This book is certainly worth reading for the modern student of foreign policy, if only to lament what strategically literate policy makers can achieve with the right leadership in spite of torrid public opinion and a world full of menace.
Post-ISIS Antagonists and the Looming Struggle
While future insurgencies may be inevitable, they can be marginalized. It is incumbent upon the international coalition to commit to a sustained presence in Iraq and the freed areas of Syria for years to come. This presence must include substantive improvements to security forces, reconstruction of decimated communities, and reconciliation of Sunni populations at the national level. This effort may take up to a decade, if not longer, the United States must leverage members of the coalition to the greatest extent possible, and policy makers must be made aware of the sobering timeline and costs required.
The Missed Kurdish Moment
Preventing the Titanic Syndrome: Monitoring Surface Warfare Experience at Sea
The kind of accident any organization should worry about is the one that seems impossible. In 2017, the U.S. Navy was rocked with two collisions at sea. These tragedies resulted in the combined deaths of 17 sailors. While both collisions were under different circumstances, and in-depth investigations remain ongoing, these events have triggered a service-wide review of the demands placed on surface warfare officers, including manning, sleep deprivation, and rising operational tempos. This article examines the way in which the Navy assigns officers to its surface vessels., and suggests improvements that could mitigate future collisions at sea.
#Reviewing Preparing For War
#Reviewing NATO and Article 5
Know Thyself: Learning Leadership through Poetry
Writing provides one of the few venues available for leaders seeking to develop themselves through inward reflection, and, to that end, poetry is writing’s finest vehicle for cultivating empathy. Analytic prose is limited in that it can make self-knowledge explicit only by delineating one’s cause-and-effect reasoning. Poems, however, can go where prosaic essays cannot.
The Strategic Communication Ricochet: Planning Ahead for Greater Resiliency
In a hyper-connected world, one can no longer just put messaging out there. Once a message is pushed out, control of it is lost, and an adversary can and will subvert and shatter it into myriad distortions that ricochet back and hurt the sender. Likewise, any actions on the ground contradicting the messaging, will also be used to attack the sender aiming to erode public faith at home by exploiting hypocrisy, creating ambiguity and, ideally, disrupting decision-making.
Two Worlds of Strategy
Although war is a uniquely military activity because of the threat or use of violence, organizations that go to war share many characteristics with civilian organizations. Both have organizational structures that can either inhibit or promote the flow of information. Both have tangible and intangible strategic resources, which, if cultivated properly, may bring competitive advantage. And all organizations, whether they wear business suits or battle dress uniforms, choose some type of process by which strategy is shaped and implemented.
#Reviewing Earning the Rockies
It was America’s good fortune—Manifest Destiny if you will—to rise on a temperate continent with abundant resources. Great Britain ceded its empire in part because it could trust and rely on the United States. America does not share this luxury. Pragmatism must be America’s watchword, for neither isolationism nor unilateralism will work.
#Reviewing Hugging This Rock
The Integrated Joint Force: A Lethal Solution for Ensuring Military Preeminence
The joint force supported by Second Offset technologies ensured U.S. military preeminence in the post-Vietnam era well into the 21st century. By moving to the deployment of an integrated joint force using Multi-Domain Battle as an operational concept, the United States can provide like-minded nations the opportunity to become truly interoperable, and, when necessary, seamlessly transition from the most effective deterrent to a lethal and agile military force capable of defeating any adversary.
Experimentation: The Road to Discovery
The Air Force, Navy, and Marines are the second group of critical stakeholders who will be active participants (to varying degrees) in the upcoming experiments. As the warfighting experts in their respective mission domains––air, sea, and the littorals––the Army’s sister services rightfully believe they bring critical capabilities to Multi-Domain Battle. But, will their capabilities become organic to the multi-domain task force structure—making the task force more joint than U.S. Army-centric? To what degree will multi-domain task force commanders be able to leverage Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps assets presently forward deployed/forward based overseas to create the desired effects? Will a laborious and time-consuming request for forces process be necessary before these assets are placed at the disposal of multi-domain task force commanders or will they be permanently “on-call”?
Interwar Airpower, Grand Strategy, and Military Innovation: Germany vs. Great Britain
Analyzing the development of the German and British air forces between the world wars reveals the importance of crafting strategy, identifying associated requirements, and marshaling the required resources to turn requirements into capabilities. Factors beyond the state’s control often drive technological requirements. Structural factors demanding innovative responses include the technological progress of potential enemies and of civil society, as well as shifts in the state’s own geopolitical circumstances. Yet the task of responding to these structural factors—of translating the state’s desired security ends into military technological means—requires an intentional, collaborative, human effort. The development of specific airpower capabilities in Germany and Britain during the interwar years illustrates the role of strategic innovators as “system builders” and doctrine entrepreneurs who brave the gauntlets of government bureaucracy, industry, and academia to turn theory into capabilities.
Protecting the South Pacific
#Reviewing The Life and Work of General Andrew J. Goodpaster: Best Practices in National Security Affairs
National security officials who want to know more about the formation of the American national security state or who are searching for a role model in conducting public service may be interested in this book. In his effort to pass on Goodpaster’s insights regarding national security affairs to subsequent generations of officials, Nelson strikes the tone of a how-to guide: how to become Goodpaster, or at least emulate this thoughtfulness and charisma.
#Reviewing Churchill's Secret War with Lenin
Modern readers will find parallels and similarities between the intervention of a century ago and those more recent. Churchill’s Secret War with Lenin engagingly illuminates the history of a small war that served as both part of the Great War and the dawn of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West. Wright masterfully presents the history of a failed campaign in compelling human and strategic terms through his use of primary sources, synthesis of other works, and his own analysis. Strategists, planners, and tacticians will all take something away from the work.
Cross Domain Concerns: Defeating a Hybrid State's Grand Strategy
Hybrid states emphasize direct and indirect approaches across land, air, sea, space, and cyber domains to achieve geopolitical objectives. The objectives of the hybrid state are unbounded and accelerated policy to deter and influence relevant actors.To develop resilience to both direct and indirect approaches to such strategies, targeted nations must understand the operational environment, its cross-domain effects, and the evolving character of war. It is imperative this comprehensive understanding of the operational environment encompasses planning considerations that include the adversary’s critical factors.
The Strategic Implications of Effective Population Defense Against Ballistic Missiles
Limited wars between asymmetric opponents tend to target the resilience of population rather than the capabilities of armed forces. One of the most important lessons from the 2014 Gaza War is that effective population defense can level the ground and bring back a degree of symmetry to the balance of power between the contenders.
Blue Whales and Tiger Sharks: Politics, Policy, and the Military Operational Artist
oday’s long wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and increasingly in the U.S. military involvement in and around Syria’s civil war, demonstrate a failure of the political resolution for which the U.S. military acts. Lacking an attainable political end, the blue whales find the need to continually keep the tiger sharks in action. Without this understanding as we confront the many challenges to U.S. policy aims, we may find ourselves, again, in exactly the wrong kind of limited wars, using limited means—wars that have no fundamental or achievable political aim—with the only option a continuing and bleeding military application for which no end appears.