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

Pacific

Three Critical Defense Reallocations for U.S. Strategic Competition with China

Three Critical Defense Reallocations for U.S. Strategic Competition with China

To meet the challenge of rising Chinese power, the Department of Defense should implement three central allocations. The first is a service reallocation. The Department of Defense must reduce the size of the active-duty Army to fund the Navy’s shipbuilding program, which is critical to meeting the challenge of the growing People’s Liberation Army Navy. The second is a regional reallocation, the Department of Defense must shift military and naval resources from the Middle East to the Indopacific. The third reallocation is from the technical to the cognitive.

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.

Fear, Honour, and AUKUS in the Indo-Pacific

Fear, Honour, and AUKUS in the Indo-Pacific

To date, Australia has enjoyed the benefit of a hedging strategy that embraces the economic prosperity of a close trading relationship with China while maintaining a close security alliance with the U.S. This strategy has been tested recently and the tension between values and interests requires focused attention. If there was previously any doubt on where that pendulum would swing, it is now firmly answered in the announcement of AUKUS, an Australian, U.K. and U.S. security partnership.

The Lion and the Mouse: The Need for Greater U.S. Focus in The Pacific Islands

The Lion and the Mouse: The Need for Greater U.S. Focus in The Pacific Islands

The Pacific island countries, a cluster of fourteen states and home to nine million people, share a profound legacy of appreciation, trust, and shared values with the U.S. The Pacific island countries historically reflected the U.S. preference for diplomatic norms in the way of life and international organizations. Unfortunately, in recent years this congruence has become precarious. The catalyst for this shift can be tied to China actively exerting influence in Pacific island countries through development, economic aid, and security cooperation that endangers the relationship the U.S. shares with them. Chinese diplomatic and economic engagement in the Pacific island countries threatensU.S. influence and values in the region and will become an existential threat to security if not addressed. The U.S. strategy can counter China's power projection in the Pacific island countries by maintaining the existing soft power presence in the region and amplifying the Biden administration's efforts to mitigate climate change. The U.S. can also capitalize on the emerging need for economic development by investing in vaccine diplomacy to fight against COVID-19 to reiterate the U.S. commitment as a partner of choice to the region.

#Reviewing By More Than Providence

#Reviewing By More Than Providence

An appropriate grand strategy, one that has a regional focus on deterrence, trade, and values will go a long way towards the peaceful management of the balance of power in the Pacific. Green’s work is timely, and decision makers, practitioners, or students of grand strategy and statecraft would do well to add it to their reading list.

#Reviewing Fire on the Water & Meeting China Halfway

#Reviewing Fire on the Water & Meeting China Halfway

Our analysis is built on a foundation of sand. We offer bold proclamations and precise policy proposals designed to cajole, convince, or coerce a hostile nuclear power whose decision making process is utterly opaque to us. We theorize much, and assume more, but we still do not know why the Chinese do what they do. Most critically, we do not know how to find the knowledge we lack. This is an intellectual challenge we have not begun to meet. Understanding Zhongnanhai is a wonderful methodological puzzle—but a puzzle with nuclear stakes. Until we solve this puzzle, I doubt any number of policy prescriptions will be enough to ensure peace in the West Pacific.

People, Posture, and Processes: U.S. Army Sustainment Options for the Joint Force in the Pacific

People, Posture, and Processes: U.S. Army Sustainment Options for the Joint Force in the Pacific

In the midst of unassuming jobs where sustainers pack the next container full of munitions, distribute fuel, police the streets, feed the force and perform an immeasurable amount of other invaluable support tasks—the importance of their craft often gets lost in the fog of plans and policy at the national level.

The President’s Hiroshima Strategy: Has the Pivot Begun?

The President’s Hiroshima Strategy: Has the Pivot Begun?

In essence, the Hiroshima site visit had little to do directly with the South China Sea, an Asia Pivot, or multilateral deals with China. As Press Secretary Josh Earnest said of the trip a week earlier, it was going to be about “sending a signal of his ambition for realizing the goal of a planet without nuclear weapons.” So, while Asian leaders were watching, Obama’s message was far more global. As the only nation on Earth to have utilized nuclear weapons in war, America’s leader was willing to stand in the only nation on Earth to have been on the receiving end of a nuclear weapon and declare that they should never again be used for conflict.

All Hell Broke Loose: The U.S. Army and OPERATION TOENAILS

All Hell Broke Loose: The U.S. Army and OPERATION TOENAILS

Few people, save avid students of the U.S. war in the Pacific, have ever heard of the small island group called New Georgia. Yet, in the summer of 1943, the island was the scene of some of the most brutal fighting of the entire war. It was on New Georgia where the 43rd Infantry Division experienced the highest number of cases of neuropsychiatric casualties (variably known as combat fatigue, shell shock, war neurosis, or post-traumatic stress disorder) casualties in any division during one operation in the entire war. For two of the three Army divisions on New Georgia, it was their baptism of fire, and one that they would never forget. While the capture of New Georgia was vital to the strategic and operational success of the Solomon Islands Campaign, the battle itself is a supremely interesting study in small-unit tactics, joint Army-Navy operations, logistics operations, and the trials of a joint command.