Strategic Issues

New Media and the Warfighter: Workshop Initial Impressions Dennis M Murphy Issue Paper by the US Army War College, Center for Strategic Leadership "Managing media and “information effects” is a hallmark of the current geo-strategic environment in which the U.S. military fights. The global information revolution and rapid spread of the Internet and other digital media have leveled the playing field between nation-states, non-state actors, multinational corporations and individuals. Anyone armed with mobile technologies such as a camera cell phone and access to the Internet is capable of affecting strategic outcomes at very low cost, using a minimal information infrastructure. The U.S. military has increasingly leveraged advances in information technology to gain advantages in the modern battlefield and to tell their story on a macro level, but has just recently begun to exploit the exploding technology realm at the micro level by co-opting the use of YouTube and blogs to help achieve objectives. Clearly, managing the “message” while controlling the necessary technological “means” represent critical challenges in today’s military operating environment."

Collins Center Update Volume 10, Issue 1 Winter 2008 Colonel Phil Evans, Ritchie L. Dion, Colonel (Ret.) Eugene L. Thompson Collins Center Update by the US Army War College, Center for Strategic Leadership

Intelligence Scotomas in Central and South America, The Proteus Monograph Series, Volume 1, Issue 4 John B Alexander Issue Paper by the US Army War College, Center for Strategic Leadership, Proteus Monograph Series Fellows Program " 'Why should I care?' This response from a U.S. Army staff officer may seem like a strange introduction to a monograph on national security issues, but it actually strikes at the crux of the problem. The comment was made by a lieutenant colonel assigned to the Department of the Army’s G-3 office when told that there were significant problems emerging in South America. He is far from alone in his reflexive analysis, or lack thereof. It is indicative of the understaffed, overworked, and terminally focused attitude that permeates everything in the Pentagon. Combat pilots call this target fixation, and for the Department of Defense, the current target is Iraq and the Middle East."

Dissent and Strategic Leadership of the Military Professions Dr Don M Snider Monograph by the US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute "Vice Admiral James Stockdale, Vietnam prisoner of war and Medal of Honor recipient, once said, 'Even in the most detached duty, we warriors must keep foremost in our minds that there are boundaries to the prerogatives of leadership, moral boundaries.' In this monograph, the author delineates a segment of these boundaries as they are understood from the study of military professions and as derived from the roles and responsibilities of those seniors privileged to be the profession’s temporary stewards—the colonels/captains and Flag Officers who comprise the strategic leadership. Such boundaries mean that the decision to dissent can never be a purely personal matter. Rather it will reverberate outward impinging at a minimum the three critical trust relationships of the military profession—those with the American people, those with civilian and military leaders at the highest levels of decisionmaking, and those with the junior corps of officers and noncommissioned officers of our armed forces."

The Trouble With Strategic Communication(s) Dennis M Murphy Issue Paper by the US Army War College, Center for Strategic Leadership "Recently the U.S. Southern Command’s Admiral James Stavridis paraphrased World War II’s great naval commander and strategist Ernest King: 'I don’t know what the hell this [strategic communication] is that Marshall is always talking about, but I want some of it.' This past summer over 200 strategic communication practitioners and academics met at the National War College for the first annual Worldwide Strategic Communication Seminar. Senior government officials urged attendees to get on with the business of strategic communication, noting that 'we will be flying the plane while we’re building it'..."

Creative Strategic Intelligence Analysis and Decision Making Within the Elements of National Power; Proteus Futures Workshop Report 2007 Workshop Report by the US Army War College, Center for Strategic Leadership "From 14 to 16 August 2007 the Proteus Management Group USA hosted an Academic Workshop to bring together specialists from academia, the defense community, and civilian organizations to share information and insights on analyzing future complex national security challenges. "

Toward a Mathematical Theory of Counterterrorism; Proteus Monograph Series 1, Volume 2 Jonathan David Farley Monograph by the US Army War College, Center for Strategic Leadership, The Proteus Management Group 'In March 2006, The New York Times Magazine published an article entitled, 'Can Network Theory Thwart Terrorists?' When terrorist cells are depicted schematically, they are often shown as structures called graphs. These are not the graphs readers may have plotted in high school algebra, but collections of dots (called nodes), representing individuals, and lines (called edges) between nodes, representing any sort of relationship between the two corresponding individuals, such as a direct communications link."

Truth, Perception and Consequences Proteus Monograph Series 1, Volume 1 Christine A R MacNulty Monograph by the US Army War College, Center for Strategic Leadership, The Proteus Management Group "Today we, in the United States, tend to regard Sun Tzu’s maxim 'If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles' as being about the physical capabilities, C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance), weapons, and warfighting capability of our own forces and those of the adversary. Given the rest of The Art of War, and its focus on preventing such actions, it is likely that Sun Tzu was referring much more to the understanding of the psyche than to the material aspects of warfare."

Regional Threats and Security Strategy: The Troubling Case of Today's Middle East Mr James A Russell Monograph by the US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute "This monograph attempts to peel back the layers of complexity surrounding the regional threat environment as a first step in the process of constructing a security strategy that can effectively mitigate the threats to U.S. and global interests. The United States has relied on a remarkably effective Cold War template to protect and preserve its regional interests that includes such elements as access to host nation facilities, prepositioned military equipment, foreign military sales, and joint training and exercises. The question facing strategists is whether this template remains relevant to the regional environment. The author argues that changing internal political dynamics throughout the region will make it increasingly difficult for regional elites to continue to allow the United States to apply its tried and true Cold War template."