Oct. 24, 2022

A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times

A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times is the narrative of Mark Esper, former Secretary of Defense for the Trump administration, about his tumultuous 17 months in office, which ended with his November 2020 firing by Trump. A Sacred Oath confronts a vital first-order question for all uniformed and civilian military professionals: How do I faithfully adhere to my sworn oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic? This question is especially searing when it comes to upholding the oath as a senior civilian political appointee in the face of a domestic security threat from the White House itself. There is no perfect answer, but contextual factors help inform whether a senior Department of Defense (DOD) official should offer resignation rather than remain and enable the threat in hopes of moderating it.

Oct. 24, 2022

Air Power Supremo: A Biography of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir John Slessor

In the pantheon of air power pioneers from the dawn of military aviation to the advent of the jet age nearly four decades later, Marshal of the Royal Air Force (RAF) Sir John Slessor never gained the stature and name recognition of such earlier air warfare icons as General Billy Mitchell of the U.S. Army Air Service. Yet viewed in hindsight, Slessor was uncommonly instrumental in the development of effective air doctrine, concepts of operations, and organizing principles during his 37 years as an airman, combat commander, and senior leader.

Oct. 24, 2022

Great Power Use of Lawfare: Is the Joint Force Prepared?

When military professionals and scholars discuss the ways the character of war has changed, they focus most on the gray zone. U.S. adversaries have become increasingly adept at achieving their goals in a manner that is deliberately designed to remain below the threshold of conventional military conflict and open interstate war. One such method, the use of lawfare, involves using law as a weapon to achieve a particular objective. This article serves as a primer on the topic of lawfare, discusses its use by Russia, China, and the U.S., and finally, reviews ways in which senior leaders must respond with changes to the organization of legal capabilities.

Oct. 24, 2022

Countering Swarms: Strategic Considerations and Opportunities in Drone Warfare

The Department of Defense and the U.S. Government face a significant national security challenge in adversarial use of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS). The available technology to create swarms of these capabilities results in multilayered and unmanageable threats. This article addresses ways to prepare for and respond to this looming challenge, colloquially known as “drone swarms.”

Oct. 24, 2022

Executive Summary

War—any war—leaves its mark on society and must be considered in everyday life, especially the unfinished work of the postwar period and any efforts to return to the prewar status quo. Today’s military and our recent veterans know what war and its aftermath look like. To some, making war is easier than keeping the peace. With this 107th edition of the Chairman’s journal, we invite you to comment on war, peace, and the in-between, as that is where you will always find the joint force.

Oct. 24, 2022

The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict

In The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict, Elbridge Colby, a lead architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, wades into the ever-prescient debate about how the United States might compete with China in the Pacific. The Joseph Biden administration’s recent release of the 2022 Indo-Pacific Strategy and the pending release of the 2022 National Defense Strategy add urgency to a question three Presidential administrations have sought to answer: “What is the best defense strategy for America?” Colby’s work undertakes this vexing question, offering a novel strategy, as well as what many will consider to be polarizing and potentially unviable recommendations focused on a strategic realignment, in which the Biden administration would undertake not just to compete with China but to deny China the ability to achieve regional hegemony in the Indo-Pacific

July 27, 2022

Joint Doctrine Update

Joint Doctrine Update.

July 27, 2022

The Integrated “Nonwar” in Vietnam

The failure of U.S.-led forces to forge a stable Afghan state with robust security forces in a two-decades-long civil-military effort is only the most recent of a series of foreign policy failures that include the invasion and occupation of Iraq, intervention in Somalia, and reach back to the Vietnam War. A recurrent issue across time and geography is the discrepancy between American preconceptions of the operating environment and local reality. The inevitable result is that resources are misdirected. As one province chief in the Vietnam War, Tran Ngoc Chau, recalled, “Give me a budget that equals the cost of one American helicopter, and I’ll give you a pacified province. With that much money, I can raise the standard of living of the rice farmers and government officials can be paid enough so they won’t think it is necessary to steal.”

July 27, 2022

This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality

Weaving together stories from his own life and interviews with journalists, scholars, and practitioners (Pavlovsky among them) in multiple countries, Pomerantsev has crafted, in This is Not Propaganda, a wide-ranging and readable account of how the post–Cold War promise of a global liberal democratic utopia came apart, first in Russia and then, increasingly, in the rest of the world—including the United States. While emphasizing the role of Putin’s Russia, Pomerantsev suggests that the current era of democratic malaise is extensive—and everywhere intractable.

July 27, 2022

Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers

Sandworm reads like a fiction crime thriller but raises the alarm about a looming nonfiction threat: unrestricted cyber war. Andy Greenberg, the author and a senior writer for Wired, cautions readers that the world is in the midst of a global cyber arms race. He forewarns that civilian critical infrastructure remains highly vulnerable to cyber attacks by aggressive state and nonstate actors. He identifies malicious cyber attacks, as part of a new tit-for-tat, with escalation mirroring that of the Cold War, with increasingly sophisticated cyber attack methods and capabilities constituting a new, modern arms race. He concludes with an ominous message: that the next cyber doomsday is not a matter of if but when.