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

#WritingContest2023

Re-Envisioning the Cyber Domain for Deterrence

Re-Envisioning the Cyber Domain for Deterrence

By adjusting our paradigm for understanding the threats and opportunities in cyberspace, the United States can incrementally build cyber deterrence to shift the balance toward stability. States will still develop and exploit vulnerabilities. However, the proliferation of simple cyber tools for criminal usage can be defeated through increased resiliency. Improved capability and a demonstrated willingness to respond will encourage states to limit offensive cyber to espionage, saving cyber-attacks for the onset of hostilities where attribution is no longer a concern. Reshaping our national cyber defense organization by creating a cyber reserve force, implemented in a flatter, horizontal organization than typically found in government, can disseminate defensive and responsive cyber capabilities against U.S. adversaries.

Countering China's Use of Information Laundering Via Minds and Media

Countering China's Use of Information Laundering Via Minds and Media

China’s influence operations have evolved to employ “information laundering” to shape global narratives. Information laundering—the process of introducing disinformation into the Internet ecosystem and legitimizing it through transitions from fringe sites to public discourse—is the next generation of information operations. While Russia’s 2016 election interference is a well-documented and heavily litigated example of this process, China’s social media forays have been characterized as more overt and less skillful.Their actions have garnered minimal engagements, were easily attributed, and were ultimately blocked as state-sponsored content. However, China’s recent history with influence operations demonstrates a continually evolving tactic and narrative, with information laundering as the most recent and successful approach.

Primacy of Maritime Strategy in Naval Shipbuilding? The Case of Imperial Germany

Primacy of Maritime Strategy in Naval Shipbuilding? The Case of Imperial Germany

Beyond strategy, domestic factors in Imperial Germany impacted naval shipbuilding. Domestic factors could strengthen naval expansion or constrain it…It may be inferred, therefore, that the conventional wisdom of the primacy of maritime strategy in naval shipbuilding may also hold true for mature navies. At all times, but especially for rising navies, non-strategic factors such as economic subsidies and technological innovation may exhibit influences that precede or override maritime strategy in naval shipbuilding. Put another way, leaders often exhibit composite thinking in naval shipbuilding decisions, but maritime strategy’s primacy does not always hold.

The Strategic Competition to Shape Cyberspace

The Strategic Competition to Shape Cyberspace

The U.S. strategy to positively shape the international community to favor a democratic and accessible Internet requires a sustained, long-term commitment. Practiced behaviors, precedents, dialogue, and agreements will set expectations and reinforce norms over time. Washington must use a comprehensive, whole-of-government effort using various approaches and options to shift the environment away from China and Russia’s repressive vision of cyberspace. Authoritarian regimes will continue to push for norms and governance structure in cyberspace, favoring an illiberal model that threatens the U.S. vision of a free and open domain. The United States can take an active role in countering this authoritarian vision.

Remind Me Again...What Were We Deterring? Cyber Strategy and Why the United States Needed a Paradigm Shift

Remind Me Again...What Were We Deterring? Cyber Strategy and Why the United States Needed a Paradigm Shift

Persistent engagement is a strategic paradigm for cyberspace born out of failure. Deterrence theory proved neither flexible enough nor well adapted to the domain. A new domain called for a new strategy. Rather than prevent cyber-attacks by convincing the attacker the cost is not worth the risk, persistent engagement seeks to prevent cyber-attacks by disabling the attacker’s capacity preemptively. There are fears around the precedents that persistent engagement sets and how those norms may one day be quite damaging. However, these concerns miss the broader nature of the environment and the already emerging norms that called for a response. To be fair, open questions remain. How the role of national sovereignty in cyberspace continues to develop could drastically alter the evolution of persistent engagement. Nonetheless, persistent engagement is a much sounder starting point for American cyber strategy than deterrence.

Paradox and Prose: Lessons in Nuclear Strategy

Paradox and Prose: Lessons in Nuclear Strategy

When faced with a paradox, our immediate instinct is to try to resolve it. But as Orwell makes clear through the concept of doublethink, attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable achieve only the corrosion of language and thought. Contradictions should be seen not as flaws but as fundamental features of nuclear strategy. Does this consign nuclear strategists—and, by extension, the societies they serve—to perpetual discomfort? Likely it does. But discomfort at the thought of nuclear use can hardly be considered a bad thing.

Factors Influencing Strategy: The Objective-Narrative Nexus

Factors Influencing Strategy: The Objective-Narrative Nexus

Strategy must evolve with the changing environment of war, and this means strategic thinking must consider the power derived from the nexus of clear objectives and a unified narrative. Commanders and their staff cannot afford to dismiss political considerations in warfare or great power competition. They must think of objective and narrative as tools for the design of campaigns, be they security force assistance or large scale combat operations.

Beyond Joint: The Need for an Interests-Centric Approach to Integrated Campaigning

Beyond Joint: The Need for an Interests-Centric Approach to Integrated Campaigning

When General Dempsey pondered what comes after jointness, he was trying to see over the horizon towards our next era of struggle. That era has come. From the levée en masse to mechanized warfare and the advent of the networked world, social and technological revolutions have underpinned the great conflicts of the past. Another such inflection point looms. Gray-zone warfare, the blurring line between war and peace, and the boundary-erasing zeitgeist of social media all point to a rapidly changing security environment. The joint force must not wait to be dragged into the future, but rather act as the vanguard of change. Recognizing the paradox that increased deterrence can result in decreased security will be key.

Applying Behavioral Economics to Improve Cyberspace Strategy

Applying Behavioral Economics to Improve Cyberspace Strategy

Addressing cybersecurity through an economic lens highlights the impact of market failures—information asymmetries and misaligned incentives. Some entities fail to invest in adequate security controls because they do not incur the full costs associated with a security incident. The current public and private divide creates an environment where society shoulders most of the risk of cyber-insecurity. To keep pace with relevance, all organizations, including those beyond critical infrastructure sectors, must be able to share information and respond to cyber risk in as close to real-time as possible.

Chinese Political Warfare: A Strategic Tautology? The Three Warfares and the Centrality of Political Warfare within Chinese Strategy

Chinese Political Warfare: A Strategic Tautology? The Three Warfares and the Centrality of Political Warfare within Chinese Strategy

All told, by looking at the development of the Three Warfares concept and its implementation in the context of disputes in the South China Sea, it becomes clear that China does not merely conduct political warfare in pursuit of various individual geostrategic objectives. Rather, it is fundamentally integrated within China’s broader maritime strategy, which, in turn, translates into China’s grand strategy of national rejuvenation. This deduction is further underpinned by China’s long strategic legacy, which firmly resembles Kennan’s definition of political warfare. Chinese political warfare should, therefore, not be considered separate from the larger strategic context because China’s conception of national strategy incorporates all levers of comprehensive national power, as defined by Xi Jinping himself, leading to the symbolic characterization of Chinese political warfare as a strategic tautology, as political warfare seems fundamentally inherent within Chinese strategic thinking.

Writing Strategy 2023

Writing Strategy 2023

Earlier this year, The Strategy Bridge asked civilian and military students around the world to participate in our seventh annual student writing contest on the subject of strategy. The response was once again amazing. We’ll publish the winners and some additional submissions earning an honorable mention in the coming weeks. In the meantime, congratulations to all the winners!

The 2023 Strategy Bridge Student Writing Competition on Strategy

The 2023 Strategy Bridge Student Writing Competition on Strategy

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 2022 and 31 May 2023. The competition deadline is 4 Jun 2023.  Winning articles will be announced in August 2023 and published on The Strategy Bridge thereafter.