Feb. 17, 2021

Multidomain Ready: How Integrated Air and Missile Defense Is Leading the Way

The U.S. military’s dominance in the traditional domains of land, sea, and air has been a key advantage that has greatly helped ground forces succeed in recent conflicts. However, strategic competitors have begun to challenge U.S. dominance in these domains with advanced surface-to-air missiles, antiship cruise missiles, tactical ballistic missiles (TBMs), antisatellite weapons, mobile sea mines, drones, electronic warfare, and cyber/electronic warfare. Along with these new technologies, new tactics, such as the use of Russian paramilitaries in Ukraine1 and of Chinese fishing boats to enforce territorial claims in the South China Sea,2 have further challenged U.S. military dominance.

Feb. 17, 2021

A New Look at Operational Art: How We View War Dictates How We Fight It

The War of 1812, the Banana Wars, World War I, Korea, Vietnam, Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan all saw brilliant battlefield victories with limited strategic success. These failures are not a product of the American intellect, spirit, ingenuity, or will. They are a failure of the American view of war and a failure of our model for operational art. The current method by which the United States views the interplay of the levels of war is insufficient to translate tactical victories into strategic and political successes, requiring a new way of viewing operational art and warfare.

Feb. 17, 2021

Modernizing the Operational Design of the Medical Readiness Training Exercise

Each year, the U.S. military deploys hundreds of medics to see patients in direct patient care training exercises throughout the Americas, Asia, and other regions around the world. “More patients mean better training” is the mantra of mission planners, commanders, and public affairs teams. Only cursory efforts are made during these missions toward building partnerships and host-nation institutional capacity. Geographic combatant commanders, however, expect to leverage these operational readiness training exercises, funded by humanitarian and civic assistance (HCA) dollars, to promote regional security and stability, while host nations want to improve their populations’ health, health systems, and institutional legitimacy. At great cost in money and opportunity, the legacy health fair–style medical readiness training exercise (MEDRETE) and its thousands of patients seen grossly underdeliver on all counts.

Feb. 17, 2021

Fight Tonight: Reenergizing the Pentagon for Great Power Competition

From General Ulysses S. Grant and the Wilderness Campaign to General Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Normandy invasion, war planning has long been considered central to the study of U.S. military history. But due to a confluence of political circumstances and a series of unique demands placed on the U.S. military from the end of the Cold War through the war on terror, the Pentagon’s bureaucratic capacity for strategic planning gradually eroded, eventually giving way to an overreliance on operational plans and grand tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan. Circumstances have changed, however. As Russia and China espouse revisionist aims and U.S. global hegemony comes increasingly into question, it is more important than ever for the Department of Defense (DOD) to reenergize its war-planning apparatus and prepare for what will likely be a prolonged era of Great Power competition (GPC).

Feb. 17, 2021

Geoeconomics and Great Power Competition

The US Department of Defense (DoD) Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) program hosted a speaker session on February 17, 2021, presented by General (Ret.) David Petraeus, as a part of its SMA INSS/PRISM Speaker Series.

Feb. 16, 2021

The Myths of Lyme Disease: Separating Fact from Fiction for Military Personnel

No one is immune to, and there is no cure for, tickborne diseases. Just one tick bite can destroy a person’s career. Given the dire health consequences, the poor diagnostic tools, the effects of climate change in increasing tick habitats, and the endemic nature of the disease in geographical areas where the military lives, works, and plays, Lyme should be a serious concern for the entire joint force.

Feb. 16, 2021

Restoring Thucydides: Testing Familiar Lessons and Deriving New Ones

Thucydides’s The History of the Peloponnesian War offers national security pundits a plethora of persuasive “dead man quotes.” However, they and their audiences have rarely digested, and infrequently understood, the context and history surrounding the phrases they employ. Professors Andrew Novo and Jay Parker of the National Defense University provide an insightful remedy for students of history and strategy in Restoring Thucydides.

Feb. 16, 2021

Grand Improvisation: America Confronts the British Superpower, 1945–1957

Grand Improvisation is an engaging and well-researched dive into U.S. and British statecraft during the often overlooked power transition between the two nations following World War II. Derek Leebaert immediately sets out to challenge the common historical narrative that “the British Empire was too weak and too dispirited to continue as a global imperial power; thus, a confidently prosperous, well-armed America assumed leadership of the West.” Furthermore, he makes the case that “America’s biggest postwar difficulty—perhaps more than the Soviet threat—was the inability to say no to the British Empire. In effect, serious people in Washington believed that ‘no acceptable foreign policy’ was available to the United States if it was not aligned with its sprawling, problematic ally.” He continues, “History’s largest empire [British] was battling to maintain its standing.”

Feb. 16, 2021

The Battle for Pakistan: The Bitter U.S. Friendship and a Tough Neighbourhood

History may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” “This famous and oft-attributed warning of Mark Twain is taken up by Shuja Nawaz, a leading South Asia political and strategic analyst, in his latest book, The Battle for Pakistan. Nawaz is a prolific author serving as a distinguished fellow in the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council. His latest book provides a detailed examination of the relationship between Pakistan and the United States from 2007 to 2019 and offers readers insights into navigating the future of the relationship. The author explores watershed moments, providing unique context and conversations that took place behind the scenes to clarify the 70-year-old relationship that sometimes resembles a Hollywood drama. His interviews with Pakistani military and political leaders, as well as American diplomats, offer unique insights for joint force planners by capturing the nuances of a complex relationship, allowing readers to peer behind the veil of Pakistani politics and critically examine missteps and misperceptions by both countries in the hope of forging a more cooperative future.

Feb. 16, 2021

Independent and Credible: Advising Afghan Security Forces During the 2019 Presidential Election

The 2019 Afghan presidential election presented a unique opportunity to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Resolute Support (RS) mission. Specifically, RS leaders needed to align the coalition to support election security operations while reinforcing the independence and credibility of the Afghan-led process. Assessing this challenge required knowledge of recent Afghan history, the roles of election stakeholders, and the capabilities of the Afghan National Defense Security Forces (ANDSF).