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

Assumptionitis in Strategy

Assumptionitis in Strategy

Former Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis identified a lack of strategy and strategic thinking in the United States’ national security policy discourse. This problem is complex, multifaceted, and caused by a number of factors, including a lack of understanding of what strategy is, and is not, and how to educate strategists, an inability or unwillingness to identify and understand core strategic issues, the tyranny of the present, and a fickle public. This article alleviates some of the challenges of living in a strategy-free mode by focusing on the development of strategic thinking and strategies that are based on empirically realistic assumptions consistent with decision making and behavior in the real world.

#Reviewing How to Prevent Coups d’État

#Reviewing How to Prevent Coups d’État

Erica De Bruin’s How to Prevent Coups d’état: Counterbalancing and Regime Survival was a long-awaited release for a couple of reasons. First, the initial article this book is based on has been cited nearly 100 times in less than three years. Introducing a way to quantify a notoriously difficult to quantify concept changed the discussion in national security and civilian-military relations, and not just among coup scholars. Second, De Bruin is thorough in examining consequences throughout her work.

#Reviewing Exercise of Power

#Reviewing Exercise of Power

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ latest book is a unique work. Exercise of Power is not a conventional Washington memoir, nor is it a foreign policy textbook. Instead, Gates examines how America can apply its power around the world, and studies the ways it has applied, or failed to apply, the range of its power to foreign policy. The result is a hybrid; part history, part foreign policy text, that makes maximum use of Gates' unique life story.

#Reviewing Homegrown ISIS in America

#Reviewing Homegrown ISIS in America

In the book Homegrown: ISIS in America, the authors provide a highly detailed account of ISIS activities in the United States. The book explores an area which has been underexamined in the terrorism/counterterrorism, security, and intelligence literature. Culminating over four years of collected research, the authors use the following sources for data collection: The Program on Extremism at George Washington University, court documents, trial attendance, interviews, and approximately forty Freedom of Information Act requests.

#Reviewing The Grit Factor

#Reviewing The Grit Factor

Throughout her book, Huffman Polson argues that grit is a skill that can and should be developed as an integral component of successful leadership. She finds this to be particularly evident in the experiences of women who have served in the U.S. military, which she classifies as the most male-dominated organization in the world. The participants and storytellers hail from a variety of occupational specialties, service branches, and military backgrounds. Their stories encompass the breadth of a military career, beginning with the author’s childhood determination to join military service to stories from general officers and covering operational, administrative, and personal experiences in which grit and leadership were integral.

#Reviewing Mike McGregor’s Portrait: Kyle Carpenter

#Reviewing Mike McGregor’s Portrait: Kyle Carpenter

What is the meaning of an outstretched hand when its own arm has been eviscerated by war and its palm now sprouts a Purple Heart Medal? This question has puzzled me since I first encountered the McGregor portrait. And it has puzzled me as being of a piece with the larger canvas of the uncertain civil-military social relationship that has accumulated in America during twenty years of war.

#Reviewing Gabriel Avilla’s No Pressure… But Don’t Mess This Up

#Reviewing Gabriel Avilla’s No Pressure… But Don’t Mess This Up

[Avilla] offers a wealth of experience, a distinctive voice, and the courage to critically examine his actions while he exposes his audience to the issues he faced. This short volume is akin to a combination self-help book and an extended reflection on action, adroitly tracing the timeline of a typical command tour without drifting into an hagiographic memoir and accusations of self-aggrandizement. Instead, it is a candid discussion of the challenges many commanders can expect to see during their time.

#Reviewing Power on the Precipice: The Six Choices America Faces in a Turbulent World

#Reviewing Power on the Precipice: The Six Choices America Faces in a Turbulent World

Decline is a choice for a status quo superpower, and choices are central steps in reformulating the future role of the U.S. on the world stage. But what are those choices and are U.S. leaders ready to summon the American people to support these choices? In addressing American relative decline, Imbrie offers guidance and answers for six possible strategic choices, and he devotes a chapter to each.

Competition and Decision in the Gray Zone: A New National Security Strategy

Competition and Decision in the Gray Zone: A New National Security Strategy

The ultimate target of hybrid warfare is not territory or military forces, but the political decision-making process itself. How will the United States deter aggression and dominate conflict in this environment, and how will decision-making processes adapt to remain relevant? This is the question that should most inform the new U.S. National Security Strategy, because in a hyper-connected world where conventional war offers limited utility, hybrid warfare will be the dominant form of conflict.

The Next National Security Strategy and National Resilience Through Education

The Next National Security Strategy and National Resilience Through Education

If the United States is serious about competition in a global, informationalized arena against other aspiring great powers, a better-informed and engaged populace capable of thinking critically about the veracity of information it encounters daily should strengthen America’s intrinsic informational and economic strengths. A better-educated and informed public is a cognitively armed population, better able to participate in the processes of government, drive civic outcomes, and thwart disinformation while also producing innovative products and solutions.

Misinformation in the Military Community and the Next National Security Strategy

Misinformation in the Military Community and the Next National Security Strategy

The proliferation of misinformation via social media continues to radicalize, alienate, or isolate American citizens across demographics, including specific targeting of military veterans. Misinformation-fed emotional and psychological effects can drive these individuals toward forming virtual and in-person communities of shared worldviews. The insurrection against the U.S. Congressional certification of the Electoral College results on January 6, 2021 demonstrated the power of misinformation to drive mass violence. Many of the insurrectionists were connected to the U.S. military, including retirees and veterans. The next National Security Strategy writers should attempt to answer: How does the United States counter misinformation within its military community?

Getting Serious About Women, Peace & Security

Getting Serious About Women, Peace & Security

Washington is littered with strategies covering everything from cyber, nuclear, and space to a national strategy to promote the health of honey bees. Some strategies get more attention than others, with a nexus to the National Security Strategy a fast track to prominence. Will the NSS get serious about women, peace and security?

The Strategic Cost of Transnational Corruption

The Strategic Cost of Transnational Corruption

The authors of the next National Security Strategy must ask how U.S. national security agencies fit in the anticorruption landscape. To inform the development of a comprehensive strategy to address corruption, they should consider how the use of foreign policy tools by national security and foreign policy agencies, from seemingly benign foreign assistance to tactical foreign subversion, interact with and potentially amplify the very challenges they seek to remedy.

Beware the Allure of Counter-models

Beware the Allure of Counter-models

Can American military, diplomatic, and other government practitioners afford to remain aloof to the operating logics and superstructural assumptions permeating national policy and state interaction within the international system? This is perhaps a moral question without a clear answer. In a Western world where geopolitical realism is coming into vogue, do values have a place in policy or in strategy when expediency or success encounter normative barriers?

Sharpening the Blunt Tool: Why Deterrence Needs an Update in the Next U.S. National Security Strategy

Sharpening the Blunt Tool: Why Deterrence Needs an Update in the Next U.S. National Security Strategy

Recent thinking on deterrence has evolved beyond these simple logics. Now emerging concepts such as tailored deterrence, cross-domain deterrence, and dissuasion offer new ideas to address criticisms of deterrence in theory and practice. Therefore, the most vital question for the new administration is: how should the U.S. revise its deterrence policy to best prevent aggression in today’s complex environment? A review of the problems and prospects in deterrence thinking reveals that in addition to skillfully tailoring threats and risks across domains, U.S. policymakers should dissuade aggression by offering opportunities for restraint to reduce the risk of escalation.

Assessing Chinese Military Capabilities: Response Actions for American Strategy

Assessing Chinese Military Capabilities: Response Actions for American Strategy

American national security depends on a comprehensive understanding of China’s recent defense reforms and weaknesses so that decision-makers remain aware of how willing Xi may be to go to war and how U.S. strategy in Asia should be adjusted to mitigate this potential. The primary concern of the new administration’s National Security Strategy in responding to China’s military modernization should be an equivalent focus on military capabilities, through a reinforced defense budget and collaboration with allies, and secondarily, greater efforts to increase high-level talks with Chinese officials on areas of potential collaboration.