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

Controlling the Narrative: How Political Warfare Can Influence Policy

Controlling the Narrative: How Political Warfare Can Influence Policy

Political warfare and a geopolitical actor’s pursuit of political dominance is not new. The Soviet Union’s success during the Vietnam era showcases the importance of political warfare as the KGB was able to sow distrust and promote anti-war sentiment in the United States. In today’s digital age, social media is a powerful and potentially a dangerous weapon that can erode trust within society and its government. I do not suggest that political warfare acts as the backbone in projecting power or influence abroad.

#Reviewing Aerial Warfare: The Battle for the Skies

#Reviewing Aerial Warfare: The Battle for the Skies

This single volume is perfect for the student or military accession looking for a fantastic introduction on the history of war in the air. Serious scholars might consider going so far as to obtaining multiple copies of this work to hand out to colleagues in other fields. It is a book perfect for classes on the history of warfare. It will find itself on numerous college syllabi and a place as one of the great air power textbooks for the foreseeable future.

Emergent Technology, Military Advantage, and the Character of Future War

Emergent Technology, Military Advantage, and the Character of Future War

Absent a clear understanding of which military problems emergent technologies are required to solve, there is, perhaps, too much confidence in their ability to reshape the character of the next war by enabling decisive battlefield advantage. More troublingly, predictions about machine-dominated warfare risk obscuring the human cost implicit in the use of violence to achieve a political objective. This article examines the integration challenge that continues to limit the military potential of available technology. It will then look specifically at why militaries should be cautious about the role artificial intelligence and autonomous systems are expected to play in future warfare.

The Unrealized Value of Open Source Intelligence for Irregular Warfare

The Unrealized Value of Open Source Intelligence for Irregular Warfare

As adversaries become more technologically savvy, the United States and its allies must become more adept at leveraging these trends. Open source intelligence, especially when coupled with rapidly improving big data analysis tools, which can comb through data sets that were previously too complex to derive meaningful results, has the potential to offset this growing problem, providing intelligence on enemy forces, partners, and key populations.

The Dawn of Anti-Personnel Directed-Energy Weapons

The Dawn of Anti-Personnel Directed-Energy Weapons

Directed-energy weapons could take armed aircraft to a new frontier in the capabilities they provide the joint force. Anti-personnel aerial lasers, specifically, have advantages making them superior to other accurate weapons because of their speed, greater accuracy, and maneuverability. If integrated into close air support and interdiction missions, directed-energy weapons would greatly enhance the operational effectiveness in each.

Bolshevik Hybrid Warfare: #Reviewing Russia in Flames

Bolshevik Hybrid Warfare: #Reviewing Russia in Flames

Engelstein’s book serves as a useful reminder that the hybrid warfare playbook is not new, especially not within the context of Eastern Europe. Almost every tactic Western analysts have attributed to Russia since the 2014 invasion of Crimea can be found in the book. Invading and calling a snap referendum to validate it is how the Poles took Vilnius from Lithuania. When an election in the Ukrainian Rada resulted in unfavorable political leadership, the Ukrainian Bolsheviks decamped to Eastern Ukraine (Kharkov) to create their own competing institutions, primarily to justify Soviet intervention. Propaganda using the latest technologies of the day, provocations, assassinations (at home and abroad), front-organizations, a nexus between organized crime and state power, and the political use of diasporas were all used extensively by the belligerents of the Russian Civil War. Many of the hot-spots are even the same: Crimea, Donetsk, Kharkov, Abkhazia, Adjara, Transnistria, and others.

The Relevance of Clausewitz and Kautilya in Counterinsurgency Operations

The Relevance of Clausewitz and Kautilya in Counterinsurgency Operations

The operational and doctrinal relevance of Kautilya’s Arthashastra and Clausewitz’s On War in today’s counterinsurgency operations remains firm and valid. In numerous instances, they provide us a template to analyze various aspects of a counter-insurgency operation including the use of local values and principles as a tool to understand the strategic culture of an adversary. It must be understood that the evolution of technology may improve one or other aspects of a counterinsurgency operation, but the core elements remain more or less the same and are diverse depending upon the region of conflict. The non-linearity and flexibility of an insurgency are such that it can exploit various means such as misinformation campaigns, religious and ideological differences, as well as enlisting foreign support to keep it alive during the conflict.

Social Engineering as a Threat to Societies: The Cambridge Analytica Case

Social Engineering as a Threat to Societies: The Cambridge Analytica Case

The key to counteracting social engineering is awareness since social engineers are targeting our lack of cognition, our ignorance, and our fundamental biases. In a cybersecurity context, it’s not as easy to mitigate social engineering as it is to mitigate software and hardware threats. On the software side, we can purchase intrusion detection systems, firewalls, antivirus programs, and other solutions to maintain perimeter security. Attackers will certainly break through at one point or another, but strong cybersecurity products and techniques are readily available. When it comes to social engineering, we can’t just attach a software program to ourselves or our employees to remain secure.

The Roots of Modern Military Education

The Roots of Modern Military Education

Jena demonstrated war’s adaptive character when Prussia’s outdated system and tactics were defeated by Napoleon’s. Scharnhorst concluded that understanding and innovation in warfare required critical thinking –– the kind of thinking that questions the status quo, identifies problems, and forms solutions. His answer was a liberal education, and he and his successors broadened the Army’s technical education with the inclusion of civilian liberal arts and sciences. Jena demonstrated that executing orders was not enough; officers had to use sound judgment and critical thinking in the preparation, planning, and execution of military operations. Scharnhorst firmly believed in the benefits of higher level education and experimented with specialized learning venues when he established the Military Society in Berlin in 1801. This society fostered a free-thinking exchange of ideas and sought to develop judgment and reasoning. Modern-day comparisons might be found in The Strategy Bridge’s “New Model Mentoring” or the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum.

#Reviewing: The Journey to Safe Passage

#Reviewing: The Journey to Safe Passage

Must the rise of power in China and the fear it causes in America lead to war? Kori Schake’s new work, Safe Passage: The Transition From British To American Hegemony, probes this question, albeit obliquely, via an inquest into why the passage of power from Great Britain to the United States during the nineteenth and early twentieth century was pacific and whether such passage is repeatable. What emerges from this eminently readable, incisively argued, and keenly erudite history is how precarious such passage was: a contingently calm transition, only tranquil because universal ideals mollified the augured storm.

The Battle of Monocacy: Reflections on Battle, Contingency, and Strategy

The Battle of Monocacy: Reflections on Battle, Contingency, and Strategy

The Battle of Monocacy, in part because of its relative obscurity, but also because of the complexity of its strategic effect, opens up interesting questions about historical contingency, the meaning of victory and defeat, the duality and ambiguity of war and strategy, and the narratives that take hold and those which fade away.

#Reviewing a New Sun Tzu Translation: Is There Any Blood Left in This Old Stone?

#Reviewing a New Sun Tzu Translation: Is There Any Blood Left in This Old Stone?

Rather than piling on more translations, we would be better served by exerting greater effort reevaluating the text in a manner that recognizes that many of its arguments were based on unique historical factors which may not directly apply to modern strategic thought yet allows for the identification of carefully derived tenets which still maintain their relevance. Establishing a more judicious interpretation of The Art of War is a worthwhile and achievable goal, but we must be willing to follow the circuitous route to reach it.

The Holistic and Strategic Approach to Peace and Security: The Nexus between UN Security Council Resolution 1325, Gender Equality, and Culture

The Holistic and Strategic Approach to Peace and Security: The Nexus between UN Security Council Resolution 1325, Gender Equality, and Culture

The global women, peace, and security agenda exists to promote and fulfil the human rights of women and achieve gender equality, as part of efforts to build more peaceful and stable societies. The link between equality and improvements for women in the defence and security sector is clear and well researched. For many U.N. member states, national action plans provide the strategic framework to address gaps and deficiencies in the meaningful representation of women in national institutions and in peacekeeping. Given that conflict most often arises in countries with high levels of gender-based discrimination, a culture of valuing the contribution of women is an essential element of suitable peace and security efforts.

Evaluating Integrated Defense Systems: How to Proactively Defend the Final Frontier

Evaluating Integrated Defense Systems: How to Proactively Defend the Final Frontier

We present the merits of evaluating an adversary’s air defense system by looking at its component parts and argue for the application of the same schema with the space domain. Using this methodology to identify, analyze, and prioritize space domain threats will enhance the ability for joint force commanders to make critical decisions in the defense of U.S. space capabilities. Further, it will allow planning staffs to lean forward rather than just react to an adversary’s potential courses of action in the contested space domain.

#Reviewing The Odyssey

#Reviewing The Odyssey

Ultimately, Wilson’s pellucid clarity—whatever its sacrifices for a certain casualness of style—opens a fresh window onto the richly imagined world of The Odyssey. What we see is a poem of extreme contrasts: neither an escapist fantasy nor a brief on post-traumatic stress, it is a blend of the mythical and the real, the beautiful and the gruesome, war and peace—one of Western culture’s great originals.

The Bear’s Side of the Story: Russian Political and Information Warfare

The Bear’s Side of the Story: Russian Political and Information Warfare

The international stage is complex and fluid, continuously changing, but human nature and the selfish intentions to achieve power have not changed in millennia. The Kremlin has added another facet to their political warfare through the savvy exploitation of new media. They are taking advantage of the West’s belief systems by conducting an end-around and using a form of malicious soft power to gain a position of advantage.

Populist Narratives and the Making of National Strategy

Populist Narratives and the Making of National Strategy

It has become clear populism is more than just another security issue affecting the strategic terrain. We need to understand how populism impacts strategic decision making in some of the most important nations on earth. Even more importantly, we need to understand how populist politics has and will continue to impact political discourse and decision making within many of our own nations.

#Reviewing Pandora’s Box

#Reviewing Pandora’s Box

Leonhard sets out not simply to write a history of events, but to help his reader understand the greater meaning of the war for the participants (who included virtually everyone in the world to one extent or another) and to us in the twenty-first century. And to arrive at that understanding he identifies a collection of leitmotifs that provided the living reality for the people of the time: realities of social condition, class, economics, demographics, relationship to local culture as well as to state and nation for example, but also of aspirations, possibilities, experiences, expectations, and people’s (ruling elite, bourgeoisie, working class) general knowledge of both the world and the local neighborhood.