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The Proliferation Security Initiative as a New Paradigm for Peace and Security
Mark R. Shulman Dr.
The author examines the Proliferation Security Initiative—a multinational activity launched in 2003 to enable the United States and like-minded countries to interdict the flow of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This Initiative also may bring dramatic changes the international security system by enabling concerned states to interdict international trade in WMD regardless of the location or nationality of their owners. As such, the Proliferation Security Initiative not only addresses one of the most urgent threats to peace and security that the world has ever witnessed, but it does so in an innovative way that has the potential to change the basic paradigm of peace and security by legitimizing the proportional and discriminating use of force to prevent a great harm. The author argues that the Initiative can be most successful by building broad support through increased transparency and a greater willingness to address forth-rightly the legal challenges that it faces.
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Iron Troikas: The New Threat from the East
Richard J. Krickus Dr.
There has been widespread discussion of Russia's efforts to exploit its energy assets to influence developments in Ukraine; specifically, to put pressure on the leaders of the Orange Revolution who have adopted a Western orientation, rather than one toward the East—Russia. The author explains how the Russian leadership has exploited its energy assets to advance its security interests in the vital East Baltic Sea Region, particularly Poland and the Baltic countries. This triad of power is comprised of former members of the military and security service—the siloviki; economic warlords, members of organized crime, and rogue military personnel; and "local elites" in Poland and the Baltic countries who have advanced Russia's security interests in the region. The author provides recommendations on how this can be addressed by the U.S. military and the EBSR defense establishments.
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CU @ The FOB: How the Forward Operating Base is Changing the Life of Combat Soldiers
Leonard Wong Dr. and Stephen J. Gerras Dr.
The situation in post-war Iraq is producing combat veterans accustomed to a perspective of combat that differs greatly from past wars. The Forward Operating Base (FOB) has become the mainstay of the U.S. presence in Iraq. The authors explore the facets of fighting from the FOB. Their research shows that the FOB gives soldiers the unprecedented advantage of gaining a respite from constant danger, minimizing the wearing effects of hunger and fatigue, and reducing the isolation of combat. As a result, many of the factors of psychological stress typically present in combat are greatly reduced. They also point out, however, that technology on the FOB allows soldiers to communicate frequently with home, shifting the family from an abstract to concrete concept in the minds of deployed soldiers. As a result, the competition between the family and Army for soldier time, commitment, loyalty, and energy is renewed.
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Irregular Enemies and the Essence of Strategy: Can the American Way of War Adapt?
Colin S. Gray Dr.
The author offers a detailed comparison between the character of irregular warfare, insurgency in particular, and the principal enduring features of "the American way." He concludes that there is a serious mismatch between that "way" and the kind of behavior that is most effective in countering irregular foes. The author poses the question, Can the American way of war adapt to a strategic threat context dominated by irregular enemies? He suggests that the answer is "perhaps, but only with difficulty."
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Kim Jong Il and North Korea: The Leader and the System
Andrew Scobell Dr.
In the first decade of the 21st century, few national security challenges facing the United States is as vexing as that posed by North Korea. It is a paradox because it appears to be a very powerful state—possessing the world's fourth largest armed forces, a sizeable arsenal of ballistic missiles, and a worrying nuclear program—but it is also an economic basket case in terms of agricultural output, industrial production, and foreign trade exports. Virtually every aspect of the Pyongyang regime is mysterious and puzzling. In short, North Korea is difficult for Americans to understand and analyze, beginning with confusion about what kind of political system North Korea has and what kind of man leads it. The author explores Pyongyang's political dynamics and seeks to shed light on the political system of North Korea and its leader.
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Multilateral Constraints on the Use of Force: A Reassessment
Seyom Brown Dr.
The difficulty of achieving a multilateral consensus in the NATO Alliance can create more of a crisis than does the difficulty of generating an effective UN response to threats to international peace and security. NATO was supposed to be America's prime multilateral institution for obtaining legitimation and support of military action when the UN Security Council was paralyzed because of the veto. But as it has turned out Washington's ability to obtain a Brussels imprimatur for U.S.-led multilateral military operations has become almost as hard as (and in some cases even harder than) obtaining UN endorsement. And whereas proposals to change the UN Security Council's voting rules have become a matter for open discourse among statespersons, such discourse with respect to the North Atlantic Council is shied away from as subversive of the ethos of the Alliance.
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Planning For and Applying Military Force: An Examination of Terms
Paul K. Van Riper Lieutenant General (USMC Ret)
The author briefly examines current and in some cases still evolving definitions in joint doctrine--especially as regards strategy, center of gravity, decisive point, and commander's intent. He discusses the heritage of those concepts and terms, most of which derived from the writings of Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, and finds that current joint planning definitions and concepts tend to confuse more than they inform.
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Training Indigenous Forces in Counterinsurgency: A Tale of Two Insurgencies
James S. Corum Dr.
The author examines the British experience in building and training indigenous police and military forces during the Malaya and Cyprus insurgencies. These two insurgencies provide a dramatic contrast to the issue of training local security forces. In Malaya, the British developed a very successful strategy for training the Malayan Police and army. In Cyprus, the British strategy for building and training local security forces generally was ineffective. The author argues that some important lessons can be drawn from these case studies that are directly applicable to current U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine.
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Recognizing and Understanding Revolutionary Change in Warfare: The Sovereignty of Context
Colin S. Gray Dr.
The author provides a critical audit of the great RMA debate and of some actual RMA behavior and warns against a transformation that is highly potent only in a narrow range of strategic cases. He warns that the military effectiveness of a process of revolutionary change in a "way of war" can only be judged by the test of battle, and possibly not even then, if the terms of combat are very heavily weighted in favor of the United States. On balance, the concept of revolutionary change is found to be quite useful, provided it is employed and applied with some reservations and in a manner that allows for flexibility and adaptability. The contexts of warfare, especially the political, determine how effective a transforming military establishment will be.
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Strategic Theory for the 21st Century: The Little Book on Big Strategy
Harry R. Yarger Dr.
The word "strategy" pervades American conversation and our news media and is most often used as a general term for a plan, a concept, a course of action, or a "vision" of the direction in which to proceed at the personal, organizational, and governmental—local, state, or federal—levels. Such casual use of the term to describe nothing more than "what we would like to do next" is inappropriate and belies the complexity of true strategy and strategic thinking. This "little book" talks about big strategy, strategy at the highest levels of the nation-state. It is applicable to grand strategy, national security strategy, national military strategy, and regional or theater strategy. The monograph does not propose a strategy for the United States; rather, it provides a framework for considering strategy at any of the levels mentioned above. It is an examination of theory, exploring those aspects of strategy that appear to have universal application. The theory also may have application to the strategy of nonstate actors, institutions, and businesses, but the explicit purpose and perspective offered herein focus on the nation-state.
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A Hundred Osamas: Islamist Threats and the Future of Counterinsurgency
Sherifa D. Zuhur Dr.
This monograph takes its title from President Hosni Mubarak's prediction that American involvement in Iraq would give rise to a "hundred Osamas." The author explores "the new jihad" and the regeneration of Islamist insurgencies and extremist movements in the context of religious and political movements throughout the Muslim world. It describes the contributions of various Islamist leaders to this discourse of extremism and how their strategies of recruitment, retention and engagement function. In contrast, various U.S. responses to extremists are critiqued, and new elements of a counterstrategy are proposed.
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The Mexican Armed Forces in Transition
Ian Nicholls Colonel and Jordi Diez Dr.
After the 9/11 attacks on the United States, homeland defense became the primary issue in U.S. defense policy. It was clear that homeland defense would have to become a trilateral continental issue and include Canada and Mexico. Because the United States and Canada already had developed a relatively close relationship during and after World War II, as a result of their common interests and efforts in NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and NORAD (North American Air Defense), it became important to become more knowledgeable regarding the Mexican armed forces. The authors are well-acquainted with the Mexican armed forces, and have developed a keen awareness of the Mexican defense establishment.
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U.S.-UK Relations at the Start of the 21st Century
Jeffrey D. McCausland Dr. and Douglas Stuart Dr.
Although there is widespread agreement that the United States is the world's most powerful country in military, economic, and diplomatic terms, and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, there is little agreement as to how the rest of the world will react to America's lead. Theory has an even more difficult time explaining the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom (UK), especially its remarkable endurance over the past 6 decades. The U.S.-UK partnership flourished during World War II, deepened during the long twilight struggle with the Soviet Union, and has prospered further since the end of the Cold War. It is likely to survive any new challenges that may loom on the horizon.
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U.S.-UK Relations at the Start of the 21st Century
Jeffrey D. McCausland Dr. and Douglas Stuart Dr.
Although there is widespread agreement that the United States is the world's most powerful country in military, economic, and diplomatic terms, and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, there is little agreement as to how the rest of the world will react to America's lead. Theory has an even more difficult time explaining the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom (UK), especially its remarkable endurance over the past 6 decades. The U.S.-UK partnership flourished during World War II, deepened during the long twilight struggle with the Soviet Union, and has prospered further since the end of the Cold War. It is likely to survive any new challenges that may loom on the horizon.
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Assessing the Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat
Milton Leitenberg Mr.
It is nearly 15 years since biological weapons (BW) have become a significant national security preoccupation. This occurred primarily due to circumstances occurring within a short span of years. First was the official U.S. Government suggestion that proliferation of offensive BW programs among states and even terrorist groups was an increasing trend; second was the discovery, between 1989 and 1992, that the Union USSR had violated the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) since its ratification in 1975 by building a massive covert biological weapons program; third was the corroboration by the UN Special Commission in 1995 that Iraq had maintained a covert biological weapons program since 1974, and had produced and stockpiled large quantities of agents and delivery systems between 1988 and 1991; and, fourth was the discovery, also in 1995, that the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo group, which had carried out the nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway system, also had spent 4 years attempting—albeit unsuccessfully—to produce and disperse two pathogenic biological agents. The distribution of professionally prepared anthrax spores through the U.S. postal system in the weeks afterwards September 11, 2001, magnified previous concerns by orders of magnitude. In December 2002, after U.S. forces had overrun much of the territory of Afghanistan, it was discovered that the al-Qaida organization also had spent several years trying to obtain the knowledge and means to produce biological agents. These new factors shifted the context in which BW was considered almost entirely to "bioterrorism." Within 4 years, almost $30 billion in federal expenditure was appropriated to counter the anticipated threat. This response took place in the absence of virtually any threat analysis. The purpose of this monograph is to begin to fill that gap.
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Assessing the Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat
Milton Leitenberg Mr.
It is nearly 15 years since biological weapons (BW) have become a significant national security preoccupation. This occurred primarily due to circumstances occurring within a short span of years. First was the official U.S. Government suggestion that proliferation of offensive BW programs among states and even terrorist groups was an increasing trend; second was the discovery, between 1989 and 1992, that the Union USSR had violated the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) since its ratification in 1975 by building a massive covert biological weapons program; third was the corroboration by the UN Special Commission in 1995 that Iraq had maintained a covert biological weapons program since 1974, and had produced and stockpiled large quantities of agents and delivery systems between 1988 and 1991; and, fourth was the discovery, also in 1995, that the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo group, which had carried out the nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway system, also had spent 4 years attempting—albeit unsuccessfully—to produce and disperse two pathogenic biological agents. The distribution of professionally prepared anthrax spores through the U.S. postal system in the weeks afterwards September 11, 2001, magnified previous concerns by orders of magnitude. In December 2002, after U.S. forces had overrun much of the territory of Afghanistan, it was discovered that the al-Qaida organization also had spent several years trying to obtain the knowledge and means to produce biological agents. These new factors shifted the context in which BW was considered almost entirely to "bioterrorism." Within 4 years, almost $30 billion in federal expenditure was appropriated to counter the anticipated threat. This response took place in the absence of virtually any threat analysis. The purpose of this monograph is to begin to fill that gap.
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Revisions in Need of Revising: What Went Wrong in the Iraq War
David C. Hendrickson Dr. and Robert W. Tucker Dr.
Though critics have made a number of telling points against the Bush administration's conduct of the Iraq war, the most serious problems facing Iraq and its American occupiers—criminal anarchy and lawlessness, a raging insurgency and a society divided into rival and antagonistic groups—were virtually inevitable consequences that flowed from the act of war itself. Military and civilian planners were culpable in failing to plan for certain tasks, but the most serious problems had no good solution. Even so, there are lessons to be learned. These include the danger that the imperatives of "force protection" may sacrifice the broader political mission of U.S. forces and the need for skepticism over the capacity of outsiders to develop the skill and expertise required to reconstruct decapitated states.
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Transformation for What?
John White Dr.
One of the most significant of global security reassessments is currently underway, driven by Operations IRAQI FREEDOM and Operation ENDURING FREEDOM, continuing technological developments, budget constraints, and the debate associated with the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review. To provide senior defense leaders with ideas on security transformation, the Strategic Studies Institute has joined with the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government to bring together top experts on an annual basis. For the third meeting in this series—held in November 2004—the National Defense University joined as a partner. The informed and free flowing debate at this conference generated a range of frank assessments and creative ideas about the status of security transformation. This report summarizes the debates and findings of the November session.
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Victories are Not Enough
Samuel J. Newland Dr.
Since the early stages of World War II, militaries in general, and the U.S. Army in particular, have studied the German way of war, specifically as practiced in the 20th century. While acknowledging that Germany—and before that nation came into existence, Prussia—produced some excellent armies, major problems with the German way of war must not be ignored. Despite the military prowess of Germany, it lost both of the major wars of the 20th century. The author explores the reasons why a nation with such a strong military reputation was unable to win its wars and achieve its goals. He emphasizes that military power, tactical and operational brilliance, and victories in the field can easily be squandered if a nation has failed to set achievable goals and develop strategies to reach them. This failure should not be lost on modern nations as they proceed into the 21st century.
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Coup D'Oeil: Strategic Intuition in Army Planning
William Duggan Dr.
Dr. William Duggan shows how to reconcile analytical and intuitive methods of decisionmaking, by drawing on recent scientific research that brings the two together. He applies this new research to the Army's core methods of analytical decisionmaking as found in FM 5-0, Army Planning and Orders Production. The result is "strategic intuition," which bears remarkable resemblance to von Clausewitz's idea of coup d'oeil in his classic work, On War. Dr. Duggan's study provides a theoretical overview of strategic intuition and practical suggestions for amending FM 5-0 to take it into account.
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Fourth-Generation War and Other Myths
Antulio J. Echevarria Dr.
Fourth Generation War (4GW) emerged in the late 1980s, but has become popular due to recent twists in the war in Iraq, and terrorist attacks worldwide. In brief, the theory holds that warfare has evolved through four generations: 1) the use of massed manpower, 2) firepower, 3) maneuver, and now 4) an evolved form of insurgency that employs all available networks—political, economic, social, military—to convince an opponent's decision makers that their strategic goals are either unachievable or too costly. Further, the theory contends that this last form characterizes the terrorists' way of fighting today. Despite reinventing itself several times, the theory has several fundamental flaws that need to be exposed before it influences U.S. operational and strategic thinking. A critique of 4GW is both timely and important because examining the theory's assumptions exposes significant faults in other popular notions, such as the idea of nontrinitarian war, that might exert damaging influence over U.S. strategy and military doctrine. What we are really seeing in the war on terror and the campaign in Iraq and elsewhere is that the increased "dispersion and democratization of technology, information, and finance" brought about by globalization has given terrorist groups greater mobility and access worldwide. At this point, globalization seems to aid the nonstate actor more than the state, but states still play a central role in the support or defeat of terrorist groups or insurgencies. We would do well to abandon the theory of 4GW altogether, since it sheds very little, if any, light on this phenomenon.
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Getting Ready for a Nuclear-Ready Iran
Henry D. Sokolski Mr. and Patrick Clawson Mr.
As Iran edges closer to acquiring a nuclear bomb and its missiles extend an ever darker diplomatic shadow over the Middle East and Europe, Iran is likely to pose three threats. First, Iran could dramatically up the price of oil by interfering with the free passage of vessels in and through the Persian Gulf as it did during the l980s or by threatening to use terrorist proxies to target other states' oil facilities. Second, it could diminish American influence in the Gulf and Middle East by increasing the pace and scope of terrorist activities against Iraq, Saudi Arabia, other Gulf states, Israel, and other perceived supporters of the United States. Finally, it could become a nuclear proliferation model for the world and its neighbors (including many states that otherwise would be more dependent on the United States for their security) by continuing to insist that it has a right to make nuclear fuel under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and then withdrawing once it decides to get a bomb. To contain and deter Iran from posing such threats, the United States and its friends could take a number of steps: increasing military cooperation (particularly in the naval sphere) to deter Iranian naval interference; reducing the vulnerability of oil facilities in the Gulf outside of Iran to terrorist attacks, building and completing pipelines in the lower Gulf region that would allow most of the non-Iranian oil and gas in the Gulf to be exported without having to transit the Straits of Hormuz; diplomatically isolating Iran by calling for the demilitarization of the Straits and adjacent islands, creating country-neutral rules against Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty state members who are suspected of violating the treaty from getting nuclear assistance from other state members and making withdrawal from the treaty more difficult; encouraging Israel to set the pace of nuclear restraint in the region by freezing its large reactor at Dimona and calling on all other states that have large nuclear reactors to follow suit; and getting the Europeans to back targeted economic sanctions against Iran if it fails to shut down its most sensitive nuclear activities.
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Going to War With the Allies You Have: Allies, Counterinsurgency, and the War on Terrorism
Daniel Byman Dr.
Washington must recognize that its allies, including those in the security forces, are often the source of counterinsurgency problems as well as the heart of any solution. The author argues that the ally's structural problems and distinct interests have daunting implications for successful U.S. counterinsurgency efforts. The nature of regimes and of societies feeds an insurgency, but the United States is often hostage to its narrow goals with regard to counterinsurgency and thus becomes complicit in the host-nation's self-defeating behavior. Unfortunately, U.S. influence often is limited as the allies recognize that America's vital interests with regard to fighting al-Qa'ida-linked groups are likely to outweigh any temporary disgust or anger at an ally's brutality or failure to institute reforms. Training, military-to-military contacts, education programs, and other efforts to shape their COIN capabilities are beneficial, but the effects are likely to be limited at best.
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Chinese National Security: Decisionmaking Under Stress
Andrew Scobell Dr. and Larry M. Wortzel Dr.
This volume represents the fruits of a conference held at the U.S. Army War College in September 2005 on the theme of "Chinese Crisis Management." One of the major debates that emerged among participants was whether all the case studies under examination constituted crises in the eyes of China's leaders. The consensus was that not all of those incidents were perceived as crises. As a result the rubric of "decision making under stress" was adopted as presenters revised their papers for publication.
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Chinese National Security: Decisionmaking Under Stress
Andrew Scobell Dr. and Larry M. Wortzel Dr.
This volume represents the fruits of a conference held at the U.S. Army War College in September 2005 on the theme of "Chinese Crisis Management." One of the major debates that emerged among participants was whether all the case studies under examination constituted crises in the eyes of China's leaders. The consensus was that not all of those incidents were perceived as crises. As a result the rubric of "decision making under stress" was adopted as presenters revised their papers for publication.
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