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.
For today’s naval professionals and scholars aspiring to follow Sim’s advice on strategic studies, A Brief Guide to Maritime Strategy offers an ideal starting point. Concise and well-researched, this highly readable volume will no doubt persuade many readers, most especially young naval professionals, to dig more deeply into studies of history and strategy.
The common perception that China’s centralized state leadership is empowered to pursue Chinese dominance over international affairs is tempting, but illusory. Its actions abroad are better understood as a manifestation of the Chinese leadership’s responses to various, and occasionally conflicting, domestic political, economic, and social pressures.
The United States should once again place greater emphasis on a concept known as soft power as a means to influence Russian perceptions towards a more pro-Western Democratic mindset. If the United States can successfully influence Russian perceptions through soft power, one might see a less corrupt and more democratic Russia, and perhaps a peaceful transition of power in the post-Putin future.
The following interview is a collaboration between Dr. Lori Lyn Bogle and two of her students, Midshipman Lucas Almas and Midshipman Jacob Kinnear, and historian Scott Mobley from the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Dr. Mobley’s recent groundbreaking book, Progressives in Navy Blue: Maritime Strategy, American Empire, and the Transformation of U.S. Naval Identity, 1873-1898 is of special interest to current midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy and illuminates the complicated cultural shift in the officer corps as the service transformed from sail to steam following the Civil War that persists to this day.
Thucydides offers many enduring insights for scholars and policymakers. New tensions emerge as great powers search for new allies and try to hold on to old ones. Once begun in earnest, great power competitions are likely to endure for decades, because of the resources great powers possess. Those resources make it highly likely conflict comes with an often terrible cost for the victor and for the vanquished.
While war between the United States and China is a possibility, a larger and more refined lesson could be gleaned from Thucydides’ ancient text. In an era of great power competition, The Peloponnesian War provides one of the first nearly complete histories of a conflict that included complex alliances, ideologically opposing views, civil discord, diplomacy, total war, and human struggle. It provides examples of how the choices made by Athenian and Spartan leaders mattered in determining whether they avoided war or led their countries into conflict. Most importantly, The Peloponnesian War offers strategists and policymakers invaluable insights into the nature and character of competition between two great powers and makes clear the importance of strategic options that avoid ill-conceived conflict.
America can still be a voice against oppression overseas even as it struggles to become a more perfect union at home. For people striving for freedom and justice abroad—from Zimbabwe to Hong Kong to Belarus—the broad movement for racial equality in America illustrates the aspirational and redemptive qualities that make America’s democracy so exceptional. One hopes that this struggle against structural racism, like the first Civil Rights Movement, will strengthen and inform the future of American statecraft.
The pillars of the trinity provide a foundation to understand how hybrid warfare employs irregular, unconventional, and conventional military power to balance against the risk of war trending towards absolute violence and open conflict. Consequently, hybrid warfare is an operational concept where military and non-military capabilities are optimised to distort reason, shape passion, and leverage chance to achieve strategic objectives and reduce the risk of escalation.
The U.S. government should nevertheless find a non-partisan, fact-based mechanism to determine what happened, capture lessons learned, and make recommendations regarding public health, the economy, and continuity of basic services. Regardless of how well or poorly the coronavirus was handled in this instance, an independent evaluation is necessary to better prepare the country for future pandemics. Moreover, the Department of Defense should review the 2018 National Defense Strategy to determine its relevance in a globally persistent novel coronavirus environment.
Earlier this year, The Strategy Bridge asked university and professional military education students to participate in our fourth annual student writing contest on the subject of strategy. The response was amazing. Now, we are pleased to announce the winners! We'll publish their essays, as well as some of the other submissions deserving an honorable mention, in a series in the very near future. We appreciate all the great submissions from the contest participants!
Cian O’Driscoll has written a thoughtful, erudite book that manages to insightfully explore both just war theory and the nature of war. Across seven pithy chapters plus an introduction and conclusion, O’Driscoll develops an extended argument about why the concept of victory in war is problematic for just war theory and how the integration of victory into just war theory can lead to a more realistic, though tragic, appraisal of just war theory. His conclusions should interest not only just war scholars, but also the broader community of war studies scholars and military practitioners.
Traditional military educational and training approaches often limit creative and critical thinking that can provide skills for quick decisions and action. Applying simple experiential learning tools in a collaborative physical setting can integrate both requirements, thus enhancing what students learn and can apply. Effectively, this requires applying Active Learning to professional military education, particularly for mid-career officers who have built up a body of practical field experience, but also are still young enough to be open cognitively to new ways of learning and thinking about their experiences.
For military institutions, social media is a mature tool that must move beyond the discretionary and into the realm of business as usual. In the absence of face-to-face interaction, social media is one of the most powerful ways for leaders to pass information, broadly convey intent, and for all of us to communicate, interact and foster professional sharing and discourse and build their capacity to influence.
Ambassador Herman Cohen is one of many career diplomats, along with ambassadors like John Campbell and David Shinn, who devote personal time to researching, understanding, and commenting on African affairs. Cohen’s most recent work traces U.S. foreign policy in Africa from Franklin Roosevelt to Donald Trump, intertwining historical files and personal insights to weave a picture of what the author titles, Eight Decades of Realpolitik.
