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.
This collection is remarkable because, whether or not everything in each story is strictly speaking factual, everything is true. If you’re interested in military culture, the ongoing cultural change in the armed forces, or just looking for excellent writing from veterans and their families, this is a book that belongs on your shelf.
Ninety years after the abolition of slavery in the United States, Blacks faced a dominant caste system in the 1950s that used the violence and power of the state to deny equal treatment or opportunity across the deep south. In more general terms, when confronting an imbalance of power, a subjugated people face a choice between submission or finding a way to alter the nature of the fight. To overcome this disparity, the Civil Rights Movement developed a strategy that aligned their actions to their desired change.
In Flying Camelot: The F-15, the F-16, and the Weaponization of Fighter Pilot Nostalgia, Michael W. Hankins argues that starting as early as the 1960s, a group of fighter pilots and reformers sought to change the procurement process for aircraft to emphasize the importance of the fighter pilot and air superiority missions. Hankins states that this resulted in the development and acquisition of the F-15 and F-16 fighters by the United States Air Force. Hankins further asserts that these reformers sought to change how fighter pilots were trained to emphasize the importance of dogfighting and air superiority campaigns over other aspects of air combat.
The character of war is rapidly changing. The increasing availability of evolving technology confounds previous frameworks for military operations. Socioeconomic factors and demographic shifts complicate manpower and force generation models for national defense. Ubiquitous connectivity links individuals to global audiences, expanding the reach of influence activities. And a renewed emphasis on strategic competition enhances the scope of military action below the threshold of violence. This is the world that Mick Ryan explores in War Transformed: The Future of Twenty-First-Century Great Power Competition and Conflict.
A newly discovered drawing, now in the collection of the German History Museum in Berlin, promises to shed new light on Clausewitz's life. Furthermore, its connection to real-life events provides a better understanding of the decade’s influence over Clausewitz's thought and the realities surrounding the creation of On War. The find highlights an overlooked memorandum Clausewitz wrote in 1825 that, for its part, reveals Clausewitz as a thoughtful and consummate military professional. In fact, the ideas expressed in this memorandum matured on the pages of his general theory, On War, reinforcing the notion of his theory as a product of complex reflection on the realities military professionals encounter.
Ralph Waldo Emerson is said to have observed, “I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” As we do each year at The Strategy Bridge, we pause to reflect on our #Reviewing series, the books and movies and other work we’ve consumed as a community—the intellectual meal we’ve shared—and consider what they have helped us to make of ourselves, what they’ve helped us become.
To begin 2023, we want to explore the relationship between historical lessons and preparation for an unknown future. A wide array of thinkers have inspired this theme, including Lawrence Freedman. In The Future of War: A History, Freedman explains that the future is so difficult to predict because “it depends on choices that have yet to be made, including by our own governments, in circumstances that remain uncertain.” Freedman continues to unpack this notion, stating:
“History is made by people who do not know what is going to happen next. Many developments that were awaited, either fearfully or eagerly, never happened. Those things that did happen were sometimes seen to be inevitable in retrospect but they were rarely identified as inevitable in prospect.”
For 1Q23, we want to hear your perspectives on the most useful point Strategy Bridge readers should consider regarding preparation for future warfare based on historical lessons, learned or not. How have states and other actors envisioned future warfare? How did they prepare, or fail to prepare, for their future warfare? Are these lessons of use to states and other actors as they prepare for future conflict?
To operationalize the concept of strategic empathy, this article argues that strategic leaders must appreciate three critical factors: geography, history, and domestic politics. These three factors are the pillars of the framework employed by U.S. Army Japan, a theater-strategic headquarters in the Indo-Pacific theater.
Strategic assessments reveal a given nation’s understanding of the security landscape and its relative power position. However, strategic appraisals can also betray the fundamental values and prevailing attitudes of the country generating the assessment. American estimators have shown a propensity to frame questions in a manner reflecting their internal predispositions—a tendency that has often contributed to flawed images of external threats. This was the case during the early Cold War when American analysts routinely transferred judgment to Soviet decision-makers. By projecting their own proclivities onto an adversary whose preferences did not align with the United States, analysts persistently misdiagnosed the threat and concealed opportunities to exploit Soviet vulnerabilities. It was not until American strategic analysis underwent a dramatic transformation in the 1970s that more reliable assessments began to emerge. The Cold War, then, offers a stark warning about the pitfalls of an ethnocentric view of the security landscape. Adversaries, after all, are bounded by distinctive national styles that diverge from American logic.
The mental model of a unified government “orchestrating” the economic instrument of power is fundamentally misleading. Rather, the more appropriate “mental model” to describe the milieu of the economic instrument is as a network of a variety of entities, and even more specifically to describe that milieu as a complex adaptive system. Behaviors in such a system are inherently decentering– no single node in the system predominates. Understanding how the economic instrument can operate in this system also requires understanding the rest of the elements and their interconnected interdependencies.
The route to a more authentic understanding of the aims and likely reactions of other states, is through narrative appreciation. When strategists can live in the skin of another through the means of storytelling, they can better calibrate policy that is feasible within the limits of state power. The interests of the state must remain front and center, but informed by a deeply felt understanding of the fears and hopes of one’s friends and foes with a mind towards avoiding unintended provocation and building deeper trust with partner nations.
In the 1970s, China’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) deferred resolving the Taiwan question—invading Taiwan to defeat the Kuomintang (KMT) and claim that territory—because it prioritized achieving economic development that required access to and integration with international trade and capital markets. Meanwhile, the U.S’ strategic ambiguity posture sought to stabilize the Taiwan Strait with dual deterrence of both Chinese attack and Taiwanese declaration of independence. This policy rested on two premises—that China would remain committed to peaceful and non-coercive merger, if any, and that Taiwan’s independence was not essential to American foreign policy interests—neither of which holds today.
All too often countries outside of Europe, or wherever the military fight is currently happening, are absent from discussions of policy in Washington. The Global South especially is too rarely part of the national security conversation. Even among the major emerging economies, colloquially known as the BRICS, Brazil and South Africa often get left out of the discussion compared to their larger and/or more threatening counterparts in Russia, China and India.”
The continued posturing of the United States as the main geopolitical power represents a grave strategic misstep against the rising power of China. This posture overcommits resources to a narrow conception of warfare that then limits the availability of options. If, however, the U.S. were to strategize as a smaller, less wealthy nation, it may develop the strategic flexibility required to counter China.
Washington cannot afford a focus on unilateral U.S. perspectives, whether to prevent alienating potential partners or to forestall potential adversarial relations. When strategists center policy from a U.S. perspective, they ignore the real cultural risks that accompany those narrative frames. China is just as centered on their own conventional framing, with equally problematic results. Washington must counter Beijing’s growing influence across the instruments of national power without alienating potential allies and partners.
The implicit bias of ethnocentrism in the decision-making process warps an otherwise effective process of linking ends, ways, and means to achieve political objectives. Without a deliberate effort to control ethnocentric tendencies in its strategic process, the United States will continue to pursue ineffective strategic courses of action given the dual impacts of ethnocentrism on statecraft: misperceiving ourselves and stereotyping others.
In recent quarterlies published by The Strategy Bridge, many authors have tended to center the United States in discussions about strategic competition. In doing so, they have illuminated perspectives about the national security challenges facing that nation. Such an approach can be limiting, however, because it is narrowly specific in its framing. As a U.S.-based journal—with a majority of our readers historically from the United States—it is perhaps natural that contributors argue from this perspective, but it can be troublesome to view challenges with a too-consistent perspective. And, if alliances are a strength of the United States and Western nations in strategic competition, then it is more important than ever to view strategic competition from the perspective of a variety of nations to better understand their complex positions due to economic, diplomatic, political, military, and other circumstances.
In the historiography of the Second World War, scholars marvel at the wonders of Normandy and D-Day, followed by the famed Red Ball Express on the drive to Paris. Dworak makes the compelling case that the real support and logistics operation came from wartime experience further south. As a reader, it is delightful to see a simple and straightforward narrative play out. Dworak digs into all facets of logistics and stays on task. The author keeps his chapters fast-paced, focused on the big operations of Torch, Husky, Avalanche, Shingle, and Dragoon, while also describing fascinating tidbits along the way.
