Recent Articles

Collins Center Update Volume 13 Issue 3 Professor Bernard F. Griffard, Colonel Sam White, Jr, LTC Vince Lindenmeyer, Professor Dennis Murphy, Collins Center Update by the US Army War College, Center for Strategic Leadership

Strategic Minerals: Is China's Consumption a Threat to United States Security? Mr Brent C Bankus, Dr Kent H Butts, LT Adam Norris Issue Paper by the US Army War College, Center for Strategic Leadership "The vitality of a powerful nation depends upon its ability to secure access to the strategic resources necessary to sustain its economy and produce effective weapons for defense. This is especially true for the world’s two largest economies, those of the United States and China, which are similarly import dependent for around half of their petroleum imports and large quantities of their strategic minerals. Because China’s economy and resource import dependence continue to grow at a high rate it has adopted a geopolitical strategy to secure strategic resources. China’s resulting role in the mineral trade has increased Western security community concern over strategic minerals to its highest point since the end of the Cold War. "

Assessing the Strategic Environment: Developing Critical Thinking Skills at the Ethiopian Defense Command and Staff College Prof Bernard F Griffard Issue Paper by the US Army War College, Center for Strategic Leadership "A government’s failure to understand the impact of global variables on the domestic environment can result in major destabilizing events. Emperor Tewodros II of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) learned this lesson the hard way. In 1862, after a snub by the British Government, the Emperor took the British Consul and other Europeans hostage to pressure the Crown to meet his request for equipment and training support. Being a somewhat impatient ruler, he also detained the British delegation sent to negotiate the initial hostages’ release. Because Britain’s ruling Liberal Party was reluctant to engage in “imperial adventures,” the hostages were still in loco Abyssinia into 1867."

Peace & Stability Journal, Volume 1, Issue 4 Mister Robert C Browne Peace and Stability Journal by the US Army War College, Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute "Since the end of the Cold War, individual states and the international community have been challenged by an increasing instability resulting from numerous causes: natural disasters, internal conflicts, transnational terrorism and crime, and chronic and seemingly overwhelming societal problems. While not new in human history, the globalized environment of the 21st century make these issues more complex and interrelated. Broad access to information and global mobility informs populations of issues, internationalizes relative social progress, and empowers non-state actors. Informed populations demand more of their governments at home and abroad. Members of the greater international community respond to the plight of troubled states and their populations in various ways."

Understanding the North Korea Problem: Why It Has Become the "Land of Lousy Options" COL William A Boik Letort Paper by US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute "This monograph is intended to draw attention to the challenges faced by the United States in developing a coordinated strategy for dealing with North Korea. Despite the many decades of direct U.S. involvement on the Korean Peninsula, we continue to have little understanding of the North Korean culture or of events inside North Korea. We also do not have a long-term coordinated strategy for North Korea. Over the past decade, the United States has focused much of its attention on the Middle East and the War on Terror, and seems to only focus on North Korea in response to crises when they arise on the peninsula. "

The New Aztecs: Ritual and Restraint in Contemporary Western Military Operations Dr Zhivan Alach Monograph by the US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute "The idea that the military environment is constantly evolving, becoming more and more dangerous and technologically sophisticated, is a common one. In the past century, we have seen the emergence of total war, nuclear weapons, and bloody unconventional and asymmetric campaigns. We have used many of the offshoots of this evolutionary idea to guide our own setting of defense policy, seeing in the evolution a constant escalation, albeit one perhaps marred by occasional yet small oscillations. "

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union's Common Security and Defense Policy: Intersecting Trajectories Mr Sarwar A Kashmeri Monograph by the US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute "In this study, Mr. Kashmeri argues his thesis that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has evolved from a confident, mission driven Alliance with a clear objective, to an organization that appears to be in disarray, still looking for a unifying mission 20 years after its reason for creation—the Soviet Union—ceased to exist. Mr. Kashmeri maintains that the action to enforce United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1073 against Libya is the latest in a series of demonstrations that highlight the disarray of the Alliance. He states that after weeks of preparation and increasingly optimistic statements about its readiness to enforce the UNSCR, Britain, France, and the United States chose to intervene in Libya alone."

Examining Military Governance as a Part of Professional Military Education Mr Brent C Bankus, Ms Lorelei E W Coplen, Prof James O Kievit Issue Paper by the US Army War College, Center for Strategic Leadership "After the capture of Baghdad in 2003, the expectation was that an Iraqi entity would quickly step forward to begin to fill the role of government in the territory formerly ruled by Saddam Hussein. Instead, there was a power vacuum which the United States – and in particular the United States military – had to fill. Similarly, in Afghanistan, despite the relatively quick identification of Hamid Karzai as the “designated” national leader, it also became clear that the new national government lacked many of the essential capabilities required to actually implement good governance. Again, despite the clear preference of many of today’s military officers to have some other entity (whether of the U.S. government, the United Nations, or even non-government private contractors) be responsible for doing so, that responsibility initially fell largely, if not exclusively, on U.S. military commanders. Even though the U.S. military, especially the U.S. Army, has had a long history of military governance activities, many of those commanders felt unprepared and/or that it was 'not really my job.'"

Developing a Diplomatic Corps that is Second-to-None Mr Samuel R White Jr Issue Paper by the US Army War College, Center for Strategic Leadership "The 2010 National Security Strategy (NSS) marked a change in emphasis in United States foreign policy direction after more than a decade of continuous military engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq. Global operations against violent extremist groups and entrenched and pervasive terror networks moved policy emphasis toward traditional” hard power” levers – primarily military and economic coercion. Though these elements have dominated U.S. efforts since 9/11, the current NSS implements foreign policy across a wider range of engagement options, balanced between appropriate measures of hard and soft power – coined “smart power” by Joseph Nye."