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Operating Successfully within the Bureaucracy Domain of Warfare: Part Two
August 29, 2024 — This article is the second part of a two-part series. Part one outlined how viewing bureaucracy as a domain of warfare can assist policy professionals in navigating its processes and procedures and then described the first three fundamentals (Politics, Personalities, and Pressure), which are externally imposed and must be navigated carefully. Part Two describes the last seven fundamentals (Principles, Perspective, Prediction, Persuasion, Privacy, Programming, and Permanence), which are internally influenced and controlled and can be developed and deployed as a foundation for enhancing success. Mapping the fundamentals for success in the bureaucratic domain will enable policy professionals to address and balance the complexities of the policy-making process to the benefit of US national security... MORE

Restoring Priority on Cultural Skill Sets for Modern Military Professionals
August 29, 2024 — The Department of Defense has failed to distinguish and sustain cultural education relative to foreign language and regional expertise, putting servicemembers at a competitive disadvantage in developing skills to engage other cultures. This article draws on recent retrospective publications and multidisciplinary social science perspectives but goes beyond them to argue for social science approaches to culture, department-wide efforts to revive culture education, and an improved transition of sociocultural research to practice. Policy and military practitioners will benefit from understanding how culture-general skills complement other important skills in the human domain and from implementing its recommendations... MORE

Why the Afghan and Iraqi Armies Collapsed: An Allied Perspective
August 29, 2024 — Rather than military factors, American and Western liberal ideas (ideological views) and politics explain many of the obstacles faced in rebuilding the Afghan and Iraqi Armies. Liberal ideas largely determined what options the coalition would use. Ideological factors help explain democratization and reconstruction challenges, partner leaders with divergent aims, military-cultural factors and the Western combat focus, politicization, corruption, and nepotism. This article reviews the differences between Western liberal democracies and partner states, the politics of counterinsurgency, and army accounts. This article will assist US practitioners in security cooperation, institutional capacity building, and security assistance... MORE

A Long, Hard Year: Russia-Ukraine War Lessons Learned 2023
August 29, 2024 — This special commentary summarizes the major findings and lessons taken from the Russia-Ukraine War integrated research project conducted by members of the US Army War College class of 2024— all subject matter experts on their topics. It outlines seven lessons covering doctrinal, operational, technological, strategic, and political issues related to the second year of the war, including Russia’s use of mercenaries; the need to create a culture of mission command; ways to deal with a transparent battlefield because of persistent, ubiquitous surveillance; air superiority as a prerequisite for successful combined arms ground offensives; and changes to the intelligence and information domains... MORE

The Challenges of Next-Gen Insurgency
August 29, 2024 — States and their security forces often assume future insurgency will be versions of Mao Zedong’s “people’s war,” and counterinsurgency remains backward looking without a theoretical foundation to situate it within broader global security environment and armed-conflict trends. Next-gen insurgency will be networked, swarming, global, and focused on narrative-centric conflict and integrated cost imposition, and social media and the virtual world will be its central battlespaces. No nation has fully grasped that the “people’s war” reflected the military, economic, political, informational, technological, and social conditions of its time. Through an examination of insurgency’s nature, character, patterns, and trends and a thought experiment about next-gen insurgency, states and their security and intelligence services can think about what insurgency will be (rather than what it has been) and prepare... MORE

Avoiding the Escalatory Trap: Managing Escalation during the Israel-Hamas War
August 29, 2024 — Israel finds itself in a trap: escalate or maintain the status quo; absent a political solution, it must develop capable threats that deter future Hamas attacks and dissuade Hezbollah and Tehran from providing the support Hamas requires to carry them out. This special commentary executes an analysis of Israel’s precarious position and, in doing so, confronts the larger question of how to avoid escalation when engaging with violent extremist organizations with clear but unverifiable state support. The analysis provides a clear picture of the problem and offers tentative, evidence-based solutions for evading escalation or an untenable status quo. ... MORE

The Forward Edge of the Fifth US Army War College
August 29, 2024 — The US Army War College recognizes the requirements for continued adaptation during periods of systemic and technological change. Currently on the forward edge of its fifth evolution, the college is adapting to provide assessment-based, tailorable education to its students and deliver impactful leader-development programs, research, and war gaming to inform strategic leaders about critical national security choices... MORE

From the Acting Editor in Chief
August 29, 2024 — Welcome to the Autumn 2024 issue of Parameters. The Autumn issue consists of a special piece from the US Army War College commandant and provost on their strategic vision for the college, two In Focus special commentaries, three forums (Cooperative Partnerships, Professional Development, and Historical Studies), two regular forums (A Major’s Perspective and the Civil-Military Relations Corner), and a review essay focused on strategy in India... MORE

Book Review: The World: A Family History of Humanity
August 21, 2024 — The Harding Project’s Lieutenant Colonel Zachary Griffiths reviews this best-selling, epic in scope history of the world framed by powerful families and gives an honest evaluation of the book’s potential value (and shortcomings) for soldiers. Griffiths notes that the book provides insight into the “richness of the human experience” with “vignettes to give color to historical military campaigns and humanize those campaigns’ participants.”... MORE

Cover of The World: A Family History of Humanity

Book Review: Standing Up Space Force: The Road to the Nation’s Sixth Armed Service
August 21, 2024 — Robert D. Bradford III reviews this “first history” of the United States Space Force. He overviews the author Forrest L. Marion’s resources (“primary sources and extensive oral history interviews”) and highlights the book’s value in the way it “depicts cultural and bureaucratic barriers to . . . organizational change.” Bradford notes the history’s universal applicability as it relates to other situations in which an institution successfully approaches change... MORE

Cover for Standing Up Space Force: The Road to the Nation’s Sixth Armed Service