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

#Reviewing Russians Among Us

#Reviewing Russians Among Us

Corera posits a thesis midway through the book, that Russian hybrid warfare, in all its forms, does not constitute military hard power, but it also does not conform to the traditional definitions of soft power—deferring to Joseph Nye’s description of soft power as attractive instead of coercive. Instead, Corera defines the Russian influence effort as “dark power,” playing on “greed and ambition.” The combination of this dark power with the hybrid warfare model creates a stark picture Corera argues is virtually impossible to combat.

1st Quarter 2021 Journal Call for Papers

1st Quarter 2021 Journal Call for Papers

“Questions are our best friends for the invention and refinement of strong useful theory, and they are the lethal enemies of poor theory.” So suggests Colin Gray. These questions then undergird and shape strategic thinking. What theoretical and empirical question should most inform the rewriting of the U.S. National Security Strategy? This quarter’s series seeks answers to inform the senior leaders responsible for authoring the next U.S. National Security Strategy.

New Year New Bridge

New Year New Bridge

New year, new format, new Managing Editors: same quality journal. Over the last seven years The Strategy Bridge has grown, it has moved, and matured. Begun as a passion project on strategy by a handful of optimistic young professionals, today The Strategy Bridge hosts a Journal with over 2,000 articles and reviews, our New Model Mentoring gatherings continue, and The Strategy Bridge Podcast has released thirty episodes. Our Masthead boasts a team of over twenty volunteers who work hard to bring you what you’ve come to expect from The Strategy Bridge: products that are read, respected, and referenced across our community.

A Year in #Reviewing

A Year in #Reviewing

It’s been a year of Zoom, but books endure. Books endure because we read them in isolation, wrote about them in lockdown, and read reviews about them in quarantine. It will take books—with their focus, length, use of evidence, ability to recreate events, and capacity to make sense of those events after the fact—on 2020 and all it entailed to make the light and shadow fall in ways that illuminate what lived experience alone cannot. And for that kind of long-term, sustained engagement with the contexts in which we read this year’s reviews, we’ll continue to need not just books, but writing about those books.

Sthenelaidas and Performance as Strategy

Sthenelaidas and Performance as Strategy

Sthenelaidas’ role wasn’t to be a general in war, but to be an orator in the preamble. It was Archidamus whose role was to play the general. On first blush, their contrasting rhetorical styles point to two different strategies for war. Ultimately, however, they push in the same direction. There is a unity of opposites. Their rhetorical style is different, but they need each other to launch Sparta in its great power rivalry.

The Department of Defense Needs to Relearn the (Almost) Lost Art of Net Assessment

The Department of Defense Needs to Relearn the (Almost) Lost Art of Net Assessment

Defense officials and analysts have advanced a wide range of solutions to the U.S. military’s operational and budgetary challenges. Most proposals strike familiar notes: invest in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, hypersonics, and unmanned systems; do more experimentation; recruit and manage the force more effectively. These are arguably the table stakes in a great-power competition. To gain and sustain an advantage, the Department of Defense must do more than just get better; it will need to build on U.S. strengths in ways that exploit adversary vulnerabilities and undermine enemy confidence.

#Reviewing On Obedience: Contrasting Philosophies for the Military, Citizenry, and Community

#Reviewing On Obedience: Contrasting Philosophies for the Military, Citizenry, and Community

On Obedience is a triumph. It deserves an enduring spot on the reading lists of senior military leaders and on the syllabi of professional military education institutions around the world. Even so, it is an incomplete—and sometimes flawed—triumph, especially as the argument reaches its apex in describing the obedience as negotiation model in the book’s eighth chapter. Shanks Kaurin too easily concedes that those responsible for giving orders also possess the preponderance of power in these negotiations.

America’s Winning Culture: A Road to Ruin in the 21st Century

America’s Winning Culture: A Road to Ruin in the 21st Century

The United States’ cultural obsession with winning precludes an effective grand strategy. Since 1945, and increasingly since the end of the Cold War, American military and economic dominance has been so great this fixation was unimportant. However, with China’s rise, America no longer has this luxury and needs a bona fide grand strategy. Americans’ distaste for the sporting tie has fostered a national culture whose tendrils have infested foreign policy decision making. Absent a dominant global military position, the U.S. must learn to prioritize and take risk.

The Air Force America Needs: Innovation, Spark Tank, and Ideas to Sustain Air Force Dominance

The Air Force America Needs: Innovation, Spark Tank, and Ideas to Sustain Air Force Dominance

The U.S. Air Force must prioritize leadership follow-up and engagement and organizational ownership of innovative solutions to show airmen that their ideas can be implemented. Not every idea should be enacted, but of the projects vetted and nominated by major commands and selected by Headquarters Air Force, the majority should be. This focus on implementation with the solutions recommended above will achieve and accelerate change to ensure the Air Force remains the dominant force America needs it to be in the years to come.

The Art of Empire: Great Britain’s Victorian War Artist, Elizabeth Thompson Butler

The Art of Empire: Great Britain’s Victorian War Artist, Elizabeth Thompson Butler

Art provides a unique option for military and strategy professionals to examine what tips a society into change. Much like a rigorous campaign analysis enables understanding of a culture moving its military to and from wars, analyzing a body of artwork can provide insight into how a nation views its military forces and actions.

#Reviewing Docu-Fictions of War

#Reviewing Docu-Fictions of War

Docu-Fictions of War is a unique investigation into popular culture’s depictions of war, and how civilian narratives interact with military storylines. A reader might be left wanting more artistic explorations, but its contributions to strategic studies are plentiful. That said, with hundreds of sources and a dense epistemological basis, it is not for the faint of heart. The analysis provided by Dr. Prorokova is thought-provoking, even if one is not inclined to accept certain epistemologies, and asserts a robust argument for America’s humanitarian rationale. Docu-Fictions of War is a seminal piece on war narratives that deserves every policymaker’s attention.

Siege Mentality: A Tale of Two Wus

Siege Mentality: A Tale of Two Wus

It is time to break Sun Tzu’s stranglehold over the study of ancient Chinese strategic thought and military theory in general. Our fixation with this lone text deafens us to the other voices in a great debate that first raged millennia ago and continues unabated. As two scholars of this formative period in China helpfully remind us, “The ancient texts were not talking to us, they were arguing with each other.” It would be helpful, therefore, to put more effort into understanding the contours of these arguments. Sun Tzu’s contemporary relevance can only be properly assessed by first comparing and contrasting him with other military thinkers of his own age, rather than racing to pit his writings against those of a nineteenth century Prussian.

Strategy and International Law

Strategy and International Law

The works of Thucydides, Sun-tzu, and Clausewitz comprise the lodestone of strategic studies. Yet, international law is conspicuously absent in all three of their works. This feature creates a potential blindspot for any strategist who narrowly relies upon the classical trilogy of strategic thought for understanding strategic decision-making processes and interactions in contemporary conditions.

Détente Under Fire: Contrasting Approaches to Cold War Strategy and Crisis Management in Africa

Détente Under Fire: Contrasting Approaches to Cold War Strategy and Crisis Management in Africa

While Africa had been a sleepy backwater of the global Cold War at the time of Richard Nixon’s first inauguration on 20 January 1969, the continent became a central battlefield of the conflict by the time of Nixon’s resignation in 1974. Africa leaped to the front page of major American newspapers as issues of decolonization, race, and regional rivalries interacted dynamically with Cold War imperatives, accelerating both the intensity and complexity of African conflicts. This period from 1969-1980 spanned the tenures of three American presidents: Nixon, Ford, and Carter and witnessed two explosions of violence—the Angolan Civil War and the Ogaden War between Ethiopia and Somalia—that ended with successful and large-scale interventions by the Soviet Union and its Cuban allies. How did successive American administrations formulate strategies for great power competition in Africa during this period, and how effective were those strategies for meting these Cold War crises?

#Reviewing The World at War

#Reviewing The World at War

As the U.S. enters what may well be later regarded as the Second Interwar Period, where discussion of a return to Great Power Competition has intensified, good histories need to make sense of why such wars come about and how they are fought. Furthermore, as the world wars of the Twentieth Century recede, it may make sense to treat them as episodes of a more massive conflagration, much as we tend to see The Thirty Years’ War as a whole, rather than a start-stop-start string of individual battles. Readers looking for such an offering should look elsewhere, for World at War fails to deliver.

Speak Softly and Conceal a Big Stick: A Diplomat’s Strategy for Competing with China

Speak Softly and Conceal a Big Stick: A Diplomat’s Strategy for Competing with China

Although the allure of geopolitics has transfixed much of the Department of State’s political leadership, inter-state competition is a cross-cutting issue rife with bureaucratic and policy complexities that often makes it difficult for agencies, bureaus, or offices not traditionally focused on inter-state competition to bring their regional and thematic expertise to bear. Adding to these challenges is a tendency for public servants unfamiliar with Chinese history and politics to latch onto talking points like malign influence and debt-trap diplomacy as guideposts when creating programs, papers, or policies. While these terms may be powerful narratives for an external audience, U.S. foreign policy practitioners should recognize them for what they are: effective messaging.

Means-Based Decision-Making: A Case for The Metaphysics of Strategy

Means-Based Decision-Making: A Case for The Metaphysics of Strategy

This article offers a re-balanced definition of strategy that uses classical metaphysics to ground the term in an implementable framework. In leaving the methods for generating prudent ideas for strategy open, the Department of Defense definition has perhaps invited an over-reliance on postmodern ideology that neglects objective concepts and objective reasoning. Postmodern thought emphasizes subjectivity in creating conditions for creativity to flourish. Classical metaphysics, on the other hand, emphasizes objective truths about mankind and reality. In suggesting appropriate boundaries using classical metaphysics, the proposed definition preserves the creative flexibility demanded in the emerging operational environment and championed by postmodern thought that rightly—if perhaps inordinately—impacts the current discussion on military strategy.

Beyond Strategic Empathy

Beyond Strategic Empathy

The United States acts upon the world, but not within the world. The United States understands other state or non-state actors to be working towards the United States, or not at all. Most give little thought to the agency of America’s international peers, their worldview, and the complex system of attitudes and events that shape their foreign policy decisions. The United States must go further than rediscovering strategic empathy.