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The Rise of iWar: Identity, Information, and the Individualization of Modern Warfare
Glenn J. Voelz Colonel
During a decade of global counterterrorism operations and two extended counterinsurgency campaigns, the United States was confronted with a new kind of adversary. Without uniforms, flags, and formations, the task of identifying and targeting these combatants represented an unprecedented operational challenge for which Cold War era doctrinal methods were largely unsuited. This monograph examines the doctrinal, technical, and bureaucratic innovations that evolved in response to these new operational challenges. It discusses the transition from a conventionally focused, Cold War-era targeting process to one optimized for combating networks and conducting identity-based targeting. It analyzes the policy decisions and strategic choices that were the catalysts of this change and concludes with an in depth examination of emerging technologies that are likely to shape how this mode of warfare will be waged in the future.
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Unlocking India’s Strategic Potential in Central Asia
Roman Muzalevsky Mr.
India’s impressive economic growth over the last two and a half decades has brought India’s role and interests to the forefront of global politics and statecraft. Importantly, it has put India into a comparative perspective with China, another aspiring Asian great power poised to stiffen competition for resources and influence worldwide. Both are resource-hungry and rapidly emerging powers seeking a new place and role in the global and regional orders. Both are also strategic rivals and consider their immediate neighborhood of Central Asia of growing strategic importance to their grand strategies. For now, China has outperformed India in Central Asia on all counts, securing the region as a key resource base and platform for power projection. India launched the “Connect Central Asia” policy in 2012 to shore up its presence, but the policy has not yet secured for it even a remotely comparable stake in the region due to aspects of India’s strategic culture and geopolitical constraints. Meanwhile, the U.S. strategic presence in the region leaves much to be desired. The United States is withdrawing from Afghanistan without major political or military gains from the conflict that has cost it and its partners a fortune in lives and money. The future of its military infrastructure and relationships with countries in Central-South Asia is a big unknown, with regional partners equating the U.S. military pullout with its waning commitment to support the regional economic and security order. To help unlock their strategic potentials, Delhi and Washington should join forces and cultivate a strategic partnership that makes Central Asia its major pillar. Until then, neither Delhi, nor Washington is likely to succeed.
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Cyber Defense: An International View
Keir Giles Mr. and Kim Hartmann Ms.
An overview of four different national approaches to cyber defense are discussed: those of Norway, Estonia, Germany and Sweden. While providing a useful guide for engagement with the relevant governmental and other organizations in each of these countries, the Paper also compares and contrasts the advantages and drawbacks of each national approach.
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Developing Emerging Leaders: The Bush School and the Legacy of the 41st President
Joseph R. Cerami Dr.
The main focus of this monograph is to synthesize the top research on leadership and leader development and to highlight the needs for developing individuals committed to careers of service across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. The foundation for the research is based on ideas drawn from leadership and management literature, government doctrine and reports, think tank studies, and case studies. The Army has long sought to be innovative in its leader development. Most recently, the Army’s Human Development White Paper supports TRADOC Pamphlet 5250301, The U.S. Army Operating Concept, “Win in a Complex World” document (2014), by emphasizing the Army’s desire to become the nation’s leader in “human development.” In short, the Army Operating Concept requires that emerging leaders must understand the political-social-military environmental context, the defense-diplomatic-development (the 3-Ds) policies of the U.S. Government, and their roles as emerging leaders and followers in a variety of operational settings. Collaboration, not just within the Army, but across government agencies will be crucial to success in this complex operating environment.
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The Ethics of Drone Strikes: Does Reducing the Cost of Conflict Encourage War?
Marcus Schulzke Dr. and James Igoe Walsh Dr.
Armed unmanned aerial vehicles—combat drones—have fundamentally altered the ways the United States conducts military operations aimed at countering insurgent and terrorist organizations. Drone technology is on track to become an increasingly important part of the country’s arsenal, as numerous unmanned systems are in development and will likely enter service in the future. Concerned citizens, academics, journalists, nongovernmental organizations, and policymakers have raised questions about the ethical consequences of drones and issued calls for their military use to be strictly regulated. This level of concern is evidence that the future of drone warfare not only hinges on technical innovations, but also on careful analysis of the moral and political dimensions of war. Regardless of whether drones are effective weapons, it would be difficult to sanction their use if they undermine the legitimacy of U.S. military forces or compromise the foundations of democratic government.
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The Limits of Offshore Balancing
Hal Brands Dr.
Is offshore balancing the right grand strategy for America? Is it time for Washington to roll back the vast system of overseas security commitments and forward military deployments that have anchored its international posture since World War II? This monograph argues that the answer to these questions is no. Offshore balancing represents the preferred grand strategy among many leading international-relations “realists,” who argue that significant geopolitical retrenchment can actually improve America’s strategic position while slashing the costs of its foreign policy. The reality, however, is rather different. The probable benefits of offshore balancing—both financial and geopolitical—are frequently exaggerated, while the likely disadvantages and dangers are more severe than its proponents acknowledge. In all likelihood, adopting this strategy would not allow America to achieve more security and influence at a lower price. The more plausible results would be to dissipate U.S. influence, to court heightened insecurity and instability, and to expose the nation to greater long-range risks and costs.
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Duffer’s Shoal: A Strategic Dream of the Pacific Command Area of Responsibility
Russell N. Bailey Colonel, Bob Dixon Lieutenant Colonel, Derek J. O'Malley Lieutenant Colonel, and Christopher J. Parsons Colonel (NZ)
This strategic assessment seeks to go beyond a traditional comparative analysis of the military, technological, political, cultural, and economic factors governing the relationships and capabilities of the Asia Pacific environment. To make sense of the intrinsic complexities unique to this region, we endeavor to broaden our view and rely on a tool often overlooked in government studies: imagination. Moreover, we aim to offer a strategic document that is readable, instructive, and provocative. Pulling from a well-referenced piece of military teaching, this assessment borrows a learning concept first employed in 1904 by Major General Sir Ernest Dunlop Swinton in "The Defence of Duffer’s Drift." This fictional story describes the plight of young Lieutenant Backsight Forethought as he commands a 50-man platoon tasked to hold a tactically critical piece of land called Duffer’s Drift. The story unfolds in a series of six dreams, where the blunders of the unwitting lieutenant lead to disaster. As the dreams progress, he harnesses the lessons of each of his failures, and by applying these lessons, his platoon ultimately defends Duffer’s Drift.
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Terrorist and Insurgent Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Use, Potentials, and Military Implications
Robert J. Bunker Dr.
This manuscript focuses on the present threat posed by terrorist and insurgent use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as well as associated future threat potentials. This work presents a counterintuitive analysis in the sense that armed drones are typically viewed as a component of America’s conventional warfighting prowess—not a technology that would be used against U.S. troops deployed overseas or against civilians back home. The emerging threat of such UAV use against the United States is investigated, and the unique analysis and creative approach related to the threat scenario variants generated are very informative. Hopefully, the larger implications posed by this analysis related to semi-autonomous and autonomous UAV type robotic systems will be of benefit.
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Using Target Audience Analysis to Aid Strategic Level Decisionmaking
Steve Tatham Dr.
The author explains how sophisticated social science research and behavioral profiling can be used to warn us of impeding issues and how that information might be used by senior strategy makers as a tool for testing and refining strategy. He makes a compelling case that the science of Target Audience Analysis (TAA) is now so well advanced that it must become a key component of future strategic decisionmaking. The author views social media as just another communication conduit, and sees this as a continuum of wrong activities being undertaken. In Iraq and Afghanistan, he saw how big public relations and marketing companies cost the U.S. taxpayer millions of dollars in ultimately failed communication and propaganda campaigns. Social media, he argues, has become yet another blank checkbook for companies who rely on creative energy rather than empirical understanding to produce communications campaigns. Instead, he argues for far greater resource in TAA and greater understanding by federal agencies of what is and is not possible or desirable in their communication efforts. To this end, he looks in particular at the U.S. Agency for International Development relief work in Pakistan and argues that the communication objectives set at the start of the projects are almost unattainable, even naive in their presumptions.
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A Hard Look at Hard Power: Assessing the Defense Capabilities of Key U.S. Allies and Security Partners
Gary J. Schmitt Mr.
Since World War II, a key element of America’s grand strategy has been its worldwide network of strategic allies and partners. The network has provided the United States an invaluable global presence, enhanced deterrence against adversaries and, when called upon, provided men and materiel to help fight wars. However, following the end of the Cold War, less attention has been paid to America’s allies, especially their “hard power” capabilities, despite the United States and its allies going to war more frequently than before. This volume addresses that gap, providing a holistic account of allied hard power and, in turn, the ability – and, indirectly, the willingness – of those same partners to use force independently or in concert with the United States and other allies.
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China's Rise and Reconfiguration of Central Asia's Geopolitics: A Case for U.S. "Pivot" to Eurasia
Roman Muzalevsky Mr.
China’s global rise has prompted numerous discussions and studies of this historically monumental phenomenon and its implications for the world. On the one hand, China’s emergence as a global player has generated a lot of optimism for global development and economic convergence. On the other, it has spurred concerns about possible collisions on the world stage as existing and emerging powers seek to retain and redesign their roles and influences. Related opportunities and fears have been especially pronounced in countries neighboring China, including in Central Asia where the newly independent and post-Soviet republics face a possibility of yet another imperial expansion due to strategic advances of the “Middle Kingdom.”
As the strongest power on the planet, the United States has a major stake in China’s and the region’s future because both directly affect the U.S. global standing and the U.S.-led global economic and security order. In this insightful and forward-looking work, Mr. Roman Muzalevsky, a widely published analyst and author of Central Asia’s Shrinking Connectivity Gap: Implications for U.S. Strategy and From Frozen Ties to Strategic Engagement: U.S.-Iranian Relationship in 2030, assesses China’s global rise through the prism of geopolitical and geo-economic forces sweeping through Central Asia. Mr. Muzalevsky concludes that the ability of the United States to “stay relevant globally” hinges on its capacity to boost its lacking regional strategic presence in Central Asia.
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Reassessing the Barriers to Islamic Radicalization in Kazakhstan
Roger N. McDermott Mr. and Zhulduz Baizakova Ms.
Central Asia has been experiencing an increase or activation of radical Islamic movements over the last decade or so. These complex processes include increasing urbanization, institutional and individual corruption, the growing gap between rich and poor, the inability of the state to provide security, corruption in the law enforcement agencies, poor functioning of the state religious bodies, inefficient power structures, limited scope for citizens to influence decisionmaking, all which result in lower trust in the authorities as well as other factors. The authoritarian regimes of Central Asia gave rise to boiling anger and discontent among their populations. For people unable to defend their rights and interests, religion might be seen as a way out of this situation. Kazakhstan, the most stable and safe country in the region, witnessed a series of alleged extremist terrorist acts since 2011. Historic roots and the identity of “Kazakh Islam,” the nature of connection and influence reaching Kazakhstan from neighboring North Caucasus and Afghanistan and how it affects radicalization of the youth, and reasons for misleading assumptions are analyzed so as to identify how Kazakhstan is viewed from the outside world. State structures and the role of the state overseeing issues regarding Islam and its practices, with attention to banned extremist groups, their specifics, and the country’s experience of political violence in 2011-12, as well as the state’s response to the acts of violence, are discussed.
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The Chinese People's Liberation Army in 2025
Roy Kamphausen Mr. and David Lai Dr.
This volume is of special relevance in light of the profound changes occurring within the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). China’s desire to develop a military commensurate with its diverse interests is both legitimate and understandable. The challenge for U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) is to understand how China will employ this growing military capability in support of its interests. The book addresses the uncertainty surrounding the potential direction of the PLA by examining three distinct focus areas: domestic, external, and technological drivers of PLA modernization; alternative futures for the PLA; and, implications for the region, world, and U.S.-China relations. The analysis provides an insightful perspective into the factors shaping and propelling the PLA’s modernization, its potential future orientation ranging from internally focused to globally focused, and how the PLA’s choices may impact China’s relations with its neighbors and the world.
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The Limits of Military Officers’ Duty to Obey Civilian Orders: A Neo-Classical Perspective
Robert E. Atkinson, Mr.
This monograph offers a neo-classically republican perspective on a perennial problem of civilian/military relations: limitations on military officers’ obligation to obey civilian authorities. All commentators agree that military officers are generally obliged—morally, professionally, and legally—to obey civilian orders, even as they agree that this rule of obedience must admit of exceptions. Commentators tend to differ, however, on the basis and breadth of these exceptions. Following Samuel Huntington’s classic analysis in The Soldier and the State, this monograph shows that disagreement about the breadth of the exceptions tends to assume that their bases—moral, professional, and legal—are incommensurable. It suggests, to the contrary, that all defensible exceptions to the rule of military obedience, like that rule itself, derive from a single neo-classical, Huntingtonian standard, binding on civilian authorities and military officers alike: the common good. This perspective promises significantly to reduce the range of disagreement over the limits of military obedience both in theory and in practice.
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Iraq’s Shia Warlords and Their Militias: Political and Security Challenges and Options
Norman Cigar Dr.
As America’s de facto co-belligerents who often share the same battlespace in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the presence and activity of Iraq’s Shia warlords and their militias have an impact on U.S. interests and policies at both the strategic and operational levels. The objective of this monograph is to provide a better understanding of the Shia militia phenomenon and to highlight the factors with which U.S. policymakers and U.S. Army planners and commanders will have to deal with respect to operations in Iraq.
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Russian Ballistic Missile Defense: Rhetoric and Reality
Keir Giles Mr.
Russia's actions in Ukraine are not the only challenge to relations with the United States. U.S. plans for ballistic missile defense (BMD) capability in Europe have led to aggressive rhetoric from Moscow, which continues at the time of this writing even though attention in the West is focused almost exclusively on Ukraine. Russia’s strenuous opposition to the U.S. European Phased Adaptive Approach plans is based on claims that this capability is intended to compromise Russia’s nuclear deterrent capability. Most of these claims have been dismissed as groundless. Yet, all discussion of the subject highlights the U.S. current and proposed deployments, and entirely ignores Russia’s own missile interception systems, which are claimed to have comparable capability. Russia protests that U.S. missiles pose a potential threat to strategic stability, and has made belligerent threats of direct military action to prevent their deployment. But no mention at all is made of the strategic implications of Russia’s own systems, despite the fact that if the performance and capabilities claimed for them by Russian sources are accurate, they pose at least as great a threat to deterrence as do those of the United States. This monograph aims to describe Russia’s claims for its missile defense systems, and, where possible, to assess the likelihood that these claims are true. This will form a basis for considering whether discussion of Russian capabilities should be an integral part of future conversations with Russia on the deployment of U.S. and allied BMD assets.
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The New Russian Engagement with Latin America: Strategic Position, Commerce, and Dreams of the Past
R. Evan Ellis Dr.
In many ways, Russia’s expanded engagement in Latin America as a response to escalating tension over the Ukraine was a repetition of its answer to U.S. involvement in the 2008 conflict in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. In the latter conflict, the U.S. deployed naval forces to the Black Sea in response to Russian support for the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia countered with a series of actions in Latin America, including sending nuclear-capable Tu-160 bombers to Venezuela, from where they conducted symbolically-charged flights around the Caribbean. A month later, a four-ship Russian naval flotilla deployed to the area to conduct military exercises with the Venezuelan navy before making port calls in Cuba and Nicaragua. In November 2008, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev traveled to Latin America to participate in the leadership summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, then subsequently hosted both Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in Moscow. Three months later, Bolivian President Evo Morales also traveled to Russia, followed in November 2009 by Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa. Very little beyond journalistic accounts have been written to examine contemporary Russian activities in Latin America and the Caribbean. As Russia’s reassertion of its global position and associated tensions with the United States proceed, a broad understanding of Russia in the Americas becomes ever more important, both as a question of U.S. national security and as an important dynamic shaping the global geopolitical environment. This monograph focuses on the character of the ongoing Russian re-engagement with Latin America and the Caribbean and its implications for the U.S.
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The Strategic Importance of the Global Oil Market
Leif Rosenberger Dr.
This Letort Paper analyzes the new global oil market. It shows how the price of oil reflects the confluence of four interrelated factors. First, the Paper explores why the supply of oil has been soaring in the world. Second, it explains why the demand for oil has been relatively weak. Third, it discusses the role that Wall Street plays in moving the price of oil. Fourth, it examines the importance of the U.S. dollar in determining the prices of oil. As a result of these factors, oil prices are relatively low. The Paper also explains how these low oil prices produce winners and losers at home and abroad. In addition, it explores where oil prices are likely to go in 2016 without policy intervention. It also recommends ways to make oil prices less volatile.
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The Strategic Lessons Unlearned from Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan: Why the ANSF Will Not Hold, and the Implications for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan
M. Chris Mason Dr.
The wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan were lost before they began, not on the battlefields, where the United States won every tactical engagement, but at the strategic level of war. In each case, the U.S. Government attempted to create a Western-style democracy in countries which were decades at least away from being nations with the sociopolitical capital necessary to sustain democracy and, most importantly, accept it as a legitimate source of governance. The expensive indigenous armies created in the image of the U.S. Army lacked both the motivation to fight for illegitimate governments in Saigon, Baghdad, and Kabul and a cause that they believed was worth dying for, while their enemies in the field clearly did not. This book examines the Afghan National Security Forces in historical and political contexts, explains why they will fail at the tactical, operational and strategic levels of war, why they cannot and will not succeed in holding the southern half of the country, and what will happen in Afghanistan year-by-year from 2015 to 2019. Finally, it examines what the critical lessons unlearned of these conflicts are for U.S. military leaders, why these fundamental political lessons seem to remain unlearned, and how the strategic mistakes of the past can be avoided in the future.
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From Cooperation to Competition: The Future of U.S.-Russian Relations
Gregory K. Anderson, Gert-Jan Kooji, Karen L. T. Briggman, Joseph E. Hilbert, Christopher L. Lay, and James C. McNaughton John R. Deni
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From Frozen Ties to Strategic Engagement: U.S.-Iranian Relationship in 2030
Roman Muzalevsky Mr.
The nuclear talks between Iran and P5+1 following the most stringent sanctions against Iran to date have opened new prospects for relaxation of tensions between Tehran and the West and for a U.S.-Iranian détente in the long run. The coming to power of new presidential administrations in both the United States and Iran, the additional sanctions, major geo-economic and geopolitical trends, and U.S.-Iranian economic and security cooperation imperatives all contributed to these dynamics. Some view the talks as a new beginning in U.S.-Iranian ties, which could herald the emergence of a U.S.-Iranian strategic relationship in the next 15 years. This work has developed three such possible strategic relationships: 1) strategic engagement involving a nuclear weapons-capable Iran; 2) comprehensive cooperation following a “Grand Bargain”; and, 3) incremental strategic engagement after a nuclear deal. These relationships deliberately focus on constructive engagement, skipping the status quo and a strike on Iran as two other possible outcomes. If they pull it off by 2030, a U.S.-Iranian détente would advance external integration of the region, aiding the U.S. strategy of fostering global connectivity. It would promote resolution of conflicts and development and reconstruction of countries ravaged by wars and sectarian violence. It would also enable Washington to deploy select military assets to other locales to address other challenges while repurposing remaining forces to face new threats in the Greater Middle East.
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Gold, Blood, and Power: Finance and War Through the Ages
James Lacey Mr.
This monograph presents a survey of the crucial link between state (national) power and finance from the ancient era through to the present day. Cicero once said that the true sinew of war was “endless streams of money.” His observation remains as accurate today as it was when Rome first began constructing its Empire. Unfortunately, too many historical works leave this crucial underpinning link out of their narratives. Even those that do discuss economic and financial concerns typically miss the fact that the size of a state’s economy often has little to do with its capacity to wield influence on the global stage. Much more crucial, in this regard, is the possession of an administrative system capable of efficiently mobilizing a state’s resources. It was such an administrative apparatus that allowed Britain to punch far above its weight in the international arena for centuries. As a survey, this work is far from comprehensive, but the author hopes it will provide a stepping stone for a much-needed in-depth examination of the topic.
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The Gulf Moment: Arab Relations Since 2011
Florence Gaub Dr.
This monograph examines the impact that the “Arab Spring” has had on how Arab states relate to each other post-regime change and post-Islamist electoral victory. It shows that the region is undergoing a profound change as some traditional regional policy actors are paralyzed by internal turmoil (such as Syria and Egypt), while others do not have a regional ambition (such as Algeria and Morocco). The region has therefore entered a Gulf moment where key decisions pertaining to the region’s future are now taken in Riyadh, Doha, and Abu Dhabi. From having once been mere bystanders of regional politics, the Gulf States have moved to become players with both the ambition and capability to shape regional dynamics. As the ripple effects of their 2014 rift show, these dynamics will have a wider Arab impact.
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Another Brick in the Wall: The Israeli Experience in Missile Defense
Jean-Loup Samaan Dr.
View the Executive Summary
For the last 4 decades, Israel has been challenged by the rise of ballistic arsenals in the Middle East. If, at first, the country kept relying on its traditional offensive doctrines, it eventually developed missile defense programs in the early-1980s through U.S.-Israel cooperation and then in the 2000s with the building of its iconic Iron Dome. This Israeli experience in missile defense reveals crucial lessons on the military adaptation to both new threats and new remedies that have direct implications for the United States and its allies.
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