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

The China Threat & What the U.S. Should Do About It

The China Threat & What the U.S. Should Do About It

China has risen. It is now a great power well on its way to becoming a superpower. China’s ambitions and quest for greater resources and expanding diplomatic, economic, and military capabilities will result in Beijing’s growing voice in all facets of international politics. While there are debates about how powerful China will become, and how soon, there is no ambiguity that it is expanding its power and influence. Despite its many other obligations, the major task for the Trump administration will be to respond effectively to China’s challenge to U.S. power.

#Reviewing Angola, Clausewitz, and the American Way of War

#Reviewing Angola, Clausewitz, and the American Way of War

McCain has usefully drawn our attention to a case that teaches by negative example. In the same way that the United States thought that anti-terrorism operations in Southwest Asia and Africa would contribute to strategic victory in the global war on terrorism, South African leaders believed that that the use of highly trained and mobile forces in operations against Cuban forces and insurgents would ensure the survival of white majority rule and domination over Namibia. The end result demonstrates the difficulty of devising a grand strategy in the face of great uncertainty and flux.

Nine Links in the Chain: The Weaponized Narrative, Sun Tzu, and the Essence of War

Nine Links in the Chain: The Weaponized Narrative, Sun Tzu, and the Essence of War

Weaponizing a narrative resembles weaponizing a disease in several ways. One similarity is that neither is kinetic, yet both can have immense effects. Both are dangerous and chaotic, but are less dangerous to the faction prepared for the risks—or with less to lose. Like viruses, narratives can combine to create overwhelming effects, and can appear and propagate with unnerving rapidity. Unlike viruses, though, the narrative is so inexpensive that almost anyone can weaponize and deploy it. Also unlike viruses, the weaponized narrative targets our minds.

Speed, Volume, and Ubiquity: Forget Information Operations & Focus on the Information Environment

Speed, Volume, and Ubiquity: Forget Information Operations & Focus on the Information Environment

We should encourage those not familiar with information operations to see it as a vital component of planning in an information environment that is much more important to military planning and operations with each passing day. Focus on capabilities does more to confuse than enlighten, and simple alternatives are available.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race: Embracing Incrementalism in U.S. Foreign Policy

Slow and Steady Wins the Race: Embracing Incrementalism in U.S. Foreign Policy

U.S. policymakers should recalibrate their standards for successful engagement in world affairs: lest they succumb to a defensive, even fatalistic, mindset, they must develop a greater tolerance for setbacks; focus more on managing problems than on solving them; pursue incremental gains rather than sweeping victories; appreciate more fully the limits to U.S. power, especially military; and accept that world order is neither a fixed state nor an attainable end, but a fluid condition and an ongoing process. To do so, however, they will have to give themselves the opportunity to pause and think

Not Safe for War: #Reviewing War Porn

Not Safe for War: #Reviewing War Porn

War Porn is an attempt to come to grips with the modern, and perhaps even the postmodern, experience of war—an experience that Achilles would still understand. Yet, what is most striking is the author's incessant meditation on what it means to be “a spectator of calamities taking place in another country.” This tension forms the brutal backbone and gritty strength of the novel, uniting all who watch war.

#Reviewing War Machine

#Reviewing War Machine

War Machine is a welcome (if failed) satire that will undoubtedly become politicized by those with no skin in the game. At the same time, it will be understood (if not agreed with) by those who have served overseas. This movie brings satire back to institutions that demand it, reminding us that questioning the powers that be is not only right but necessary.

The Weaker Foe – Part 2: Transforming the Army to Win as the Near-Peer Competitor

The Weaker Foe – Part 2: Transforming the Army to Win as the Near-Peer Competitor

In 105 days the Finns defeated a Soviet force ten times as large and with orders of magnitude more tanks, artillery and airplanes. The tactical and operational victory by the Finns demonstrates that a weaker force can defeat a stronger one, but only by fighting and operating differently and not simply fighting in the traditional, accepted ways.

#Reviewing 21st Century Patton: Strategic Insights for the Modern Era

#Reviewing 21st Century Patton: Strategic Insights for the Modern Era

To understand Patton, you have to look at what he wrote and what he read, and it is there that you will find the man. Besides Patton’s well-known journals...Patton also wrote essays on military technology, history, leadership, and strategy. Many of these are now reprinted in 21st Century Patton: Strategic Insights for the Modern Era.

Beyond Checkers and Chess: What Junior Leaders Can Do to Develop Strategic Thinking

Beyond Checkers and Chess: What Junior Leaders Can Do to Develop Strategic Thinking

Chess may be good to sharpen the tactical mind, but strategy requires setting conditions beyond the battlefield, identifying comparative advantages by analyzing adversarial interactions, seeking positional advantage in the physical, informational, and electromagnetic environments, and contributing efforts to achieve political objectives. By recognizing what drives our adversaries’ actions we can more accurately apply diplomacy to keep the peace, but when required to out think and outmaneuver enemies in times of war. We can use tools like the Operational Variables to identify conditions and interactions, the “Five Whys” to perform root-cause analysis ensuring we are solving the right problems, and game theory to improve our strategic empathy. The tacticization of strategy must be reversed.

Towards Unity of Effort: Reforming the U.S. National Security Enterprise

Towards Unity of Effort: Reforming the U.S. National Security Enterprise

Despite demonstrating excellence in their own fields, agencies and departments within the U.S. national security enterprise lack a cohesive structure to bind their efforts together. Today’s challenges require a single unified approach and by restructuring the national security enterprise, the U.S. can be more effective at addressing its national interests in today’s complex world.

Vicksburg: The Past and Future of Amphibious Operations

Vicksburg: The Past and Future of Amphibious Operations

The Vicksburg Campaign yields a number of lessons for tacticians and strategists. Grant was a talented commander to be sure, but the most important reason for his success was the Union Navy under the able leadership of Admiral Porter. Not just its presence, but the tight coordination between the two allowed one to support the other and vice versa. Land and sea are too intimately connected during amphibious campaigns for the typical supported/supporting relationships to work, there must be symbiosis.

#NextWar: Coast Road

#NextWar: Coast Road

In this decision game, you play either a Joint Task Force (JTF) tasked to seize a lodgment in Lebanon or a Lebanese Hezbollah unit tasked to defend the area.  The game is designed to help you think through 21st century Joint Forcible Entry (JFEO).  Get creative and experiment with Manned-Unmanned Teaming (MUMT), seeing where you could either use an optionally-manned vehicle or add a new unmanned system (but think cheap and off-the-shelve vice exquisite and expensive Terminators).

#Reviewing Violence

#Reviewing Violence

Violence remains an uncomfortable if necessary part of the profession of arms. As the United States has shifted to more limited ways of conducting war, so too have our views on the appropriate application of force. Seminal works like On Combat and On Killing by David Grossman began the discussion of how soldiers are trained for war and killing, and offer an organizational perspective on how individuals can be trained for violence. These books operate on the questionably documented assertion that humans are inherently reluctant to engage in violence.

Warfare and War Ethics: An Islamic Perspective

Warfare and War Ethics: An Islamic Perspective

Man, since creation, has had to kill and pillage in his quest for security and survival. Our complex characteristics such as greed, ambition, and lust have led us through generations to bear the teeth and spear against our kind in order to keep land, power, and wealth. War and the art of it has therefore been a handy tool for man to either destroy or rebuild.

Professional Military Education: What is it Good For?

Professional Military Education: What is it Good For?

Professional Military Education (PME) covers a wide range of activities. In one sense it refers to a plethora of training, continuing education, and other activities designed to provide development to members of the military at various points in their career and to prepare them for the next level of responsibilities. The U.S. military requires professional education for both officers and enlisted personnel and its form, content, and objective varies across rank, service, and military role. But what is its overarching purpose? Why do we invest so much in this effort?

Thinking Strategically About NAFTA

Thinking Strategically About NAFTA

Before considering the terms of a revised NAFTA, one should consider the thought-provoking insights of international relations scholar Parag Khanna. Khanna notes how outdated political boundaries serve as a constraint on the American economy because they prevent the integration of social, economic, and industrial components across state lines. He concludes that by redefining the American political map, that is, rethinking our current state borders, the economy will be better positioned for the future. This change of perspective, more so than a grand military strategy, will enable the US to remain a superpower. Renegotiating NAFTA must be viewed through this strategic lens.

The Wages of War Without Strategy

The Wages of War Without Strategy

War and violence decoupled from strategy and policy—or worse yet, mistaken for strategy and policy—have contributed to perpetual war, or what has seemed like 15 years of “Groundhog War.” In its wars since 11 September 2001, the United States has arguably cultivated the best-equipped, most capable, and fully seasoned combat forces in remembered history. They attack, kill, capture, and win battles with great nimbleness and strength. But absent strategy, these victories are fleeting. Divorced from political objectives, successful tactics are without meaning.