Strategic Issues

2025 Homeland Defense Symposium Compendium Editors: Prof. Bert Tussing, Dr. George Schwartz, Dr. John ‘Charles’ Anderson. Conference Papers by: Dr. Erik Dahl, Dr. John Comiskey, Amy Lay, Ashley Reichert, Cary Underwood, Julianne Ortman; The United States Army War College’s 2025 Homeland Defense Symposium presented a unique opportunity for a whole-of-nation discussion and for information sharing on extant and emerging threats to the United States homeland. The research, presentations, key points, and discussions are consolidated in a compendium in this inaugural issue of For the Common Defense. Approximately 125 security professionals from a wide variety of backgrounds including the Joint Force, all levels of government, and civilian academia, attended in-person or virtually for three days. They participated in the symposium because they recognize that our homeland is once again in danger. Our potential adversaries are already making preparations to conduct operations in the continental U.S. in the event of a future large- scale combat operation. They will strive to disrupt infrastructure and supply chains, generate civil unrest, and create multiple dilemmas for elected leaders with the goal of keeping our military forces out of the warfight overseas.

The Collins Center Update is a quarterly summary of programs and activities at the Center for Strategic Leader (CSL) at the U.S. Army War College (USAWC). This issue features articles on Gaming Homeland Defense Contingencies by Major Andrew Starkey and Professor Bert Tussing; The Homeland Defense Defender’s Elective by Master Sergeant Ronald Bittner; Army War College Fellows Focus by Ms. Patricia Hayes, the 2025 National Security Simulation Exercise of Competition, Crisis, and Conflict by Mr. Brian Foster; and The National Security Seminar Homeland Defense Workshop by Dr. George Schwartz.

By Colonel Larry A. Wyatt, Dr. Michele Devlin, Dr. José de Arimatéia da Cruz. Weather-induced instability, such as the 2023–24 dzud (a slow-onset Mongolian winter disaster characterized by large-scale livestock mortality), creates schisms adversaries use to expand their soft power, Mongolia’s movement toward US adversaries could indirectly threaten US national security by heightening instability, increasing competition, and disrupting global economic systems. Conversely, through increased environmental diplomacy, investment, and resilience building—and by promoting democratic partnerships to bolster regional stability and showcase US leadership while mitigating adversarial exploitation of vulnerable regions—the United States can mitigate the impacts of ecological challenges on its national security interests.

Handbook by the School of Strategic Learning, US Army War College The purpose of this document is to assist United States Army War College students during the Military Strategy and Campaigning (MSC) course. It also serves to assist commanders, planners, and other staff officers in combatant commands (CCMD), joint task forces (JTF), and Service component commands. It supplements joint doctrine and contains elements of emerging doctrine as practiced globally by joint force commanders (JFCs). It portrays a way to apply draft doctrine awaiting signature, published doctrine, and emerging concepts, all at the higher levels of joint command, with a primary emphasis at the combatant command level.

By Dr. William J. Barry, PhD and Lieutenant Colonel Aaron “Blair" Wilcox; Issue paper from the U.S. Army War College, Center for Strategic Leadership; In the frenzy to adopt newly accessible artificial intelligence (AI) tools for military purposes, little public discussion has addressed the potential pitfalls. Despite the energy invested in developing the ideal generative AI (GenAI) tool for military applications, a trusted capability remains elusive across the US Army and the Joint Force. In May 2025, the US Army War College, the Global Information Dominance Experiment, and the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office partnered to test Donovan, a GenAI system developed by Scale AI, in the first classified war game focused on war plans at the theater-Army level. This experiment demonstrated the industry-partnership model required to build the tools the Army needs to maintain the cognitive edge in landpower.

Antulio J. Echevarria II; Monograph from the US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College Press; This monograph discusses how NATO might better leverage risk to strengthen the alliance’s extended deterrence. Such leverage would prove especially useful because Kyiv is unlikely to be permitted to join NATO and the United States may reduce its presence in Europe. Western analysts have not given Russian deterrence enough credit for the alliance’s deterrence failure on February 24, 2022. The alliance did not act fecklessly, nor did it self-deter. Rather, NATO’s deterrence measures were calibrated more for hybrid/gray-zone attacks of the sort it saw in 2014, not for the large-scale combat operations the alliance witnessed in 2022, which involved a nuclear-armed adversary with stronger interests in Ukraine than NATO had. To be sure, the alliance’s leaders acted responsibly in managing the risk of escalation. But in so doing, they also facilitated Russian deterrence efforts, which succeeded in keeping Washington and Brussels from intervening in the war. The alliance thus demonstrated its need for a strategy that would increase the risks and costs of war for Russia without unduly raising NATO’s. In short, the alliance needs a proxy strategy of “waging war without going to war,” whereby NATO can provide its full political, economic, and military support to Ukraine without running the risk of putting alliance troops in harm’s way.

Publication from the US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College Press; Maintaining strategic advantage demands professional discourse from across the force. The Academic Year 2025–26 Annual Estimate of the Strategic Security Environment provides a framework for those aspiring to tackle the Department of Defense’s most pressing challenges. This year’s authors highlight trending challenges and identify potential tension points across 15 sections organized into four enduring themes. This survey of regional, domestic, and institutional challenges represents the collective expertise of the US Army War College. The narrative is supplemented by a tailored list of 100 command-sponsored questions from 43 different Army and Joint organizations from across the Department of Defense. Combined, the distinct yet complementary narrative and question list offer unique insights into the vital matters impacting defense organizations and provide aspiring researchers with a necessary starting point.

George M. Schwartz, Editor; Conference papers from the US Army War College, Center for Strategic Leadership, US Army War College Press; Using disinformation and social media means, cognitive warfare seeks to shape the attitudes and behaviors of a civilian populace by negatively influencing and disrupting their cognitive processes, thus weakening a society’s political will and degrading national resilience. The authors of these papers provide insights and offer solutions for cognitive defense. Copyright: Chapter 1 – ©2025 Mark R. Landahl; Chapter 3 – ©2025 George M. Schwartz

by COL Byron Cadiz, COL T. Marc Skinner, LTC Robert Mayhue, LTC Lori Perkins, LTC Shun Yu. This report, produced by US Army War College Futures research team Axis Insight 2035, represents eight months of rigorous research from October 2024 to May 2025 to answer Mr. Ian Sullivan, TRADOC G2’s pivotal question: How will China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea react to U.S.-led deterrence efforts by 2035? By 2035, it is almost certain that China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea will respond to US deterrence with entanglement, disruptive technology, and persistent coercion. The global landscape is rapidly transforming, characterized by increasing complexity and challenges to U.S. influence. This seismic shift is marked by two key findings, the first encompassed in three threat vectors: 1) an entangled future of situational cooperation and transactional interdependence among China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea which amplifies deterrence challenges; 2) disruptive technology by which the U.S. advantages are severely threatened or lost to adversarial emerging technologies; and 3) persistent coercion consisting of the expansion and exploitation of gray zone activities in which aggression below the level of armed conflict bypasses traditional deterrence. Collectively, these developments forecast that U.S. deterrence is at risk of becoming strategically irrelevant without integrated, adaptive responses across all instruments of power.