Strategic Issues

Support to Civil Authority in Seismic Disasters: Regional Initiatives (U.S. Pacific Command Southeast Asia Seismic Disaster Preparedness Conference) Arthur L Bradshaw, Dr Kent H Butts, Prof Bernard F Griffard Issue Paper by the US Army War College, Center for Strategic Leadership "The “Ring of Fire” is a tough neighborhood. Fellow residents include over 75% of the world’s active and dormant volcanoes, and along their fence line are a series of dynamic tectonic plates that produce frequent, and sometimes violent, seismic events. This delicate relationship between man and nature was brought home to Southeast Asia on December 26, 2004 when a 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra produced a Tsunami that devastated the region. "

Collins Center Update - Volume 8, Issue 1: September - December 2005 Tammy S. Schultz, M. J. Cross, Colonel Richard Dillon, Colonel Ken Smith, Colonel Phil Evans, Kent Hughes Butts, Professor Dennis Murphy Collins Center Update by the US Army War College, Center for Strategic Leadership

Recognizing and Understanding Revolutionary Change in Warfare: The Sovereignty of Context Dr Colin S Gray Monograph by the US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute "This monograph provides an audit, a not-unfriendly critical review, of the concept of revolutionary military change. It offers a review of what those who theorize about, and those who are committed by policy to execute, such a revolution ought to know about their subject. As the subtitle of the analysis announces, the leading edge of the argument is the potency, indeed the sovereign importance, of warfare’s contexts."

Strategic Theory for the 21st Century: The Little Book on Big Strategy Dr Harry R Yarger Monograph by the US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute "The word “strategy” pervades American conversation and our news media. We tend to use strategy as a general term for a plan, a concept, a course of action, or a “vision” of the direction in which to proceed at the personal, organizational, and governmental—local, state, or federal—levels. Such casual use of the term to describe nothing more than “what we would like to do next” is inappropriate and belies the complexity of true strategy and strategic thinking. It reduces strategy to just a good idea without the necessary underlying thought or development. It also leads to confusion between strategy and planning, confining strategic possibilities to near-time planning assumptions and details, while limiting the flexibility of strategic thought and setting inappropriately specific expectations of outcomes. "

Information Operations and Winning the Peace: Wielding the Information Element of Power in the Global War on Terrorism Dennis M Murphy Issue Paper by the US Army War College, Center for Strategic Leadership "Perhaps more than ever before Information Operations (IO) is (or at least should be) the main effort tactically, operationally, and strategically in the current phase of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). This national effort is in fact about winning the “war of ideas.” However, it’s important to understand that this way of fighting is new to the United States and new to the world for that matter. Counterinsurgencies (COIN) have been fought in the past but the U.S. has never fought a counterinsurgency in an information environment so favorable to the enemy. This information environment favors the enemy’s strengths and exploits our vulnerabilities (truth, bureaucratic layers and clearances, real time press reporting, etc.). Thus, both of these factors (IO as the main effort in COIN and the current information environment) present new and unique dilemmas that must be examined and overcome."

The Struggle Against Extremist Ideology: Addressing the Conditions That Foster Terrorism Dr Kent H Butts, COL Jeffrey C Reynolds Study by the US Army War College, Center for Strategic Leadership "Since the end of the Cold War, the primary threat to United States’ national security interests has been regional instability. In the absence of superpower influence and guidance, long suppressed religious, ethnic, socioeconomic, and territorial issues began to surface and threatened the continued governance and stability of regional states. At the same time, economic and military support from the superpowers was greatly reduced, as was the capacity of regional states to build and maintain legitimacy in the eyes of their people."

Revisions in Need of Revising: What Went Wrong in the Iraq War Dr David C Hendrickson, Dr Robert W Tucker Monograph by the US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute "David C. Hendrickson and Robert W. Tucker examine the contentious debate over the Iraq war and occupation, focusing on the critique that the Bush administration squandered an historic opportunity to reconstruct the Iraqi state because of various critical blunders in planning. Though they conclude that critics have made a number of telling points against the Bush administration’s conduct of the Iraq war, they argue that the most serious problems facing Iraq and its American occupiers—criminal anarchy and lawlessness, a raging insurgency, and a society divided into rival and antagonistic groups—were virtually inevitable consequences that flowed from the act of war itself."

Coup D'Oeil: Strategic Intuition in Army Planning Dr William Duggan Monograph by the US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute "In our military professions, formal analytical methods co-exist with intuitive decisionmaking by leaders in action. For the most part, there is no harm done. But many officers can recount times when they knew they should have “gone with their gut,” but followed instead the results of their analytical methods. The gap between these two forms of decisionmaking perhaps has grown wider in recent times, especially in Iraq, where adaptive leadership seems to have overshadowed formal methods of planning. Departing from formal methods increasingly seems to be the mark of an effective commander, as we learn from Dr. Leonard Wong’s recent Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) report, Developing Adaptive Leaders: The Crucible Experience of Operation Iraqi Freedom (July 2004)."

The Fourth Annual USAWC Reserve Component Workshop: The Role of the National Guard in Critical Infrastructure Protection COL Richard W Dillon, Prof James O Kievit, Prof Bert B Tussing Issue Paper by the US Army War College, Center for Strategic Leadership "The Department of Defense (DoD) Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support asserts that one of the most essential and promising areas of employment for the National Guard in defense of the homeland is Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP). The strategy’s authors believe that the comprehensive assessment of critical infrastructure sites (both DoD and non-DoD), and the protection of those sites as required, are both areas in which the Guard could serve vital functions. Concurrently, the strategy reminds us that the modern threat against our country will call for an “unprecedented degree of shared situational awareness” between the interagency, state, local, tribal and private entities – a requirement that could be greatly facilitated by the traditional relationship between the Guard and the communities it serves."