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.
Net resources offer an additional insight into historical, present, and future trends of the global balance of power, enhancing and expanding our understanding of great power politics and competition. They can be a modern-day oracle—imperfect and imprecise, but nonetheless useful…The concept of net power resources and what it indicates is relevant, and deserves closer analysis by those wishing to understand the topography of the past, present and future geopolitical challenges.
Wars rarely follow straight paths from beginning to end. Belligerents constantly shift, seeking advantage and adapting to change, and the interaction takes its participants to places unimagined at the war's inception. Such has been the case for the American' war in Afghanistan. The U.S. started with clear strategic aims: defeat al-Qaeda and their Taliban hosts. Within months, military action had accomplished both. Yet, having achieved those aims, the war continued to escalate, and the war deviated from its expected path.
The concept of strategic culture gives fresh insights into China’s current strategy and behaviour, particularly in North-East Asia. Strategic culture also demonstrates the difficulty in separating the connection between ideational forces and the development and execution of strategy. This essay expands on the concept of strategic culture by incorporating relationality into the analysis. The argument is that a state’s strategic preferences are shaped normatively over time through consistent inter-state relations. This essay looks at China’s relationships with North Korea and Japan as case studies, before commenting on the implications of relational strategic culture for China’s future actions and the future of strategy.
To complete their missions, combatant commanders will, out of necessity, leverage data as a weapon system as it constitutes the basis of information development within the commander's decision space. With new sensors, the amount of collected data continues to climb, making more data available for transformation into actionable information supporting decision-making. Given the enormous volume of data that presently exists and the supply of trained analysts within a command, the commander and staff are assumed to have the capability to effectively employ data analytics to support the planning and execution of operations within the area of responsibility decisively. The perception is partially true.
The Horn of Africa dominates today’s headlines. From ethnic cleansing in Ethiopia’s Tigray region to the ongoing war against al Shabaab, the region is beset by overlapping crises. Understanding today’s tumult in the Horn requires grappling with the complex legacy of the Cold War’s final chapter in the region. The Cold War accelerated and intensified the Horn of Africa’s zero-sum brand of ethnic politics from 1977-1985, and the thaw and subsequent end of the Cold War in Africa ended critical lifelines for the notorious regimes in Addis Ababa and Mogadishu, precipitating their collapse in 1991. This essay outlines how the Cold War’s conclusion laid the groundwork for the Horn’s bloody 21st century.
The Pacific island countries, a cluster of fourteen states and home to nine million people, share a profound legacy of appreciation, trust, and shared values with the U.S. The Pacific island countries historically reflected the U.S. preference for diplomatic norms in the way of life and international organizations. Unfortunately, in recent years this congruence has become precarious. The catalyst for this shift can be tied to China actively exerting influence in Pacific island countries through development, economic aid, and security cooperation that endangers the relationship the U.S. shares with them. Chinese diplomatic and economic engagement in the Pacific island countries threatensU.S. influence and values in the region and will become an existential threat to security if not addressed. The U.S. strategy can counter China's power projection in the Pacific island countries by maintaining the existing soft power presence in the region and amplifying the Biden administration's efforts to mitigate climate change. The U.S. can also capitalize on the emerging need for economic development by investing in vaccine diplomacy to fight against COVID-19 to reiterate the U.S. commitment as a partner of choice to the region.
Climate change is rapidly reshaping the world despite international efforts to curb the warming trend. At its current pace, climate change will dramatically reshape the landscape by 2050, causing more than a billion people to compete for resources in affected regions. Moreover, the melting of Arctic ice caps will open new maritime routes nearly year-round, shifting global shipping to less secure zones. As fragile regions become unstable and climate change exacerbates conflict drivers, the U.S. must not remain strategically flexible but should prepare for certain variables. Of these variables, three stand out as most concerning for U.S. security and require shifts in strategy: Arctic ice loss, human displacement, and rare earth supplies.
Expectations that Japan and the Republic of Korea could work together to develop their own strategic partnership have been dashed, with the two countries drifting apart over the past few decades and allowing tensions in their bilateral relationship to hamper any cooperation on security issues. This breakdown in Japanese-Korean relations is limiting the ability of the U.S. to fully utilize its regional alliances to defend the status quo in East Asia. It is in the interest of American peace and prosperity to prevent any foreign power from dominating the region, which is home to multiple security partners and critical markets for American goods. Additionally, East Asia sits atop a number of trade routes vital to the broader economy that underpins the broader liberal international order. This article proposes a potential strategy through which Washington can foster relations between its allies and better push back against Beijing’s efforts to become a regional hegemon.
Because of the urgency of addressing climate change, U.S. foreign policy should be re-oriented around climate change. This can be accomplished by linking climate change to national security, especially within the executive branch, pursuing a comprehensive international climate strategy, and addressing the U.S.'s own contributions to climate change, both domestically and abroad.
Earlier this year, The Strategy Bridge asked university and professional military education students to participate in our fifth annual student writing contest on the subject of strategy. The response was amazing, with more submissions than our small team of volunteers could handle. We’ll publish the winners and some additional submissions earning an honorable mention in the coming weeks. In the meantime…Congratulations to all the winners!
Christian Brose’s The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare is a book about death. It is a book about Senator John McCain’s legacy after pursuing defense reform as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. It is a book that makes a case for the death of the current tradition of American power projection. Correspondingly it is a book about the desired death of a defense acquisitions ecosystem that has, according to Brose, contributed to building a military ill-equipped for the 21st century.
Aral’s seminal book provides two fundamental arguments: first, social media promised and still promises economic, political, and social uplift for people; it can also cause perils, such as external election influence, financial manipulation, privacy issues, spreading of fake news, and so forth. The author also argues that left unchecked, social media can bring disharmony and destruction to a country's economic, political, and social structures. Therefore, he opines that to fully utilise the potential of social media platforms and avoid their drawbacks, there needs to be a rigorous scientific understanding of social media and knowledge of its nuances to eradicate the unscientific hysteria around social media.
Sir Michael Howard wrote that the "roots of victory and defeat often have to be sought far from the battlefield." Provide a tailored thesis-driven argument exploring that thought using historical case studies, political theory, or other avenues of inquiry. This quarter’s series seeks compelling arguments to advance the conversation in the realms of strategy, national security, and military affairs.
The English-language publication of The Forgotten Front suggests that military history is not only alive and well but also integral to historians’ understanding of the first world war. Moreover, it showcases the breadth and depth of military history in its coverage of topics such as military strategy, national identity, and collective memory.
Rwanda in the early 1990s was going through a transition to democracy that obligated its society to resolve decades old disputes between two native ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi. A U.S. diplomatic team assisted in negotiations that resulted in the Arusha Accords, outlining a provisional government for the transition that included a power sharing agreement. Without a way to enforce the accords, the U.S. diplomatic team struggled to resolve embittered ethic differences so that a viable peace could be maintained, and the growing instability deteriorated into the genocide of 1994. From Hope to Horror is the detailing of the events that led to the atrocities of the Rwandan genocide written by Joyce Leader, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Rwanda from 1991-1994.
The report is timely and covers a broad range of risks that pose a threat to international security and stability. This article reviews the relevance of the Global Risks Report to corporate and public sectors delving into the risks identified in the report, the methodology used to collect the data, and demographic profiling.
Military officers may not be inclined to reach for a book of poetry to bolster their understanding of warfare, but important lessons can be drawn from seemingly unusual sources. And while the Chief of Staff of the Air Force Professional Reading Program has been expanded to include cinema, photography, and even TED Talks, poetry in book or singular form appears to have never made the decades-old list. Similarly, poetry does not seem to be included on sister service recommended reading lists. Despite this, there is a place for poetry somewhere in the military leader’s piles of literature, history, and leadership books, one that puts a little heart into the science of war.
Scharnhorst: The Formative Years, the long-awaited prequel to The Enlightened Soldier, is a detailed account of the developmental period of Scharnhorst’s Bildung, when he matured into the enlightened soldier. Unlike most writing about Scharnhorst, in Scharnhorst: The Formative Years, Charles White focuses exclusively on the less well known period of his life while he was still serving in Hanover. In doing so, White explores how the seeds of military Bildung initially take root and begin to blossom in Scharnhorst’s life.
Military history attests to nations’ struggle to transition from a peacetime footing to a wartime posture, but this work draws solely from Israel’s modern experiences. While Finkel explores an overlooked concept, focusing analysis through the lens of Israel’s experiences since 1948 imposes methodological limits upon the work.
This book gives the reader much to consider and is particularly useful due to its unique approach that complements works in other fields like political science. There are no easy answers to why we fight. Regardless of some of oxytocin’s evolutionary victories over testosterone, this book provides much to ponder and understand regarding the inherent job security of being in the business of war.
