Oct. 22, 2020

PRISM Vol. 9, No. 1 (October 2020)

Though Great Power Competition (or GPC) dominates the current national security discourse, the United States is a global power with global interests. In addition to GPC, PRISM V.9,N.1 offers insight on the future of NATO, on U.S. engagement in Africa, and on emerging technology domains of competition such as quantum computing, 5G technology, and influence operations. Read American and South East Asian perspectives on competition with China, as well as Huawei’s rejoinder to "The Worst Possible Day: U.S. Telecommunications and Huawei," from PRISM V.8,N.3.

Oct. 21, 2020

China’s Strategic Objectives in a Post-COVID-19 World

On 1 October 2019, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) celebrated its 70th birthday, thus marking another important landmark of modern China under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In commemorating the event, the Chinese government held a grand military parade with some 15,000 troops, more than 160 aircraft, and 580 active weapon systems during the event, including the latest generation nuclear missile systems such as the Dongfeng-41 mobile intercontinental ballistic missile. As the South China Morning Post reported, citing one insider, “the parade, which aims to showcase President Xi’s achievement in military modernization and reforms in both hardware and software will carry a lot of political meaning.” Given ongoing social protests in Hong Kong and problems in western societies at that time (such as Brexit talks in the UK and political opposition to President Trump in the United States) the contrast could not have been more stark: A powerful and prosperous China celebrates its international success while many western societies fail and flounder amidst their own domestic problems.

Oct. 21, 2020

The Essence of the Strategic Competition with China

U.S. national security strategy and defense policy have come to focus on China as the primary emphasis in the “strategic competition” outlined by recent U.S. strategy documents. Outside government, an avalanche of recent reports and essays lays out the China challenge in sometimes fervent terms, depicting an ideologically threatening revisionist state with malign intentions. As the Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf put it recently, “Across-the-board rivalry with China is becoming an organizing principle of U.S. economic, foreign and security policies.

Oct. 21, 2020

Rediscovering a Strategic Purpose for NATO

Watford is at first sight an unlikely place for a gathering of world leaders. This nondescript suburb to the north of London found itself briefly in the media spotlight one chilly afternoon in December 2019. Boris Johnson had taken time out from his election campaign just before polling day to host a meeting of NATO leaders. It was intended to be a signal of allied unity in the 70th anniversary year of the 1949 Washington Treaty.

Oct. 21, 2020

The Evolution of Authoritarian Digital Influence: Grappling with the New Normal

As the world contends with the wide-ranging ramifications of the global COVID-19 pandemic, it has been simultaneously beset by the global information crisis, which mimics the shape of the pandemic itself in its viral effects across huge segments of the global population.

Oct. 21, 2020

Quantum Computing’s Cyber-Threat to National Security

Quantum computing has the potential to bring tremendous advancements to science, including biology, chemistry, physics, and many other disciplines. The practical application will empower a stronger defense against future pandemics similar to COVID-19, not only in the acceleration of the development of vaccines and treatments, but also in optimizing currently unsolvable logistics problems such as how to deliver and route vaccines. In computer science, the “traveling salesman problem” shows it is impractical to find the optimal shortest path to visit cities once the list grows to even a few dozen. This same challenge in delivering vaccines to rural areas during a pandemic is exactly the type of problem that quantum computing will be well suited to solve.

Oct. 21, 2020

No Competition Without Presence: Should the U.S. Leave Africa?

American blood and treasure should be prioritized to secure U.S. national interests. The United States military is not the world’s police force, and where others can share the burden, the United States should add only its unique capabilities. But defending U.S. interests extends even into faraway lands, including Africa. While Africa may never be a top national security concern for the United States, a convergence of gains by state and nonstate actors alike there affect U.S. security and economic interests globally. Yet the Pentagon’s recent effort to rebalance its resources against great power competitors—especially China and Russia—after almost two decades of counterterrorism dominance places the commitment of U.S. military resources to Africa in question. Drawing down too far militarily in Africa risks losing influence on the continent to those very same state actors, erasing hard–fought counterterrorism gains, and compromising U.S. global interests.

Oct. 21, 2020

International Competition to Provide Security Force Assistance in Africa: Civil-Military Relations Matter

Western states increasingly tackle the problem of state fragility in Africa through the delivery of security force assistance (SFA). What is SFA and why does it matter?  Broadly speaking, SFA is a term used to describe the provision of military aid, advisors, and resources to a fragile state, so that the armed forces of that state can provide security in support of stability. SFA typically consists of the deployment of small numbers of military advisors and resources to a fragile or weak state to build effective armed forces. However, such efforts are often overly technical and rarely address the political and institutional problems that create insecurity and the fragmented security organizations of that state (e.g. police, military, intelligence, etc.). Worse, in some cases, such SFA has only created the veneer of military effectiveness, known as the Fabergé Egg army problem; an expensively built military, but easily broken by insurgents.

Oct. 21, 2020

Don’t Trust Anyone: The ABCs of Building Resilient Telecommunications Networks

The January issue of Prism carried an article titled “The Worst Possible Day”1 that included a discussion of the implications for the United States of banning Chinese company Huawei from networks that the United States and its allies rely on for national security-related communications. A supporter of the ban, the author, Thomas Donahue, emphasized the critical importance of using equipment from trusted sources in U.S. telecom infrastructure and that of its allies. He argued that the consequences of not doing so could be catastrophic when the United States needs to project power, or convincingly threaten the use of force, such as during a military conflict. The article concluded that the United States needs to seriously consider how to assure the use of trusted alternatives to Huawei equipment, whether by supporting the development of a U.S.-based manufacturer or consortium, or spending tens of billions of dollars to acquire either or both the manufacturers Nokia and Ericsson, or investing significantly in the two Nordic firms.

Oct. 21, 2020

Is China Expansionist?

The Chinese soldier who pushed the Indian Colonel Santosh Babu (who tragically died) and thereby triggered the violent clash between Chinese and Indian soldiers in mid-June 2020 should be court-martialed. Both sides suffered casualties, the worst since 1975. This one push by one Chinese soldier has set back China-India relations severely, undermining all the good work that had been done over several years by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Premier Wen Jiabao, as well as by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping. Equally importantly, it has reinforced a growing belief, especially in the western world, that as China’s economy becomes stronger and stronger, China will abandon its “peaceful rise” and behave as a militarily expansionist power. This could well happen. It would be naive to believe otherwise. However, a deep study of Chinese history and culture would also show that the continuation of a peaceful rise is equally plausible.

Oct. 21, 2020

An Interview with General Joseph Votel, USA (Ret)

First and foremost, we have largely blunted the platform that was used to attack our country on 9/11, and our military operations there have ensured that the area cannot be used as a location from which to attack our citizens or our homeland. We certainly have accomplished that. I think we have also provided the opportunity for the Afghan people to move forward in their own way; to exercise self-rule, for example. It has certainly been a very difficult path and it will continue to be as we move forward. It is not an easy situation, but I think we have provided the opportunity for them to become a more stable part of the Central Asian scene, and hopefully not be a platform from which terrorist organizations or other elements of instability can continue to impact the people of Afghanistan or others in the region.

Oct. 21, 2020

Exercise of Power

I first met Secretary Gates in the summer of 2006, when he was President of Texas A&M and had been invited to the Pentagon to meet with my boss, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld. I was a newly selected 3-star Vice Admiral, and knew all about him, of course, as a career CIA officer who went on to lead the Agency before retiring and heading into academe, first as Dean of the Bush School and then as President at Texas A&M. When he came into my small office outside the vast Secretary of Defense office, I started to usher him in immediately, but he spent several minutes asking me about myself, how long I had been with Secretary Rumsfeld, where I had been before my current job. It was friendly and engaging conversation, but you could feel that spymaster’s gaze sizing you up and filing the conversation away. I thought to myself, I would like to work for him someday—never considering it would happen. I sure wasn’t going to get out of the Navy and move to Texas.

Oct. 21, 2020

The Return of the Russian Leviathan

Sergei Medvedev, Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, is a fox; a thoroughly modern, or perhaps I should say, post-modern fox. Isaiah Berlin would understand. The British historian of ideas wrote a paradigmatic essay on Russian literature, “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” in which he contrasted Tolstoy the fox, with Dostoevsky the hedgehog. As Berlin explained, the hedgehog knows one big thing, but the fox knows many things.

Oct. 21, 2020

The Dragons and the Snakes

Every few years David Kilcullen publishes an insightful book that inspires new thinking in the U.S. armed forces and becomes a standard reference for all manner of strategies, operational plans, and concepts. The Australian anthropologist, former army officer, and conflict zone observer has a unique talent for capturing global dynamics in warfare and explaining them to a wide audience. In 2009, it was The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One. In 2013, it was Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla. His newest, The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West, repeats the feat in a timely book for the re-emerging multipolar world.

Oct. 15, 2020

America and the World: A History of U.S. Diplomacy and Foreign Policy

The US Department of Defense (DoD) Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) program hosted a conversation on October 15, 2020 as a part of its SMA INSS/PRISM Speaker Series, featuring Honorable Robert Zoellick and moderator General (Ret.) David Petraeus.

Sept. 23, 2020

Geoeconomics and the Emerging World Order: The Power of the U.S. Dollar

The US Department of Defense (DoD) Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) program hosted a speaker session on September 23, 2020 as a part of its SMA INSS/PRISM Speaker Series, entitled “Geoeconomics and the Emerging World Order: The Power of the U.S. Dollar.” This brief was presented by the Honorable Jack Lew (Former United States Secretary of the Treasury, White House Chief of Staff, and Director of the Office of Management and Budget).

Sept. 10, 2020

Joint Force Quarterly 98 (3rd Quarter, July 2020)

As I write this column from my table far away from my NDU Press office during the pandemic, I am wondering about the scope of it all, as I am sure many of you are. Was COVID-19 unexpected? Unprecedented? Did we all think it would not happen? One thing I am certain about—such times bring out the need for capability and teamwork in the harshest of conditions. While not a typical environment for the military, often when we see the need to team up in ways that might not be traditional to work out a “wicked problem” like this one, I wonder if this situation is exactly what jointness is for.

Sept. 10, 2020

Surrogate Warfare

What do you get when two Middle Eastern subject matter experts decide to update the age-old concept of proxy warfare and explore the potential of machines to serve as surrogates that substitute or supplement a nation’s formal military forces? The answer is an ambitious and useful examination of how war is changing in light of emerging technologies, such as autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones) and cyber weapons able to leverage artificial intelligence (AI). Members of the joint force willing to brave the occasional academese passages on Clausewitzian theory will find gems of insight throughout Surrogate Warfare.

Sept. 10, 2020

The New Rules of War and The Dragons and the Snakes

It is said that generals always want to refight the last war. Often scholars are willing to do the same. Martin Van Creveld’s Transformation of War (Free Press, 1991) was heavily influenced by the painful intifadas in his native Israel. Mary Kaldor’s New and Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era (Stanford University Press, 1999) was based on the criminal warlords of the ethnic Balkan clashes. In his The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (Knopf, 2007), British general Rupert Smith declared that war, as he was taught, no longer existed and drew heavily on the breakup of the former Yugoslavia and his tour in Bosnia. Conventional warfare was thrown into history’s dustbin and “wars amongst the people” presented as a novel paradigm shift.

Sept. 10, 2020

The Duke of Marlborough and the Paradox of Campaigning in Long Wars

The Duke of Marlborough was a commander for the ages. For 10 campaigns during the War of the Spanish Succession, stretching from 1702 to 1711, he was never defeated on the field of battle. However, the war ended in the failure of the Grand Alliance’s war aim to prevent Louis XIV’s Bourbon dynasty from taking the throne of Spain. Marlborough’s campaign in 1711 provides a potent source of understanding for joint military commanders and practitioners on the complexities of campaigning.

Sept. 10, 2020

Leveraging Return on Investment: A Model for Joint Force Campaign Plan Assessments

On August 2, 2019, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper informed the military Services of a department-wide fiscal program review to better align the future joint force toward a near-peer threat environment, a process similar to the “night court” proceedings he held during his tenure as the Secretary of the Army. The directive memo states, “No reform is too small, too bold, or too controversial to be considered.”

Sept. 10, 2020

The Psychology of Jointness

No military in the world can employ the forces of different services in such an integrated and interdependent manner as the U.S. military, and we can attribute this hard-won level of competence, accumulated over decades, to reforms stemming from the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 (GNA). These changes led the U.S. military to become the most powerful force in the world by compelling it to become the most joint force in the world.

Joint Force Quarterly 98 Sept. 10, 2020

The "Politics" of Security Cooperation and Security Assistance

In 1955 a book titled The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640–1945 was published; it would soon become a landmark study of civil-military relations. Gordon Craig’s unassuming tome became widely influential within and outside the civil-military relations field and spurred the publication of what has become a wide literature on the politics of armies (particularly those of the United Kingdom, Italy, Russia, and France) that takes a different approach to our conventional understanding of civil-military relations.

Sept. 10, 2020

Joint Doctrine Updates

Joint Doctrine Updates.

Sept. 10, 2020

Preparing Senior Officers and Their Counterparts for Interagency National Security Decisionmaking

America will be better off if uniformed officers know more about interagency decisionmaking and their civilian colleagues understand more about the military and how it is schooled. The answer to the problems at hand is education writ large, but the critical part will be in determining how, when, and where this education takes place.

Sept. 10, 2020

Evaluating Strategies: Six Criteria for National Security Professionals

It is relatively easy to examine past strategies and evaluate whether they were successful; it is much more difficult to evaluate current and proposed strategies to determine whether they are likely to be effective. This article briefly discusses some of the proposals in business literature for evaluating corporate strategies and incorporates many of these ideas into six criteria for evaluating security strategies.

Sept. 10, 2020

Disinformation and Disease: Operating in the Information Environment During Foreign Humanitarian Assistance Missions

Previous disease outbreaks involving narrative exploitation by the former Soviet Union, Russia, and Iran highlight the consequences of failing to identify and counter misinformation and disinformation. The expected rise in disease- and disaster-related FHA missions demands interagency community and Department of Defense (DOD) coordination to mitigate risks. This analysis illustrates the threat posed by adversaries and the necessity of building expertise to synchronize information-related capabilities for counternarrative planning.

Sept. 10, 2020

Accelerating Military Innovation: Lessons from China and Israel

The U.S. military’s technological advantage is under threat. Since the end of the Cold War, the military has been largely occupied with relatively low-tech counterterrorism and counterinsurgency conflicts against non-peer adversaries. Much U.S. defense research and development (R&D) during that time focused on delivering incremental innovations to address capability gaps in existing systems and warfighting concepts. As a result, many of today’s frontline systems are upgraded versions of those used in the Gulf War almost 30 years ago.

Sept. 10, 2020

Structuring for Competition: Rethinking the Area of Responsibility Concept for Great Power Competition

Even if we can create and master new tools capable of dominating today’s battlespace, just having the best technology will not be enough: Winning conflicts today requires changes to the ways DOD organizes and employs forces. Ultimately, if the United States fails to take a comprehensive approach toward adapting to the challenges of the information age and adversarial competition, then we will cede our national security advantage.

Sept. 10, 2020

Executive Summary

As I write this column from my table far away from my NDU Press office during the pandemic, I am wondering about the scope of it all, as I am sure many of you are. Was COVID-19 unexpected? Unprecedented? Did we all think it would not happen? One thing I am certain about—such times bring out the need for capability and teamwork in the harshest of conditions. While not a typical environment for the military, often when we see the need to team up in ways that might not be traditional to work out a “wicked problem” like this one, I wonder if this situation is exactly what jointness is for.

Aug. 19, 2020

GeoEconomics and the Emerging World Order

Held on August 19, 2020, this lecture and discussion featured Dr. Joseph E. Stiglitz, University Professor at Columbia University. Dr. Stiglitz is winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics (2001) and in 2011 was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. The session was chaired by PRISM Editor, Michael Miklaucic.

Aug. 12, 2020

The Micromanagement Myth and Mission Command: Making the Case for Oversight of Military Operations

This paper argues that leaders, historians, and pundits have grossly exaggerated civilian micromanagement of the U.S. military, resulting in less effective civilian and military oversight of military operations and a reduced likelihood that military operations will achieve strategic results.

July 28, 2020

Beyond Borders: PLA Command and Control of Overseas Operations

China’s latest round of military reforms is driven primarily by Xi Jinping’s ambition to reshape the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to improve its ability to win informationized wars and to ensure that it remains loyal to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The reforms are unprecedented in their ambition and in the scale and scope of the organizational changes.

July 7, 2020

Latin America 2020: Challenges to U.S. National Security Interests

U.S. national security interests in Latin America are undermined by three key threats: transnational criminal organizations, which exploit weak levels of governance across the majority of countries in the region; extra-regional actors, which fill the vacuum created by U.S. distraction and inattention to its neighborhood; and finally, a number of regional political actors embracing ideological positions opposed to open political systems and free markets, which undermine progress toward democratic governance and stability.

July 2, 2020

Crafting Strategy for Irregular Warfare: A Framework for Analysis and Action (1st Edition)

This edition has been revised and updated. See the 2nd Edition for the most recent version.

June 25, 2020

System Overload: Can China’s Military Be Distracted in a War over Taiwan?

In his 2019 New Year’s Day address, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping issued a stern warning to Taiwan: “We make no promise to abandon the use of force, and retain the option of taking all necessary measures.” At the same time, he warned that force could also be used to forestall “intervention by external forces,” referring to the United States. While designed to intimidate recalcitrant Taiwan and U.S. leaders—and appeal to domestic nationalists—rather than to signal an imminent confrontation, Xi’s comments underscored the very real military threats that China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) poses to Taiwan. As the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency notes, Taiwan has been the “primary driver” of PLA modernization for decades, spurring the development of short- and long-range ballistic missiles, amphibious and airborne units, and other capabilities targeted at Taiwan and intervening U.S. forces. Those threats have become more worrisome as the PLA conducts large-scale exercises and provocative bomber flights around the island. The PLA’s improved warfighting capabilities have contributed to China’s near-term cross–Taiwan Strait objective—deterring Taiwan independence. Understanding the costs that a war would impose on the island, few but the most die-hard Taiwan independence activists have supported overt moves toward de jure independence.

June 12, 2020

PRISM Vol. 8, No. 4 (June 2020)

As the National Security and National Defense Strategies state, the world has entered a phase of great power competition in which the United States is confronted by a rising China and a resurgent Russia. PRISM V.8,N.4 offers perspective on this competition with articles by Sir Lawrence Freedman, the Honorable Joseph Nye, and the Honorable Andrew Natsios.

June 11, 2020

Full Spectrum Dominance: Irregular Warfare and the War on Terror

One might assume that a history of America’s 21st century turn to irregular warfare would have little to offer policymakers grappling with the challenge of great power competition. In Full Spectrum Dominance: Irregular Warfare and the War on Terror however, Maria Ryan offers a meticulous account not of how the United States might organize itself for futuristic high-tech warfare or geopolitical competition, but, rather, how it came to elevate a form of warfare that many U.S. defense planners and practitioners would prefer to view through the rear-view mirror. And yet, the lessons implied by Ryan’s impressive piece of scholarship should serve as a cautionary tale not just for practitioners seeking to ensure irregular warfare remains a “core competency” of the U.S. military, but also for those managing the tradeoffs and dilemmas of the contemporary strategic environment.

June 11, 2020

Foreign Aid in an Era of Great Power Competition

Over the past decade the international political system has evolved into a state of great power rivalry in which the United States is challenged for international leadership by a rising China and a rapidly re-arming, revanchist Russia. A new militant nationalism is spreading across the globe; democracy appears to be in retreat as aggrieved populations turn to populist authoritarianism as a remedy. This rising political and strategic competition has now crossed over into the international development space.

June 11, 2020

Perspectives for a China Strategy

When the Munich Security Conference met in February 2020, China was the most frequently mentioned country, while there was an exaggerated mood of Western decline. Yet as the recent COVID-19 pandemic has shown, China has both strengths and weaknesses. Its initial censorship, suppression of feedback and curtailment of international information allowed the pandemic to develop and fester. Draconian quarantine of Wuhan curtailed its spread somewhat; followed by a government propaganda campaign to attract others to the theme that China’s behavior had been benign. When the pandemic eventually subsides, however, China will be faced with the political and economic costs resulting from the exposure of both a failed public health system and an overly rigid party control system.

June 11, 2020

COVID-19: The Pandemic and its Impact on Security Policy

The world is caught up in an existential struggle. The opponent is intangible; it spares neither state nor social group and does not stop at any border. For many of us, this struggle feels like war. Indeed, with the growing use of war-like language in the fight against COVID-19, also called coronavirus, a rapidly rising number of victims, and last but not least the economic consequences which are becoming increasingly clear, we seem to be experiencing a war-like situation.

June 11, 2020

No Such Thing as a Perfect Partner: The Challenges of “By, With, and Through”

Taking a peacebuilding approach to working with local militaries and armed groups means using assistance to fragmented security sectors to increase cooperation between various formal and informal elites in a weak state. This approach places less emphasis on developing conventional military power and more emphasis on facilitating and improving relations between the different factions within the security sector and between the security sector and the civilian population. If international providers help local partners perform better at military tasks without ensuring that the forces have local legitimacy and strong accountability, progress is likely to be fleeting and could actually exacerbate civilian harm and the underlying drivers of violent conflict.

June 11, 2020

China’s Private Military and Security Companies: “Chinese Muscle” and the Reasons for U.S. Engagement

On 7 February 2019, General Thomas Waldhauser, then-Commander of United States Africa Command, stated the following during a hearing of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee: “The Chinese bring the money and the Russians bring the muscle.” “Chinese money” is evident in the fact that since 2009, China has been Africa’s largest trading partner.

June 11, 2020

AI Singularity and the Growing Risk of Surprise: Lessons from the IDF’s Strategic and Operational Learning Processes, 2014-2019

For decades, scholars have pondered the likelihood and effect of computers surpassing human intelligence, often referred to as the singularity. For militaries, artificial intelligence (AI) singularity will be a double-edged sword. We should seek to achieve and employ it, while denying our adversaries the opportunity to do so. When AI singularity does emerge, it will likely have profound implications for tactical capabilities, as well as strategic and operational decisionmaking.

June 11, 2020

ROC(K) Solid Preparedness: Resistance Operations Concept in the Shadow of Russia

Resistance is a form of warfare. It can be planned. The Resistance Operations Concept is simply a resistance primer. It contains guidance and advice toward establishing a nationally authorized resistance capability. It advises the establishment of a pre-crisis organization for nations under greater threat, for the purpose of having a unified resistance effort against an occupier, and renders specific organizational guidance.

June 11, 2020

Who Wants to Be a Great Power?

Strategic competition is back in vogue. After years of worrying about ethnic conflict and humanitarian intervention, civil wars and counterinsurgency, there is a renewed focus among policymakers, think-tankers, and academics on traditional strategic concerns and in particular great power confrontation. For many students of international relations this appears as no more than recognizing a feature of the system that never went away.

June 3, 2020

Just Another Paper Tiger? Chinese Perspectives on the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy

In March 2018, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi responded to a question about the Donald Trump administration’s new “free and open Indo-Pacific” strategy by comparing it to “sea foam in the Pacific or Indian Ocean” that might get some attention, “but soon will dissipate.” Wang’s remarks raise an important question for U.S. policymakers: Is Beijing so confident in its own influence, and doubtful of U.S. commitments in the region, that it perceives a green light to continue or expand the kinds of behavior Washington is trying to discourage, such as coercion of China’s territorial rivals and “predatory” lending?

May 6, 2020

The Geo-Economic Dimension of Great Power Competition

This faculty seminar was held on Wednesday, May 6, 2020 and focused on the fundamentals of geo-economics and the drivers or dimensions of geo-economic competition. This seminar features two distinguished subject matter experts on China and geo-economics, and is part of a series that looks at modern great power competition and how to prepare national security leaders for the associated challenges. The discussion was led by Carolyn Bartholomew and William Overholt, and moderated by PRISM Editor Michael Miklaucic.

April 1, 2020

Joint Force Quarterly 97 (2nd Quarter, April 2020)

This issue of JFQ shows the way ahead for the Joint Force. In our Forum and JPME Today sections, we discuss emerging battlespace technologies. In Commentary, authors propose the development of a new global engagement cycle. In our Features section are articles about the need to adapt the Joint Force command and control structure, about dealing with Iran as a rival nation-state, and addressing A2/AD threats in the Indo-Pacific region. In Recall, we see how General Ulysses Grant learned the art of joint operations in the Civil War. Finally, we review Andrew Marble’s biography of former CJCS General John Shalikashvilli.

April 1, 2020

Putting the “FIL” into “DIME”: Growing Joint Understanding of the Instruments of Power

When developing strategy, the US military considers all instruments of power (IOP) in planning activities that require a whole-of-government approach. Recently, newer IOPs such as financial, intelligence and law enforcement have emerged. The National Defense Strategy and a doctrine note on strategy mention the new IOPs, but there is no guidance on how they could be applied in a competitive environment. A better understanding of these new IOPs could mitigate the gap in doctrine and joint planning, say the authors, by defining the terms, identifying key mission partners, and detecting potential applications for each new instrument.