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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

Sept. 30, 2022

PRISM Vol. 10, No. 1 (September 2022)

PRISM Vol. 10, No. 1 is now online.

Sept. 30, 2022

Old and New Battlespaces

How and why warfare is changing has become its own genre of late. Enter Jahara “Franky” Matisek and Buddhika “Jay” Jayamaha. Both have military backgrounds and are on faculty at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Old and New Battlespaces builds on their previous scholarship regarding “social media warriors.” Like their articles, readers will find the book either astonishingly naïve or extraordinarily prescient, depending on what war they inhabit.

Sept. 30, 2022

2034: A Novel of the Next World War

This is a thriller that carries a cautionary note for those interested in national security who worry about the risks of human miscalculation. The point that the book makes is that in the emerging threat environment, when state players rely heavily upon technology to improve military capabilities, the human factor remains central.

Sept. 30, 2022

The Ledger and The American War in Afghanistan

The American war in Afghanistan has finally come to an ignominious end, but the inevitable post-mortems have only just begun to trickle in. No doubt soon they will become a flood, adding to the mountains of studies, analyses, and full-length volumes that have appeared virtually since the onset of the war two decades ago. In no small part because of the chaos that surrounded America’s final withdrawal from that embattled country, many analysts and observers have been quick to draw parallels with its equally chaotic departure from Vietnam nearly a half century earlier.

Sept. 30, 2022

The Digital Silk Road

The Digital Silk Road is Jonathan Hillman’s hi-tech companion to his book The Emperor’s New Road: China and the Project of the Century, published in 2020, which dealt with the vast Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the largest developmental project of our time. The Digital Silk Road (DSR) is the BRI’s high-tech portion, its transoceanic fiber-optic cables and its space-based satellite chains every bit as much a part of the BRI as a railroad project in Africa or port construction in South Asia. And like the BRI, the DSR’s goal is global and hegemonic: in establishing it, China intends to be the world’s “indispensable hub and gatekeeper” of the digital space.

Sept. 30, 2022

Why Nation-Building Matters

The recent fall of Kabul is a stark reminder that policymakers need to understand much more about the problems of nation-building. Some may try to swear off any further involvement with nation-building, but these problems cannot be ignored when failures of law and governance in weak states underlie a pressing migrant crisis on America’s own borders. As the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has noted, America’s refusal to prepare for future stabilization missions after the collapse of South Vietnam did not prevent the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq but instead ensured that they would become quagmires. To begin thinking more carefully about these vital problems, a good place to start is with Keith Mines’s book Why Nation-Building Matters.

Sept. 30, 2022

Interview with Kevin Rudd

The interview was conducted by Michael Miklaucic on March 29, 2022. The Honorable Kevin Rudd served as Prime Minister of Australia from 2007 to 2010, and again in 2013.

Sept. 30, 2022

Defining and Achieving Success in Ukraine

This article examines the ongoing war in Ukraine and explores options that lead to ending the conflict in some way that would constitute success or “victory.” Decisive victory in a purely military sense is an unlikely prospect. A frozen conflict, a larger and longer version of Donbas across the entire Ukrainian frontier, is increasingly likely despite the efforts by the West to induce Russia to back down. The prospects of a grinding stalemate are evident and extending the fighting creates spillover consequences for other U.S. strategic priorities. A war of endurance may play to U.S./European economic advantages but could evolve in a way that harms longer-term interests.