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.
We inhabit a troubled and troubling world, so we owe our ear to men like Fenzel who spent years, in Teddy Roosevelt’s memorable words, “in the arena.” The author has walked the grounds and studied the people—friend and foe—of these regions, before and after the fall of the Soviet Union. He’s worked at high levels of our government and his counsel is respected. By reading his novel, readers just might get a jump on the future.
I understand that discussion of political activity is important and the pen is mightier than the sword, but sometimes we must use the sword to protect the pen against those who would threaten the stability of our planet and its people, whether they are terrorists with a political agenda or tactful leaders with visions of conquest and domination.
The rise of China and the challenge that China poses to the United States is the defining trend around which American strategists orient their thinking about Asia. In Canberra, Delhi, and Tokyo, national security policymakers view China as the foremost national security threat facing their nation. This shared focus on China underpins the idea of the “quad,” a proposed security partnership between Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, which would represent a democratic bloc against Chinese hegemony in Asia.
Choosing or being compelled to fight a particular intensity of war is a grand-strategic issue—depending on the political, economic, cultural, and military capabilities and constraints developed by the rival communities at large. It determines the military objectives and methods employed. Therefore it behooves decision-makers to strive to choose an intensity that provides them with the most advantages vis-à-vis the enemy and, if possible, to prevent the enemy from compelling them to fight at the intensity it chooses.
This book had a lot of promise. If O’Brien had taken a more serious look at Obama’s engagement with the world—explaining why he thought it was wrong instead of presupposing it was—it could have been great. Still, this book can serve as an interesting read for people on the Hill, historians, and foreign policy partisans. Its great contribution is the exposition of political differences in foreign policy, but it will not help solve many of the world’s problems.
Dixon’s psychology may be dated and his references may be foreign, yet he has much to offer anyone who selects leaders. Dixon himself admits that “it is most difficult to find a suitable prescription for military commanders,” but despite the difficulty, someone must attempt to find one. Fortunately for them, On the Psychology of Military Incompetence is a great place to start.
It’s been another big year for The Strategy Bridge and we’re thankful for the great community that helped us span our third year of work developing writers, thinkers, and practitioners in the realms of strategy, national security, and military affairs. As our community enters a new year, we look forward to expanding not just our own individual efforts in the national security space, but our conversations and programming to develop new thinkers and writers. Your recent contributions to The Strategy Bridge will be instrumental in providing the resources and network for the community to grow—thank you. We look forward to working with you this year...and stay tuned for more great work from The Bridge community!
The traditional lore of the American Revolution holds that small groups of Patriot citizen-soldiers using unconventional tactics defeated a superior foe, who was using European tactics unfit for combat in the wilderness of North America. The lesson modern strategists are led to take from the experience of British operations during the American Revolution is that imposing one’s military doctrine in an alien environment is a recipe for disaster. Founding lore, however, overlooks a class of colonists lost in the clamor to understand to what transpired in 1776: Loyalists.
Policymakers and diplomats view ceasefires as a positive step toward peace because they present the conditions under which trust can be engendered between opposing sides in the Syrian civil war. Some academics have even found statistical evidence supporting this claim. But of the 44 ceasefires agreed to throughout Syria since 2012, only five preceded rebels surrendering, and only seven ceasefires in Syria have endured to the present. The remaining 32 ceasefires have failed. A survey of the failed ceasefires provides three logical pathways from ceasefires to offensives: leverage, buying time, and collapse of cooperation.
While the U.S. remains the single most powerful actor on the international stage, its influence and ability to react to the growing threat that transcends its own internal artificial boundaries and planning processes is not keeping pace with the evolution of the environment. With the rise of global near-peer competitors and regional powers with transnational reach, the U.S. military must become more flexible and adaptable at crossing multiple boundaries simultaneously if it seeks to maintain its competitive advantage. The only way to achieve this is to transform our current command and control structures to allow us to be a global power that actually acts and thinks globally.
Developing the depth and flexibility of mind and understanding to work effectively within the information environment, in addition to the operational environment, is challenging. However, given the systemic changes in virtually every field of human activity during the new century, and the threats they may pose to our country’s security and prosperity, this is a challenge we must accept.
My War Gone By, I Miss It So is a story about Loyd’s struggle of emotional turmoil and his abuse of alcohol and heroin becoming the solution. It identifies with a generation that has experienced the horrors of war while figuring out their place when they return to their old world and coping with the enduring memories. His candid struggles with drug addiction offer the perfect companion to Loyd’s struggle with his addiction to war. The deep, personal struggles when home, and how alcohol soon moved to heroin as the coping mechanism to process his emotions, allow the reader to feel the internal struggles and conflict. This emotional conflict is not unique to Loyd. His ability to be so candid, and describe his journey with such clarity, pulls the reader into a shadowy world many are unfamiliar with and lack the ability to comprehend. Beyond the field of war, the book will additionally relate to readers who struggle with substance abuse as a coping mechanism for their respective problems.
Francis Bacon once wrote, "Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man." Reading was the beginning of study for Bacon, and the reading he advised in the pursuit of knowledge ranged widely. But we must also think, discuss, and write about the knowledge we pursue. We've taken this advice to heart here at The Strategy Bridge, and the #Reviewing series is one monument to our belief in its truth. The interested reader will find here a collection of our reading, thinking, and writing—of our #Reviewing—for 2016. The interested reader will also find a group of authors nailing their whispers to the wall making themselves and our community stronger. We're proud to be a part of such a community.
Only by understanding the proper framework and context within which to place and employ the means towards the ends can tactical victories and strategic successes possibly be achieved. Strategy and tactics are absorbed and coextensive in the mind of the commander, within the plan of war, which decides combat, the crucial key connecting and explaining strategy, tactics, and their relationship.
It is not useful to define wars by measures such as size, scale, or commitment because these are subjective and thus cloud analysis. This is particularly true in regard to such things as cost and casualties. How much a war costs, how many people it kills, and what it consumes and destroys are certainly important issues—no one disputes this—but these are not bases for critical analysis because they fail to generate solid, tangible, universal foundations for discussion, which is exactly what writing on such subjects should provide.
Reviewing the work of scholars who have examined the Peloponnesian War gives grounds for questioning not only Thucydides’s purportedly dispassionate style, but also one of his most well-known conclusions: “The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war inevitable.”
Russian aggression has resulted from a combination of many different factors that created a situation where the benefits of aggression significantly outweighed their costs. While Russians certainly like using NATO expansion to justify aggression, this article describes facts suggesting Russia’s motives have little to do with fears over NATO expansion or military forces.
The question that confronts Canada in this environment is not which is the right fighter for our interests. The question is, “Does Canada realise that the strategic environment is no longer what it was?” The elephant may choose to roll over on the mouse just to make a point. The house might be firebombed from within, again, just to make a point. Canada’s careful, cold-nosed policies on “how little is enough” have become decidedly more difficult.
Military leaders must continue to uphold public confidence with exemplary behavior. This requires renewed commitment to education, self-improvement, reason, and duty. Placing blanket ethics training aside, we can start to relearn virtuous living by picking up copies of Republic and De Officiis. Indeed as professionals, we have an obligation to self-train on these classic works and groom our own moral excellence, for the trust of the society we serve depends on it.
Few at CyConUS were optimistic about the future of cyber restraint among states. Rather, it was the assertiveness of nation-states that featured prominently in many of the keynotes and panel discussions. Whether the U.S. and its allies can respond effectively to these challenges, and the many others likely to follow, remains an open question. The cyber era is one of asymmetric conflict. For all of the billions of dollars the U.S. spends on cybersecurity through the departments of Defense and Homeland Security, determined attackers can find success for a minuscule fraction of that cost. Bending that cost-curve in a more favorable direction must be a top priority for the U.S. and its global partners.
