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

Korea

Relational Strategic Culture, Strategy-Making, and China

Relational Strategic Culture, Strategy-Making, and China

The concept of strategic culture gives fresh insights into China’s current strategy and behaviour, particularly in North-East Asia. Strategic culture also demonstrates the difficulty in separating the connection between ideational forces and the development and execution of strategy. This essay expands on the concept of strategic culture by incorporating relationality into the analysis. The argument is that a state’s strategic preferences are shaped normatively over time through consistent inter-state relations. This essay looks at China’s relationships with North Korea and Japan as case studies, before commenting on the implications of relational strategic culture for China’s future actions and the future of strategy.

Old Enemies, New Friends: Repairing Japanese-Korean Relations and Moving to a Networked Approach Towards America’s Alliance

Old Enemies, New Friends: Repairing Japanese-Korean Relations and Moving to a Networked Approach Towards America’s Alliance

Expectations that Japan and the Republic of Korea could work together to develop their own strategic partnership have been dashed, with the two countries drifting apart over the past few decades and allowing tensions in their bilateral relationship to hamper any cooperation on security issues. This breakdown in Japanese-Korean relations is limiting the ability of the U.S. to fully utilize its regional alliances to defend the status quo in East Asia. It is in the interest of American peace and prosperity to prevent any foreign power from dominating the region, which is home to multiple security partners and critical markets for American goods. Additionally, East Asia sits atop a number of trade routes vital to the broader economy that underpins the broader liberal international order. This article proposes a potential strategy through which Washington can foster relations between its allies and better push back against Beijing’s efforts to become a regional hegemon.

#Reviewing Korea: The War Before Vietnam

#Reviewing Korea: The War Before Vietnam

In Korea: The War Before Vietnam, Callum A. MacDonald writes with short, sharp clarity. The precision of his writing does not take away from necessary details or the importance of the Korean War in international history, especially for those involved in that conflict. The book is driven by a narrative told through official documents, robust secondary sources, and scholarship developed over nearly 35 years.

North Korea: Time for a "Normal" Strategy?

North Korea: Time for a "Normal" Strategy?

The agenda for normalizing U.S.-Pyongyang relations should be modeled after the incremental U.S.-Hanoi approach, yet also take advantage of the momentum created by the April 27 summit between President Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong Un. While the summit produced few detailed plans, both leaders agreed in principle to pursue a permanent peace treaty. This now presents a natural opportunity for the U.S. to support South Korea by setting aside previous ambitions for regime change and championing efforts to turn the 1953 armistice into a peace agreement. Progressive steps would then follow a similar multi-year process used with Vietnam. Pursuing this methodology offers a viable conduit for changing the dynamics on the peninsula and in the region, while Kim Jong Un is provided security as well as access to the resources needed to lead his desired modernization efforts.

A Pyongyang Spring? Not So Fast

A Pyongyang Spring? Not So Fast

Whilst the diplomatic de-escalation of tensions in early 2018 is a welcome affirmation of Churchill’s observation that ‘jaw jaw is better than war war,’ the apparent concessions that North Korea has offered are not particularly damaging to Pyongyang’s interests. The array of concessions that Kim Jong Un has offered do not meet the standard of costly signals. North Korea has, on multiple occasions, offered concessions to U.S. and South Korean interests, only to renege on them with embarrassing haste. It is thus necessary to go beyond a superficial reading of DPRK’s apparent concessions.

Failure to Communicate: U.S. Intelligence Structure and the Korean War

Failure to Communicate: U.S. Intelligence Structure and the Korean War

Intelligence at all levels is an art form. Sources, corroborating or contradicting information, unknowns, and delays in time all result in varied levels of analytical confidence. Information coming from different means, methods, and areas requires a functioning structure to ensure senior national leaders have the best information to make the decisions. While strategic intelligence drives operations and national goals, military decision-makers—especially in combat zones—rely on tactical intelligence to help win battles. For the Department of the Navy, “tactical intelligence support is the primary focus of naval intelligence.”[1] Marine Corps intelligence also focuses almost exclusively on the tactical level to support Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) maneuvers since tactical intelligence is, “the level of intelligence Marines need, generate, and use most often.” When strategic missteps occur, tactical intelligence can provide a needed capability to keep front-line forces winning, creating breathing room for new strategic plans. A functioning intelligence structure encompassing all levels of intelligence is needed to enact this goal.

The Death of American Conventional Warfare: It’s the Political Willpower, Stupid

The Death of American Conventional Warfare: It’s the Political Willpower, Stupid

Conventional Warfare is officially dead. This has become an obvious trend with innumerable adversaries engaging the American military and her allies in unconventional ways and means. The long-held notion of the ‘decisive battle’ that brings the combat power of two nations against each other for a winner-take-all slugfest lies in the next grave. Even ‘wars of attrition’, in the model of the American Civil War, First and Second World Wars, and Korea are gone. If America hopes to remain strategically significant, its political and military leadership must adapt to the new reality that no adversary wants to fight the United States (U.S.) in a symmetrically conventional fashion.

Korean Reunification: Challenges and Opportunities

Korean Reunification: Challenges and Opportunities

The potential for eruption on the Korean peninsula escalates daily as the North Korean regime continues to flex its military muscles. De-escalation seems unlikely while Kim Jong Un remains in power, suggesting the only long-term solution may be a regime change, peaceful or otherwise. While the international community might hope for a scenario in which the current regime falls, what would come after such an event? A peaceful transition to a new form of leadership in North Korea seems unrealistic. In the absence of the current regime, North Korea would likely descend into chaos as warring elites and generals scramble for power and the general populace continue to suffer from the burden of limited basic resources and infrastructure. Rather than hope for an independent fix within North Korea, one solution is the reunification of North and South Korea.

Fateful Failure: The Lost Opportunity to Terminate the Kim Il Sung Dynasty

Fateful Failure: The Lost Opportunity to Terminate the Kim Il Sung Dynasty

The long-term consequences of allowing the Kim Il Sung dynasty to continue are likely to be grave, however, possibly worse for the United States than the consequences of the failure of the first opportunity to eliminate it. Moreover, with Seoul certain to bear the brunt of any near-term hostilities with North Korea, the Republic of Korea’s consideration of assassination as a third option deserves particular weight. As in 1946, it will entail almost certain death for those selected to carry it out, and it may result in wider hostilities, but it may be the least costly option with the most positive outcome for both the United States and the Republic of Korea.

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

Since World War I, powerful nations victorious on the field of battle struggled to achieve political objectives because their post war settlements set conditions that facilitated future conflicts instead of ensuring lasting peace. The victorious strategist must not only ensure their pre-war political objectives are codified in the post war settlement, but the emissaries must also take great care and vigilance to end the war with strategic foresight that translates the military victory into lasting peace.

#Reviewing Success and Failure in Limited War

#Reviewing Success and Failure in Limited War

Strategic performance is strongly affected by the state’s information management capabilities. Top policymakers must have the ability to understand the environment in which they are acting (outside information) and how their national security organizations are behaving in that strategic environment (inside information). Strategic risk assessment is based on an understanding of the opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, the challenges and opportunities present in the international environment, and the capability of the state to act in a purposeful way along multiple lines. Without sound outside and inside information, risk assessments will suffer, as will the quality of strategy.

#Reviewing Success and Failure in Limited War

#Reviewing Success and Failure in Limited War

In the Information Institution Approach, Bakich gives critical importance to whether or not key decision makers have access to multi-sourced information and whether the information institutions themselves have the ability to communicate laterally. When information is multi-sourced and there is good coordination across the diplomatic and military lines of effort, Bakich predicts success. When information is stove piped and there is poor coordination, he predicts failure. Where the systems are moderately truncated, Bakich expects various degrees of failure depending on the scope and location within the state’s information institutions.

Should We Stay or Should We Go? The American Military’s Role in a Post-Unification Korea

Should We Stay or Should We Go? The American Military’s Role in a Post-Unification Korea

What should the United States do if the Koreas were unified relatively peacefully? Should the military forces remain on the Korean Peninsula post-unification? Would our presence there help to stabilize the region? Or would we be better off by freeing up the 30,000 or so soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines stationed in Korea and easing the costs of their presence there?