literature seems content with grand strategy’s transition from its original martial dimension to statecraft, it shows impatience with its lack of practicality in the realm of government. These political scientists’ concerns with the impracticality of the concept match some strategy scholars’ disinclination to accept grand strategy into the corpus of strategic theory. The dominant view in the latter discipline is that strategy’s raison d’être is pragmatic as it serves the conduct of war or statecraft. It is thus no surprise that, in its most visionary conceptualizations, grand strategy met the resistance of some strategists.

Writing Strategy 2020

Writing Strategy 2020

Earlier this year, The Strategy Bridge asked university and professional military education students to participate in our fourth annual student writing contest on the subject of strategy. The response was amazing. Now, we are pleased to announce the winners! We'll publish their essays, as well as some of the other submissions deserving an honorable mention, in a series in the very near future. We appreciate all the great submissions from the contest participants!

The 2020 Strategy Bridge Student Writing Competition on Strategy

The 2020 Strategy Bridge Student Writing Competition on Strategy

The Strategy Bridge’s Student Writing Competition is back for 2020! The competition is open to students attending civilian universities and military war or staff colleges at every level, including distance learning, correspondence, and fellowship programs between 1 Jun 2019 and 31 May 2020. The competition deadline is 1 Jun 2020. Winning articles will be announced in July 2020 and published on The Strategy Bridge thereafter.