News

Operating Successfully within the Bureaucracy Domain of Warfare: Part One
May 29, 2024 — Policymakers in the defense community should approach bureaucracy as a sixth domain of warfare because, in doing so, they can successfully handle its processes and procedures. Part one of this two-part article discusses the first three (of 10) fundamentals these professionals must develop to navigate the bureaucratic domain and address and balance the complexities of the policy-making process for the overall benefit of US national security... MORE

Closing the Gap: Officer Advanced Education STEM+M (Management)
May 29, 2024 — The Army has made insufficient progress in arming its officers with science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and management (STEM+M) knowledge. The contemporary battlefield is faster paced, technologically enabled, and data driven, requiring officers to possess more skills, knowledge, and experience. We examine the Army’s history with STEM education and show that, in terms of education, the current Army officer corps has fallen behind its requirements for technology-enabled forces and modern society. We conclude with recommendations on how the Army can close the STEM+M education gap through advances in higher education and adopting talent management practices... MORE

Raven Sentry: Employing AI for Indications and Warnings in Afghanistan
May 29, 2024 — This article examines Raven Sentry, a project that employed artificial intelligence to provide advance warning of insurgent attacks in Afghanistan. During 2019 and 2020, the Resolute Support Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence (J2) benefited from a command culture open to innovation, the urgency created by the US drawdown, and a uniquely talented group of personnel that, aided by commercial sector experts, built an AI system that helped predict attacks. The war’s end cut Raven Sentry short, but the experience provides important lessons on AI and the conditions necessary for successful innovation... MORE

Iraq’s Ministry of Interior: NATO, Capability Building, and Reform
May 29, 2024 — The ongoing, 20-year effort to reform Iraq’s Ministry of Interior through capability building is an underreported but critical aspect of NATO’s mission. This article identifies 10 strategic errors or “lessons” from this mission related to ends, ways, means, and assumptions. NATO’s involvement was flawed from design to delivery, including its myopic focus on training, systemic disregard of politics, relegation of civilian expertise, and inadequate measurements of its effects. As a result, police legitimacy in Iraq eroded, potentially exacerbating instability. Capability building is becoming more attractive as a non-kinetic tool; the success of future NATO missions—in Iraq and elsewhere—will, therefore, rely on avoiding similar mistakes... MORE

The Dynamics of US Retrenchment in the Middle East
May 29, 2024 — This article argues that conditions favor American retrenchment from the Middle East because the United States can shift burdens to capable states in the region, there are few areas where US commitments are interdependent, and the local conquest calculus favors defense. Forward military deployments do not positively influence potential threats in the Middle East, and maintaining deployments there will detract from meeting challenges from China. Through comparisons to prior cases of great-power ordinal decline, this article puts America’s modest decline in historical perspective and finds that retrenchment policies will likely have positive consequences... MORE

Understanding Russian Disinformation and How the Joint Force Can Address It
May 29, 2024 — Russia will dominate information warfare if the United States does not treat disinformation as central to Russian strategy. This article examines the vital role disinformation played in post–Cold War Russian strategy, including its strategy in the current Russia-Ukraine War, and in a departure from previous scholarship, this article observes that US defense leaders are aware of Russian disinformation but have failed to assess its impact or sufficiently negate Russian influence. The article also reviews current US efforts and suggests proactive ways to counter Russia’s disinformation strategy... MORE

The Combat Path: Sustaining Mental Readiness in Ukrainian Soldiers
May 29, 2024 — In Ukraine, soldiers’ psychological resilience is of paramount concern. Therefore, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have developed a new intervention, Combat Path Debriefing, designed to address combat stress and promote unit readiness for soldiers returning to combat. This article outlines the components of Combat Path Debriefing and discusses how it is rooted in principles of combat and operational stress control and the unique characteristics of Ukrainian military life. This perspective offers US and allied leaders real-world experience that can inform future efforts to support soldiers’ mental health and combat performance... MORE

What American Policymakers Misunderstand about the Belt and Road Initiative
May 29, 2024 — American accounts of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) contend that it is a coherent grand strategy that reflects Beijing’s geopolitical ambitions. These accounts ignore the BRI’s fragmented nature, whereby Chinese provinces have been pivotal actors in its development and implementation. Furthermore, these accounts disregard the agency of participant countries and their capacity to shape the BRI. This article illustrates this fragmentation and agency by studying the Yunnan province and its domestic and international neighbors. It contends that these dynamics indicate that the BRI lacks coherence and that Beijing’s capacity to extract geopolitical benefits will remain limited. ... MORE

In Memoriam
May 29, 2024 — US Army Pacific (USARPAC) is grateful for the enduring relationship it has with the folks at the US Army War College and the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI). We were all shocked and deeply saddened to hear of the sudden death of Dr. Carol Evans, the director of SSI. I considered Carol both a terrific colleague and a close friend... MORE

From the Editor in Chief
May 29, 2024 — Welcome to the Summer 2024 issue of Parameters. We open this issue with a special “In Memoriam” by General Charles A. Flynn, Commander US Army Pacific, honoring the life and legacies of our director and consummate colleague, Carol V. Evans. We dedicate this issue to her. General Flynn’s memoriam is followed by an In Focus commentary entitled “What American Policymakers Misunderstand about the Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), by Zenel Garcia and Phillip Guerreiro; they argue the grand-strategic and geopolitical framing American policymakers typically use to interpret the BRI ignores the origin of the program and its fragmented nature... MORE