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.
The primary project is not defeating combatants—instead, the project is the community itself. What better way to ensure the community remains central to strategies of securing them than to find mechanisms to directly adopt precepts of community policing when countering hybrid threats—to constabularize America’s approach to security.
Maritime hybrid warfare has the potential to become a major issue across all the levels of warfare. Its methods are numerous, but will likely involve autonomous systems, drones, Q-boats, little blue sailors, cyber-attacks, and propaganda. Ultimately, these methods will be hard to combat, but their effects can be reduced.
The Vicksburg Campaign yields a number of lessons for tacticians and strategists. Grant was a talented commander to be sure, but the most important reason for his success was the Union Navy under the able leadership of Admiral Porter. Not just its presence, but the tight coordination between the two allowed one to support the other and vice versa. Land and sea are too intimately connected during amphibious campaigns for the typical supported/supporting relationships to work, there must be symbiosis.
Instead of simply meeting budgetary recommendations, an analysis of small state security potential and funding of smarter, more cost-effective contributions to the alliance is needed. Furthermore, using a few of NATO’s “minnows” as examples of how to make limited means count in the face of an expansionist Russia, it becomes apparent that the continued existence of the alliance is of paramount importance. Ultimately, conventional “hard power” alone is not an effective strategy for combating current Russian security challenge facing Europe. For the small, frontline states on NATO’s eastern flank, a focus on special operations forces and intelligence are a better use of limited resources.
