Parameters
USJFCOM Commander’s Guidance for Effects-based Operations
Herein are my thoughts and commander’s guidance regarding effects-based operations (EBO). This article is designed to provide the US Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) staff with clear guidance and a new direction on how EBO will be addressed in joint doctrine and used in joint training, concept development, and experimentation.
A Concert-Balance Strategy for a Multipolar World
The United States is a superpower in search of a strategy. Following the end of the Cold War, no new grand strategy has won the bipartisan support that underpinned America’s strategy of containment from President Truman to President Reagan. Enthusiastic promoters of globalization occasionally argue that international trade will be a panacea for conflict, at least among developed nations....
Collaborative Strategic Planning and Action: A New Approach
The complexity of the contemporary US security environment demands a new, comprehensive way of assessing and contending with the ongoing challenges. The current method can be characterized as a symptomatic rather than systemic approach. The present interagency and multinational mechanism consists of reacting to immediate threats and opportunities, dealing with the conditions of violent extremism, and responding to each crisis as it arises....
Reflections on Leadership
Last year I read Partners in Command, a book by Mark Perry. It is an account of the unique relationship between General Dwight D. Eisenhower and General George Marshall, and how they played a significant role in the American victory in World War II and laid the foundations for future success in the earliest years of the Cold War. Eisenhower and Marshall are, of course, icons, legends etched in granite. Their portraits hang in my office. ...
Aligning “Soft” with “Hard” Power
Last November, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates gave a speech that was described as “groundbreaking” in the manner in which it addressed the role of development and defense in meeting the national security challenges facing the United States. “One of the most important lessons of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that military success is not sufficient to win,” Secretary Gates stated: ...
The Next Wave of Nuclear Proliferation
In recent years record oil prices, long-term concerns about fossil fuel supplies (particularly oil), and worries about the contributions of fossil fuels to the accumulation of greenhouse gases such as carbon and methane have helped revive interest in nuclear energy production.1 Indeed, it has become commonplace to advocate renewed investment in nuclear energy production in the United States. There has been, however, little consideration as to what a global turn to nuclear energy on an enlarged scale would actually entail, let alone the security implications of such. ...
Making Revolutionary Change: Airpower in COIN
What a difference a year makes. The idea that airpower would be playing a critical role in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would hardly have been predicted in December 2006, when the Army and Marine Corps issued a completely revised—but airpower “lite”—counterinsurgency (COIN) manual commonly known as Field Manual (FM) 3-24.2 Complimentary reviews appeared in unlikely venues such as The New York Times Book Review.3 What seems to have captured the imagination of many who might otherwise be hostile to any military doctrine were the manual’s much-discussed “Zen-like” characteristics, particularly its popular “Paradoxes” section.4 This part of the manual contained such trendy (if ultimately opaque) dictums as “sometimes, the more force is used, the less effective it is” and “some of the best weapons for counterinsurgents do not shoot.”5 ...
Meddling in the Markets:Foreign Manipulation
No bombs need fall from the sky. Yet damage can be inflicted on the United States through market manipulation that would be as costly to recover from as any conventional attack. The threat of financial and commodity market manipulation is not new. What is new is the ability of a foreign government to use manipulation in a way that would cause a swift and systemic economic crisis in the United States. Such actions could be taken without ever clashing with the American military—offering those without the military capability to penetrate America’s defenses an asymmetric tactic for direct attack. That a foreign government could do so should be a major concern for all of America’s political and military strategists. ...
Review: Terrorism and Insurgency
The war on terrorism will have lasted seven years by September 2008, making it much longer than the American Civil War or World War II. Current American national security and military strategy documents, in fact, frame this war as a protracted struggle, one which may see persistent conflict lasting several decades. Despite the duration of this war, the US government has not yet exhibited a great deal of perspicacity in identifying and describing it coherently. It has used monikers that vary from the “Global War on Terrorism” to the “Long War” and “Persistent Conflict.” ...
Contractors: The New Element of Military Force Structure
Mercenaries,” “merchants of death,” “coalition of the billing,” “a national disgrace” all have been used to describe the use of contractors in war. The extensive use of contractors on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan has engendered strong emotion and calls for change. An ever-expanding literature and much larger volume of opinion pieces have led the discussion, most expressing shock and disappointment that such a situation has occurred. Unfortunately, little of this literature is useful to planners trying to design future forces in a world characterized by extensive commitments and limited manpower. The purpose of this article is to examine what battlefield contractors actually do, consider how we got to the situation we are in today, and provide force planners with some useful insight regarding the future. ...Most Commented
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