April 1, 2015

Joint Doctrine Update

DOWNLOAD PDFJoint Publications (JPs) Under Revision (to be signed within 6 months)JP 1-0, Joint

April 1, 2015

Five Examples of Big Data Analytics and the Future of ISR

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April 1, 2015

Global Knowledge Networking: Smart Strategies for Promoting Innovative Learning and Leader Development

Smart security builds on actionable knowledge. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Wales Summit in September 2014 highlighted the need to build on partnerships to prepare and operate together better. Building on the successes of past partnership initiatives and capabilities, this paper proposes new ways to embrace and extend techniques and relationships originally developed under successful Secretary of Defense (SECDEF)-level memoranda of understanding (MOUs) within NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) program. The Global Knowledge Networking (GKN) initiative supports smart decisionmaking by educating and training tomorrow’s agile, resilient, and effective leaders. GKN is a network of people, ideas, and processes to make knowledge actionable and is focused on improving on U.S. and coalition interoperability through improvements in existing training and education capabilities. It has begun to convene strategic dialogues around key challenges and collectively owned opportunities. Its initial framing is globally relevant and focused on the Arabian Gulf region through a proposed test bed for collaboration with the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This will allow new tools for interoperability to be explored and created together as enablers of joint capability. Drawing on the experiences of NATO’s Partnership for Peace, it will promote an innovative systems approach that could help cultivate and sustain more effective security partnerships around the globe.

April 1, 2015

Responding to Russia after the NATO Summit: Unmanned Aerial Systems Overmatch in the Black Sea

The Ukraine conflict poses unique and asymmetric challenges to the international community. Since the earliest days of the Crimean crisis, Russian support of “separatists” within Ukraine has ranged from plainclothes thugs to more traditional uniformed troops, munitions, and other forms of aid. Some of the individuals involved may have had links to the Russian military or its intelligence community. While much of the aid comes through the porous border between Russia and Ukraine, Russia also leverages the opportunity to use Black Sea smugglers as a way to supply ongoing rebellions or to initiate new revolts. Two Black Sea–bordering regions, Odessa and Transnistria, are home to active pro-Russian movements that could potentially evolve into a pro-Russian state. Worries of Russia supplying separatists via illicit movements on the Black Sea and generally advancing its Novorossyia claims should be matched to a general concern over Black Sea smuggling rings, which traffic humans, weapons, and nuclear materials into Europe via Odessa’s port.

March 1, 2015

The U.S.-Japan Alliance: Review of the Guidelines for Defense Cooperation

DOWNLOAD PDFExecutive Summary This paper is focused on the U.S.-Japan alliance as reflected in the

March 1, 2015

Defense Partnerships: Documenting Trends and Emerging Topics for Action

Public-public and public-private and partnerships (P4s) are time-proven effective solutions for delivering public services at reasonable costs when deployed and managed properly. Various U.S. agencies and international organizations all have longstanding successful P4 initiatives and projects. Recently, Department of Defense (DOD) leaders have expressed increased interest in implementing P4s throughout their organizations. As DOD is faced with evolving roles and missions in an “unpredictable and complex world amid fiscal constraints, the expertise and involvement of the private sector and other public organizations will be essential.” P4s could be ideal tools intended to “further policy objectives, enhance U.S. operational capabilities, reduce costs, gain access to nonmilitary expertise or assets, or build greater capacity in partners.”

Jan. 1, 2015

Red China's "Capitalist Bomb": Inside the Chinese Neutron Bomb Program

DOWNLOAD PDFCenter for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs, Institute for National Strategic

Jan. 1, 2015

Red China’s “Capitalist Bomb”: Inside the Chinese Neutron Bomb Program

This paper examines why China developed an enhanced radiation weapon (ERW) but did not deploy it. ERWs, better known as “neutron bombs,” are specialized nuclear weapons with reduced blast effects and enhanced radiation, making them ideal tactical and antipersonnel weapons. Declassified U.S. intelligence and Chinese press reports indicate the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was interested in an ERW in 1977 and successfully tested a device on September 29, 1988. To date, however, these sources provide no evidence of deployment. This study exploits primary source documents to reconstruct the ERW program’s history, assesses drivers behind decisions throughout the program, and considers broader implications for PRC decisionmaking on weapons development. This case study suggests a model of a “technology reserve” in which China develops a weapons technology to match the capabilities of another state but defers deployment. This paper presents an analytic framework for examining how the technology reserve model might apply to China’s decisionmaking on ballistic missile defense (BMD), antisatellite (ASAT), and hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) systems.

Dec. 30, 2014

From the Chairman: The Posture Paradigm

For the first half of my 40 years in the military, we were largely a readiness-focused force. We deployed for exercises and demonstrations to send signals to the Soviet Union and to reassure allies. Certainly, we had forces forward based in Europe and the Pacific. But mostly we trained our forces in the continental United States, building readiness in case we had to fight “the big one.”

Dec. 30, 2014

Executive Summary

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Dec. 30, 2014

Navy Perspective on Joint Force Interdependence

Looking ahead to the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) fiscal prospects and security challenges in the second half of this decade and beyond, the Services and their partners will have to find ever more ingenious ways to come together. It is time for us to think and act in a more ecumenical way as we build programs and capabilities. We should build stronger ties, streamline intelligently, innovate, and wisely use funds at our disposal. We need a broader conversation about how to capitalize on each Service’s strengths and “domain knowledge” to better integrate capabilities. Moving in this direction is not only about savings or cost avoidance; it is about better warfighting.

Dec. 30, 2014

Bringing Space Crisis Stability Down to Earth

Tensions in the South and East China seas have been elevated during the last year. Territorial disputes in these areas flare periodically, but historically the brinkmanship has largely been confined to encounters at sea, with maritime law enforcement vessels confronting fishing fleets as traditional naval forces lurk just over the horizon. Given that the objects of these political disputes are islands, shoals, and the vast resources around and beneath them, it is only natural that the armed instruments of power brought to bear would operate in close proximity to the territory in question.

Dec. 30, 2014

Debunking Technical Competency as the Sole Source of Innovation

Academic and governmental organizations have sounded the alarm that the United States is rapidly losing technical competence, and this decline places the Nation at risk. A 1983 National Science Foundation (NSF) report stated, “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well view it as an act of war.” In 1999, Congress chartered the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century (also known as the Hart-Rudman Commission) to provide the most comprehensive Government-sponsored review of U.S. national security in 50 years. The report highlighted a lack of U.S. technical competence as a national security threat second only to the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists. This article attempts to answer the question: “Does improving technical competency enhance innovation?”

Dec. 30, 2014

Should Military Officers Study Policy Analysis?

Recently, during a symposium with security studies faculty members from civilian institutions, the question arose as to how those of us who teach in the country’s professional military institutions approach the study and use of policy analysis in our classrooms. There was a certain degree of incredulity that places such as the Naval War College (and its sister institutions) would encourage their students—people bound by oath to faithfully execute the orders of the commander in chief—to probe and analyze decisions taken by the current and past Presidents as part of their academic experience. Indeed, many question whether military officers need to engage in the dissection and discussion of national security decisionmaking since, echoing Alfred Tennyson’s famous exhortation in his classic poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” “Theirs not to reason why/Theirs but to do and die.” Others take the view that, for military officers, ignorance may be bliss, following the advice popularly ascribed to the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck: “The less the people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they sleep in the night.”

Dec. 30, 2014

Assessing Causality in a Complex Security Environment

In May 2014, I was moderating a Naval War College seminar on the topic of U.S. policy in the Middle East. The discussion involved President George W. Bush’s statement that a democratic Iraq would serve as a “beacon of democracy” in the Middle East, leading nations and peoples in that region to reappraise their systems of government and, perhaps, initiate democracy movements of their own. A student raised his hand.

Dec. 30, 2014

Next Steps for Transforming Education at National Defense University

National Defense University (NDU) is implementing major reforms in the graduate-level programs it provides senior military officers and other national security professionals. If all goes as planned, the result will be a transformation in the way the university educates senior national security leaders.1 This article does not review the status of current change initiatives. Instead, it looks beyond the changes under way for the 2014–2015 academic year and identifies future steps senior leaders might consider in order to maintain momentum for the transformation of joint professional military education.

Dec. 30, 2014

Revisioning Strategic Communication through Rhetoric and Discourse Analysis

Strategic communication is an important but contested issue, visible in continuing criticisms over the last 5 years. One critique is that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) definition of the term strategic communication is vague and idiosyncratic in relation to the definitions of other agencies. In turn, this argument runs, the lack of conceptual clarity and of shared, precise terminology hurts the implementation and further development of strategic communication. Additional concerns have been raised about the lack of both domestic interagency and foreign partner coordination and cooperation and the absence of credible expertise in strategic communication. Still, criticisms point to high-visibility failures in strategic communication—for example, the 2001 “Shared Values” campaign and the 2012 U.S. Presidential response to the “Innocence of Muslims” video—as evidence of both strategic communication conceptual flaws and implementation failures.

Dec. 30, 2014

A Theater-Level Perspective on Cyber

Most U.S. military cyber professionals will tell you that “defense is the main effort” and that providing secure and reliable communication is job one. In practice, however, most cyber discussions focus on sophisticated computer hackers conducting exploitation (espionage) or attack (sabotage) operations. The reasons for this seeming contradiction include cyber espionage intrusions, industrial-scale intellectual property theft, and denial-of-service attacks that cost millions of dollars and naturally capture headlines and the imagination. Likewise, the potential for cyber attacks to disrupt infrastructure with kineticlike consequences provides fodder for books and articles that bridge reality and science fiction, empowering armchair theorists to contemplate a new and different type of war and warrior.

Dec. 30, 2014

Refocusing the U.S. Strategic Security Perspective

Since the early days of Cold War rivalry between the United States and Soviet Union, policymakers have recognized that low-intensity conflict and limited wars often occur in spite of deterrence—that is, using the threat of military force or coercion to change an adversary’s behavior. Because of this shortcoming and risk of escalation, the United States has applied deterrence haphazardly in its relationship with China. Yet U.S. policymakers have failed to identify an alternative approach for chronic disputes that are not readily shaped by military posturing. This deficiency is overlooked at the expense of muddling through commonplace confrontations with China over fishing rights, maritime borders, and cyberspace rather than establishing consistent mechanisms to reduce tension and prevent escalation. Some analysts, such as Richard K. Betts, see only two stark choices to address this dilemma: “accept China’s full claims as a superpower when it becomes one or draw clear redlines before a crisis comes.” However, we do not need to limit our options to deterrence or acceptance. Rather, we should complement deterrence with a more flexible, strategic framework focused on conflict management.

Dec. 30, 2014

Nonlethal Weapons: A Technological Gap or Misdefined Requirements?

The internal and international conflicts that have taken place in the last few decades have significantly raised the issue of interacting with with civilian populations, a problem that has been worsened by urbanization. In the last few decades of the 20th century, a universal respect for human life became a crucial variable within the international community in general and Western societies in particular. In this new political reality, the military seeks new technologies that have “greater precision, shorter duration, less lethality, and reduced collateral damage . . . [as these technologies] may provide more effective power than their larger and more destructive, but also more inexact and crude, predecessors.” Nonlethal weapons (NLW) would seem to be the perfect answer for this military quest; however, observers point out that, to date, “few non-lethal weapons incorporating new technologies have actually been deployed on a large scale” and that “operational use of available non-lethal weapons by the military has been limited.” Despite the reasonable demand for the employment of less lethal military technologies on the battlefield, then, it seems that such technologies are still far from becoming a reality.

Dec. 30, 2014

Challenges to Improving Combat Casualty Survival on the Battlefield

The United States has achieved unprecedented survival rates (as high as 98 percent) for casualties arriving alive to a combat hospital.1 Official briefings, informal communications, and even television documentaries such as “CNN Presents Combat Hospital” highlight the remarkable surgical care taking place overseas. Military physicians, medics, corpsmen, and other providers of battlefield medical care are rightly proud of this achievement. Commanders and their troops can be confident that once a wounded Servicemember reaches the combat hospital, his or her care will be the best in the world.

Dec. 30, 2014

Mosquitos: A Viable 21st-Century Soft Power Tool

Militaries and soft power have been interlinked since Alexander the Great began assisting the populations his armies conquered by rebuilding infrastructures and distributing food and first aid. Humane gestures by armies were considered important to winning loyalties. During the Napoleonic wars, military altruism had become customary enough to be included in soldiers’ military science studies. Napoleon viewed humanitarian assistance as a form of philanthropy that helped change civil social order among those populations his troops defeated on the European continent. Over time, measures of humanitarian aid have shifted as the sizes, types, and durations of conflicts have changed. Military roles now involve functioning as relief agents, participating as surplus disposal entities for old or outdated materials and machines, acting as international peacekeeping forces or as liberators, and delivering organized and rapid natural disaster relief. The latest addition to these scenarios is the performance of long-term humanitarian roles in peaceful settings with nations that may have a future potential value as allies.

Dec. 30, 2014

Operation Cottage: A Cautionary Tale of Assumption and Perceptual Bias

In the summer of 1943, American and Canadian forces launched an amphibious assault on the north Pacific island of Kiska. Codenamed Cottage, the operation was intended to seize the last enemy stronghold on North American soil from Japanese occupiers. The assault began in the predawn hours of August 15 with a heavy coastal barrage by an armada of nearly 100 Allied warships. Intense fire support was followed by a chaotic but successful ship-to-shore movement of over 34,000 U.S. Army and Canadian combat infantrymen. For 2 long days, the invasion force slugged its way inland through thick fog and against the constant din of machinegun and artillery fire. By the time the island was declared secure, over 300 Allied soldiers lay dead or seriously wounded. Japanese casualties? There were none. The Japanese had abandoned the island almost 3 weeks prior.

Dec. 30, 2014

Book Review: The Roar of the Lion

Toye provides rich descriptions for readers to understand Churchill’s speeches through the political and informational environment existing at the time. Using research from a wide variety of sources, ranging from Gallup polls to diaries, Toye examines audience perceptions recorded immediately following speech delivery. Remarkably, some of Churchill’s most famous speeches were ill-received at the time while some of his lesser known speeches greatly influenced audiences. Toye explores an evolution of perception as contemporary audiences seemed to reinterpret over time some of Churchill’s speeches, ascribing to them mythic qualities that they did not possess when delivered. He explores this phenomenon resulting in a literary time capsule, which expertly describes this war of words over the will of a nation. Military and civilian leaders alike can learn much from this comprehensive discussion of strategic communication.

Dec. 30, 2014

Book Review: A Scrap of Paper

This centenary of the beginning of World War I has spawned divergent reconsiderations of the war. Why should these different views and the Great War itself be of interest to readers of Joint Force Quarterly? The reasons concern everything from the nature of peace to military operations and innovation. World War I has had such a profound impact on the structure of our world that it has even made the subject of human misery an area of enduring interest. Nationally, of course, the war represents America’s entrance onto the world stage, followed by a short, costly effort to retreat, followed by the continuing leading role since 1945 or, perhaps more accurately, since December 7, 1941.

Dec. 30, 2014

Joint Doctrine Update

DOWNLOAD PDFJoint Publications (JPs) Under Revision (to be signed within 6 months)JP 1-0, Joint

Dec. 30, 2014

Seeing 2020: America's New Vision for Integrated Air and Missile Defense

On December 5, 2013, with the stroke of a pen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin E. Dempsey profoundly altered the U.S. approach to the pressing problem of air and missile defense. On that date—coincidentally, 70 years to the day after the U.S. Army Air Corps began Operation Crossbow, the Anglo-American bombing campaign against Adolf Hitler’s V-1 and V-2 missile forces and a missile defense milestone—General Dempsey signed the Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense: Vision 2020.1 This seminal document for air and missile defense (AMD) outlines the Chairman’s guidance to the joint force and, by extension, to all the stakeholders that contribute to the air and missile defense of the U.S. homeland and its regional forces, partners, and allies. What makes the new vision both exceptionally timely and highly relevant is that it accounts for the volatility and reality of 21st-century strategic and threat environments characterized more often than not by rapid, enigmatic change.

Dec. 30, 2014

Letter

As I read Rebecca Patterson and Jodi Vittori’s article titled “Why Military Officers Should Study Political Economy” in Joint Force Quarterly 75 (4th Quarter 2014), I reconsidered my own understanding of the term political economy. At one time I was admittedly unsure of its precise meaning, although I could make some informed guesses, and thankfully the authors do a good job of giving readers many opportunities to understand what it means based on context in various passages.

Dec. 30, 2014

Where Do We Find Such Men and Women?

The title of this article is a slightly edited sentence from James Michener’s 1953 novella The Bridges at Toko-Ri. On December 17, 1777, General George Washington recruited former Prussian officer Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Von Steuben to strengthen professionalism in the Colonial Army. Von Steuben then wrote a manual outlining the duties and responsibilities of the noncommissioned officer (NCO). In essence, this hallmark document was the creation of the NCO in the U.S. Armed Forces. This article is about one of those NCOs.

Dec. 30, 2014

Book Review: Brothers Armed: Military Aspects of the Crisis in Ukraine

Brothers Armed is an edited anthology comprising several essays detailing the history of Crimea, the post-Soviet history of the Russian and Ukrainian armed forces, and a detailed account of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014. This volume is timely, especially given the dearth of existing scholarly sources on some of the subjects covered. It provides great insights into the annexation, comprehensively analyzes the historical context as well as the existing military balance, and delivers a full accounting in an objective and dispassionate manner.

Oct. 1, 2014

“Not an Idea We Have to Shun”: Chinese Overseas Basing Requirements in the 21st Century

China’s expanding international economic interests are likely to generate increasing demands for its navy, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), to operate out of area to protect Chinese citizens, investments, and sea lines of communication. The frequency, intensity, type, and location of such operations will determine the associated logistics support requirements, with distance from China, size and duration, and combat intensity being especially important drivers.

Oct. 1, 2014

The Grand Strategy of the United States

From the earliest days of the Republic, the outlines of an evolving American grand strategy have been evident in our foreign and domestic policy. Much of that history continues to inform our strategic conduct, and therefore American grand strategy rests today on traditional foundations. Despite a welter of theory and debate, grand strategy as a practical matter is remarkably consistent from decade to decade, with its means altering as technology advances and institutions evolve but its ends and ways showing marked continuity.

Sept. 30, 2014

From the Chairman: Commitment to Service

Representing America to the rest of the world is something that we all take great pride in. We know what a privilege it is to represent our country overseas. Of course, representing our nation is not an experience entirely unique to the military.

Sept. 30, 2014

True and Steady, Inspection Ready

The global security environment in which the U.S. Armed Forces must operate, manage, and influence presents many challenges to our all-volunteer force. Moreover, shifting societal norms (domestic and abroad) often compete directly and indirectly with the professional norms that shift over time. The effect of variances in societal and professional norms can and often does induce friction points and challenges us to stay on the right course, defined by the qualities of honor, respect, duty, service, courage, commitment, loyalty, and integrity, as well as the virtues of decency, fairness, honesty, humility, integrity, and valor through actions. The standards required to sustain the Profession of Arms must always be maintained.

Sept. 30, 2014

Executive Summary

As we mark this 75th issue of Joint Force Quarterly, I am reminded of the wisdom I gained some years ago when I was seeking to become a teacher. My faculty mentor at the time offered some advice as I took up the task of teaching history. I asked him, “Does history repeat itself?” His response was useful but not easily digested. “History does in fact repeat but not in detail or on a schedule,” he said. “We as teachers need to identify both the similarities and differences of events past and present in order to have our students learn.” Recent events that fit this model of the past repeating itself, but not in detail, include rioting in Missouri surrounding the violent death of an African American teenager, a failed special forces raid into Syria to rescue an American reporter held hostage, airliners shot down by military forces, mass migration of people seeking security in a foreign land, deadly disease spreading in Africa, and the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from an unpopular war—to name a few in today’s headlines.

Sept. 30, 2014

An Interview with Raymond T. Odierno

We’re starting from an incredible position of strength because of the experience that the Army has. This is the first time after a long period of war that Army leaders are staying in the Service; they’re not leaving en masse to do other things. So we have an incredible force, and I want to build on that. We have a wealth of experiences from junior to senior officers that we’ve never had before, and we have to learn how to exploit the experiences gained in joint, multinational, interagency, and intergovernmental environments, and I think that’s key to the future.

Sept. 30, 2014

Theater Airlift Modernization: Options for Closing the Gap

America’s renewed strategic emphasis on state-on-state conflict highlights significant gaps in the country’s theater airlift capabilities, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. Quantitatively, there likely will not be enough airlift capacity available to cover major conflict requirements. Qualitatively, the current program- of-record (POR) airlift fleet (what the Nation has and what it expects to acquire) presents serious shortfalls in the ability to maneuver land forces on the scale, to the destinations, or in the timeframes desired by Army planners. Air commanders also have reason for concern since the core aircraft of the theater fleet, the C-17 and C-130, pose capacity and operational risks in their abilities to support high-volume combat operations at forward bases when threatened or damaged by attack.

Sept. 30, 2014

The Afghanistan National Railway: A Plan of Opportunity

In support of the State Department’s “New Silk Road” initiative, U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) formed a planning team of subject matter experts spanning the Department of Defense (DOD), the interagency community, academia, and the U.S. railroad industry to provide recommendations that advance the development of a national railway system for the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA). The Afghanistan National Railway Plan (ANRP) was provided to the Afghanistan Railway Authority (ARA) in August 2013.

Sept. 30, 2014

The USCENTCOM Train: The Deployment and Distribution Operations Center Turns 10

On December 12, 2003, just months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq and on the cusp of transition to Operation Iraqi Freedom II, General John Abizaid, USA, accepted on behalf of U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) an invitation that would birth the first Deployment and Distribution Operations Center (DDOC). In an October 24, 2003, memorandum, General John Handy, USAF, commander of U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM), and General Paul Kern, commander of Army Materiel Command, had offered a “joint intermodal distribution team” led by a flag officer who “would have visibility and synchronization authority over all theater-level lift platforms.”1 With General Abizaid’s go-ahead, a team of 42 USTRANSCOM distribution experts began arriving at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait to establish initial operational capability and validate the emerging DDOC concept during the major muscle movements of the Iraqi Freedom II transition.

Sept. 30, 2014

2014 Winners

The NDU Foundation is proud to support the annual Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Joint Force Quarterly essay competitions. NDU Press hosted the final round of judging on May 15–16, 2014, during which 23 faculty judges from 15 participating professional military education institutions selected the best entries in each category. The First Place winners in each of the three categories are published in the following pages.

Sept. 30, 2014

Deterrence with China: Avoiding Nuclear Miscalculation

As China rises and the United States seeks to maintain its global dominance, the world is faced with a new historical phenomenon: a dramatic shift in power between two nuclear-capable nations. As the relative power of each nation nears parity, tension is inevitable and the character of the evolving Sino-U.S. relationship poses a risk of nuclear miscalculation. Nuclear use between China and the United States would be a catastrophe, but China is an independent actor, and the United States can only influence, but not control, the crossing of the nuclear threshold. If U.S. policymakers neglect this risk, miscalculation is more likely.

Sept. 30, 2014

The Limits of Cyberspace Deterrence

As a concept, deterrence has been part of the military vernacular since antiquity. In his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides quotes Hermocrates as stating, “Nobody is driven into war by ignorance, and no one who thinks that he will gain anything from it is deterred by fear.”2 In the 2,400 years since then, the domains for the conduct of military affairs have expanded from the original land and maritime domains to air, space, and now cyberspace. As warfighting expanded its scope, strategic theory did as well. Today, U.S. doctrine declares that the fundamental purpose of the military is to deter or wage war in support of national policy.3 Therefore, military strategists and planners have a responsibility to assess how adversaries may be deterred in any warfighting domain. Through the joint planning process, planners, working through the interagency process, consider deterrent options for every instrument of national power—diplomatic, informational, military, and economic—across all phases of military operations.4 However, most of the thought and analysis in deterrence has revolved around the use of conventional and nuclear weapons.

Sept. 30, 2014

Opportunities in Understanding China’s Approach to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands

In 2010, two Japanese coast guard vessels and a Chinese fishing boat collided in the disputed waters near the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, sparking increasingly confrontational behavior by both China and Japan. The pattern of escalation continued in 2012 when Japan nationalized several of the disputed islands by purchasing them from the private owner. China promptly responded by sending warships to the area in a show of force. Although escalation to the point of war is unlikely, these incidents underscore the destabilizing regional effects of the disputed islands and associated maritime boundaries. China’s territorial claims are rooted in historical context, nationalism, national security, and economic interests.3 By understanding China’s perspectives, motives, and approaches to resolving this dispute, the United States can anticipate the current pattern of escalation, forecast future Chinese behavior, and identify opportunities for conflict management and eventual de-escalation to improve strategic stability in the region.

Sept. 30, 2014

Cyber Security as a Field of Military Education and Study

Information and communication technologies are acknowledged as enablers and the core arsenal of military capabilities, functions, and operations. An increasing number of nations pursue improved fluency and agility of armed forces personnel in information and communication technology, its contemporary uses, and relevant defense and security implications. Underdeveloped terminology and concepts, combined with recognized functional needs and national ambitions to control the relatively new battlespace and domain, create ambiguity and even anxiety among the current generation of planners and leaders. Particularly challenging is the balance between technical in-depth knowledge requirements and strategic understanding of the cyber domain desirable for joint planners, field commanders, and senior decisionmakers.

Sept. 30, 2014

Low Cost, High Returns: Getting More from International Partnerships

Unbeknownst to most Americans, over 8,000 international military personnel are trained or educated annually in the United States at the invitation of the U.S. Government, studying every aspect of the military profession. The most select officers with future leadership potential are invited to participate in senior Professional Military Education (PME) courses alongside U.S. officers at schools such as National Defense University (NDU) and the Army, Naval, Air, and Marine Corps War Colleges. Many of these students are funded by the United States through security assistance programs such as the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program, which has an annual cost of over $100 million. This is a significant investment of time and treasure by the United States, and as we will show, the initial returns of these programs are high.

Sept. 30, 2014

Asymmetry Is Strategy, Strategy Is Asymmetry

Much of the strategic studies literature of the past two decades identifies profound novelty in the conduct and challenges of modern war, novelty that ultimately calls into question the nature and even existence of war. War has allegedly now been transformed from a regular, conventional, purportedly symmetric exercise into an irregular, unconventional, asymmetric event, which must be understood anew.

Sept. 30, 2014

Is Military Science “Scientific”?

The term military science generally describes the body of theories, concepts, and methods for employing armed forces. However, as an academic discipline it is ill defined, drawing from a patchwork of curricula including history, foreign affairs, security studies, leadership, operations management, and systems engineering, as well as other elements of the physical and social sciences. Notably, the Department of Defense dictionary does not even provide a definition. This vague categorization is somewhat reflective of the term’s diminished status from its 19th-century usage when Military Science was frequently capitalized and placed alongside Physics, Philosophy, and other well-established academic disciplines.

Sept. 30, 2014

The Best Man for the Job? Combatant Commanders and the Politics of Jointness

The U.S. military today fights jointly. A joint commander—reporting to the Secretary of Defense—commands all Service components during military operations. And as a key sign of this jointness, combatant commanders no longer come solely from a single Service as they once did. In fact, the combatant commanders and their control of operations are often considered the greatest expression of jointness.

Sept. 30, 2014

A Potent Vector: Assessing Chinese Cruise Missile Developments

The numerous, increasingly advanced cruise missiles being developed and deployed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have largely flown under the public’s radar. This article surveys PRC cruise missile programs and assesses their implications for broader People’s Liberation Army (PLA) capabilities, especially in a Taiwan scenario.

Sept. 30, 2014

Determining Hostile Intent in Cyberspace

According to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hostile intent is defined as the threat of imminent use of force against the United States, U.S. forces, or other designated persons or property. It is the indication, the belief, a commander has that an adversary is about to attack. That belief provides the groundwork for “anticipatory self-defense,” an American legal concept that allows a commander to attack before being attacked.