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

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.

Does Economic Deterrence Work? Understanding the West’s Assumptions About Keeping Russia in Check

Does Economic Deterrence Work? Understanding the West’s Assumptions About Keeping Russia in Check

In the lead-up to the February 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Western nations threatened Russia with severe economic sanctions, export controls, and other punitive economic measures if it proceeded with an invasion. These threats were ignored. Over a year into the invasion, Russia’s economy and war-fighting capabilities are hurting. Punitive economic measures by the West have shut Russia out of the global economy and challenged its ability to profit from oil sales, import critical technology, and finance its war effort.

Reconstructing the Ladder: Towards a More Considered Model of Escalation

Reconstructing the Ladder: Towards a More Considered Model of Escalation

In the field of geopolitical analysis and strategy, models and frameworks are crucial. They inform the focus of the analyst, how to measure and evaluate the area of attention, and what to expect in the future. This process can occur consciously as part of a formal analytical procedure, or subconsciously, through the mental models that an analyst internalises. The escalation ladder is one such model. It advises an analyst to focus on how a state escalates and de-escalates against its competitors, and how to measure actions against the different escalation levels, or steps, on the ladder.

Mind the Gap: How the U.S. Coast Guard Can Navigate the Window of Vulnerability in the Indo-Pacific

Mind the Gap: How the U.S. Coast Guard Can Navigate the Window of Vulnerability in the Indo-Pacific

When the U.S. Coast Guard’s unique capabilities, authorities, and less threatening white hulls are considered in totality, novel solutions that mesh with the service’s strengths emerge. Cooperation on mutually beneficial Coast Guard missions serves as an opportunity to develop confidence-building measures and knit a resilient architecture that will inoculate two superpowers from conflict.

Sharpening the Blunt Tool: Why Deterrence Needs an Update in the Next U.S. National Security Strategy

Sharpening the Blunt Tool: Why Deterrence Needs an Update in the Next U.S. National Security Strategy

Recent thinking on deterrence has evolved beyond these simple logics. Now emerging concepts such as tailored deterrence, cross-domain deterrence, and dissuasion offer new ideas to address criticisms of deterrence in theory and practice. Therefore, the most vital question for the new administration is: how should the U.S. revise its deterrence policy to best prevent aggression in today’s complex environment? A review of the problems and prospects in deterrence thinking reveals that in addition to skillfully tailoring threats and risks across domains, U.S. policymakers should dissuade aggression by offering opportunities for restraint to reduce the risk of escalation.

A Comprehensive Approach to Space Deterrence

A Comprehensive Approach to Space Deterrence

China and the United States have fundamentally different approaches to strategy and deterrence, yet for the most part, U.S. space strategy does not acknowledge or address these differences. This mismatch must be addressed for the United States to successfully deter China.

#Reviewing The Bomb

#Reviewing The Bomb

Kaplan does a wonderful job of historically tracing many of the interactions and viewpoints of presidents and key military officers, but he does not make a serious attempt to theorize how certain sets of interactions, personalities, and/or experiences will conditionally affect nuclear deterrence. Still, The Bomb is both timely and classic, a joy to read, and rich in information for students of military history, American political bargaining, and nuclear strategy.

A Modern Deterrence Theory Case Study: America’s Failure to Deter Japan

A Modern Deterrence Theory Case Study: America’s Failure to Deter Japan

Historic examples of states attempting to deter unprofitable conflict with their peers are found as far back as 5th century B.C. in Thucydides’ “History of the Peloponnesian War,” when Athens and Sparta exchanged a series of envoys to convince each other that continued violations of a tenuous peace agreement would inevitably lead to war. Today, theories for convincing adversaries to voluntarily limit their pursuit of strategic interests line bookshelves globally.

Towards a Better U.S. Space Strategy: Addressing the Strategy Mismatch

Towards a Better U.S. Space Strategy: Addressing the Strategy Mismatch

To develop a fulsome space strategy, U.S. strategists need to acknowledge that their counterparts in other countries, especially within China, do not necessarily think about deterrence and conflict in the same way. To address the problem, a viable space strategy should address Chinese long-term strategy, and in particular, U.S. space strategy should emphasize deterrence by denial, while addressing provocative actions that seek to erode U.S. strategic advantage.

The Venezuela Crisis Revisited

The Venezuela Crisis Revisited

The political turmoil in Venezuela has captured the attention of the United States for several months, and the recent introduction of Russian troops into the country has solidified a place for the ailing petrostate on front pages nationwide. As American eyes are drawn to the ongoing unrest in the streets of Caracas, it is worth noting this is not the first time the United States has been concerned by European intervention in Venezuela.

What U.S. Policy for North Korea Fails to Understand

What U.S. Policy for North Korea Fails to Understand

The chance of conflict in the Korean peninsula should be weighed against the direct threat being posed to the U.S. The risk of nuclear war in Seoul should not be exchanged for the risk of nuclear war in San Francisco. Washington should not deceive itself that risk and tragedy can be forever postponed. The U.S. should prepare for the unthinkable to prevent it from becoming the inevitable.

Israel's Nuclear Ambiguity: Would a Shift to Selective Nuclear Disclosure Enhance Strategic Deterrence?

Israel's Nuclear Ambiguity: Would a Shift to Selective Nuclear Disclosure Enhance Strategic Deterrence?

All things considered, Israel must now prepare to rely upon a multi-faceted doctrine of nuclear deterrence. In turn, this doctrine must be rendered selectively less ambiguous and more expressly synergistic. Its operational range of application must include both rational and non-rational adversaries and both state and sub-state foes.

#Reviewing 21st Century Power: Strategic Superiority for the Modern Era

#Reviewing 21st Century Power: Strategic Superiority for the Modern Era

The adversaries of today are still human, and the threats of today may not be so conceptually different from those of the Cold War. By looking back at how a previous generation of strategists considered and communicated their strategic challenges in context, we may be able to gain insights into how to address these modern threats. 21st Century Power: Strategic Superiority for the Modern Era is a useful resource toward that end.

Israel’s Nuclear Strategy: Enhancing Deterrence in the New Cold War (Part II)

Israel’s Nuclear Strategy: Enhancing Deterrence in the New Cold War (Part II)

For Israel, ultimate survival tasks will necessarily be profoundly intellectual or analytic, and require utterly durable victories of "mind over mind" as well as more traditional ones of mind over matter.[1] These victories, in turn, will depend upon prior capacities to fully understand the prospectively many-sided elements of Cold War II. In principle, at least, such prior capacities could lead Israel to seriously consider certain preemption options.

Israel’s Nuclear Strategy: Enhancing Deterrence in the New Cold War (Part I)

Israel’s Nuclear Strategy: Enhancing Deterrence in the New Cold War (Part I)

By definition, as long as particular countries regard their nuclear status as an asset, every state that is a member of the so-called nuclear club is a direct beneficiary of the Cold War. This is because all core elements of any national nuclear strategy, whether actual or still-contemplated, were originally conceptualized, shaped, and even codified within the earlier bipolar struggles of post World War II international relations. Nonetheless, as the world now enters into a more-or-less resurrected form of this initial struggle the strategic postures of each extant nuclear weapons state are being modified within the still-developing parameters of Cold War II.

The End of Strategic Patience: The North Korea Dilemma

The End of Strategic Patience: The North Korea Dilemma

The continuum of applied U.S. strategies towards North Korea has failed and will never achieve the desired strategic objectives, as they are currently envisioned. This is because U.S. policymakers remain focused on denuclearization and non-proliferation vice regional stability as the strategic goal. In the 2015 U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) President Obama outlined his vision for leveraging “strategic patience” as a means to force the Kim regime to the negotiating table. In his view, this strategy focused on a “commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” However, because the U.S. continues to fundamentally miscalculate the underlying cultural influences guiding North Korean decision-makers and because China and Russia have failed to consistently enforce economic sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council (UNSC), strategic patience as envisioned by President Obama failed to produce the desired results. Continuing to march towards the same end-state, albeit more aggressively than before, President Trump released his 2017 NSS that asserts the U.S. “will work with allies and partners to achieve complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula and preserve the non-proliferation regime in Northeast Asia.” Unfortunately, pursuing a denuclearized North Korea and convincing North Korea to agree to non-proliferation are fruitless endeavors. To understand precisely why these strategies have failed and will continue to fail, it is important to understand the cultural ideologies that influence North Korean national objectives and domestic policy actions.