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

Sea

Strategy of the Commons: Defending the International Order Where it is Most Vulnerable

Strategy of the Commons: Defending the International Order Where it is Most Vulnerable

References to the rules-based order are frequent in everything from the Biden-era Interim National Security Strategic Guidance to the Trump-era Advantage at Sea. Yet what it means to defend the order, where that defense happens, and what those answers hold for questions of budgets and priorities, is often ambiguous. How should diplomats and operational forces bridge the gap between high-level pronouncements on the rules-based order and practical guidance and budgeting for the daily defense of that order? The development of the new National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy offers two venues to address that question. And the answers should focus not strictly on any one adversary, but on a series of domains: the global common—the high Arctic, the high seas, and space.

Dark Matter, Fisheries, and Non-Governmental Organizations

Dark Matter, Fisheries, and Non-Governmental Organizations

As demonstrated by many contemporary cases - science fiction can become reality. In the Canadian television series Dark Matter, both governments and corporations own warships. They also employ mercenaries in a never-ending quest for strategic resources and advantages over their competitors. During the first season, corporate-funded gangs and other proxy combatants battle one another, while state-on-state conflict is simply non-existent or omitted. This concept is not confined to the imagination of science fiction writers; for the past decade, maritime non-governmental organizations, private maritime security companies and fishing corporations have engaged one another on the high seas.  The South China Sea is ripe for a clash not of civilizations, but of fishing fleets and other state-sponsored surrogates.