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Critics of the Afghan war have claimed it was always unwinnable. This article argues the war was unwinnable the way it was fought and posits an alternative based on the Afghan way of war and the US approach to counterinsurgency in El Salvador during the final decade of the Cold War. Respecting the political and military dictates of strategy could have made America's longest foreign war unnecessary and is a warning for the wars we will fight in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of hybrid war has evolved from operational-level use of military means and methods in war toward strategic-level use of nonmilitary means in a gray zone below the threshold of war. This article considers this evolution and its implications for strategy and the military profession by contrasting past and current use of the hybrid war concept and raising critical questions for policy and military practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reemergence of great power competition, conflict with near-peer competitor states below the level of armed conflict, and persisting threats from nonstate actors with transnational ambitions and global reach pose challenges for strategists planning, executing, and assessing military operations and strategy. Building on current visualization tools, two proposed models--the National Strategic Risk Abacus and the National Strategic Risk Radar Chart--address these challenges and better depict how the US military may inadvertently contribute to risk at the national strategic level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predoctrinal deliberations about the employment of the US armed forces, captured in Joint Doctrine Notes, remain critically understudied. Using comparative text analysis, this article identifies changes in recent Joint Doctrine Note depictions of military strategy. These changes risk distorting the logic of military strategy, sacrificing means-ends integration to organizational impulse, and raising the prospect of future shortfalls in US strategic effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expanding complexity and variety of threats to national security will require Joint commanders and planners who champion innovative and comprehensive military campaigns. Thus to educate future pragmatic practitioners, academic faculty should devise curriculum which advances beyond formatting of plans and orders to establish contextual frameworks for strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues for the efficacy of a recently implemented method for teaching strategic mindedness to cadets at the Norwegian Military Academy. The method fuses the Lykke model of military strategy with the Toulmin model of argumentation, consumes less time than other teaching methods in the field of strategic thinking, and could be used to educate military officers in other nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the myths surrounding Russia's A2/AD capabilities and the risks associated with the current counter A2/AD efforts among NATO countries. It offers recommendations for investing in a stronger defense of the Baltic states and Eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the impacts of technological and socio-cultural changes on the military profession and on the U.S. Army. Topics discussed include changing trends in military leadership, changes in patterns of decision making with regard to military problems and the impact of the changing war scenario. The impacts of changes in military strategies and tactics are also discussed.

This article argues American military strategists must incorporate multidimensional power projection into their planning processes to counter adversarial actions by gray-zone actors. By developing a more complete concept of power projection, the United States can apply its resources more effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article encourages operational thinkers to apply the philosophies of Carl von Clausewitz, Thucydides, and Mao Zedong when integrating technology into future war strategy to remember that humans not only begin wars but also end them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines the progression of Russia's use of unconventional warfare. This perspective provides strategists and policymakers with insights into the actions leading up to and extending from Russia's annexation and occupation of Ukrainian territory since 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents five scenarios that might result from a Russian coup de main in the Baltic region. The author argues the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should analyze force capabilities further to ensure Alliance nations can adequately respond if Russia attacks across its border with Estonia and Latvia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the lack of rigor associated with the application of comparative strategy in professional military education. It also offers an analytical approach to help students identify case-selection bias and thereby strengthen the value of case comparisons in the curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides strategy makers with a multiple causation framework for analyses in complex environments with low tolerances for negative outcomes. With this framework, leaders can develop solutions with outcomes surpassing the effectiveness of single causation approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views regarding the military social experiment during the American Civil War in 18th century. It examines the political and military relationship between service, citizenship and equality in the U.S. Also investigated is the citizenship and military service of German immigrants during the Second World War.

This article introduces the value of efficiency in counterterrorism, such as that applied in Israel's effective national defense strategy, to resolve the conundrum of eliminating global terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the strategic logic of siege warfare in counterinsurgencies and questions the perception that siege warfare as an effective and relatively low-cost form of counterinsurgency. Sieges do allow the besieging side to conserve its military resources, avoid direct contact with the enemy, and minimize a rapid escalation of civilian casualties. Yet, on a strategic level, siege warfare is ineffective without major outside military support or the willingness to use overwhelming force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces financial warfare as a valuable and innovative tool for deterring the sponsors of the "little green" and "little blue men" of proxy warfare. By analyzing the economic terrain, financial trace, nodes, and edges of a sponsor's financial networks, US policymakers can develop, plan, and deliver financial deterrence necessary to support international stability as well as to persuade or coerce an adversary by increasing the costs of their wars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the use and value of surprise attacks in modern warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This dialogue regarding teaching, understanding, and practicing strategy stems from Jeffrey W. Meiser's article "Ends + Ways + Means = (Bad) Strategy" published in the Winter 2016-17 issue of Parameters (vol. 46, no. 4). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The French Army strategy to protect the people from terrorism and to remain involved in international stabilization efforts comes at a cost. This article identifies steps to balance the complexities through technology and force structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the competencies Australia's political and military leaders selected to pursue offset strategies and anti-access/area denial capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the US defense community, strategy making has become a narrow-minded exercise rooted in the concepts of ends, ways, and means and the whole-of-government approach. Strategic thinking can be improved by defining strategy as a theory of success and understanding that the purpose of strategy is to create advantage, generate new sources of power, and exploit weaknesses in the opponent. This analysis of the 2009 Afghanistan policy review and strategy-making process illustrates an approach to overcoming dysfunctional strategic practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article demonstrates the usefulness of rethinking our understanding of uncertainty and how that might affect the course of the Department of Defense's Third Offset Strategy and US grand strategy in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until the missing pieces of the role of global power transitions, of American "flawed by design" concepts of war and peace, and of paradoxical consequences resulting from America's roles and actions to maintain and disrupt the international system are calculated into the ongoing strategy and force planning reforms, any resulting changes of those efforts will inadequately prepare America to fight, win, and fully finish gray-zone wars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While examining effective and ineffective examples of Army modernization, this article explains the importance of focusing efforts on combined arms maneuver warfare with a nearpeer competitor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has sophisticated propaganda capabilities and expertise that can be turned against it. The United States should draw upon its expertise in political communication and psychological operations as well as adapt Russian precepts of operational shock and reflexive control to complement traditional military approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Force reductions resulting from the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review significantly compromise the US Army's ability to maintain the global commitments and positioning necessary for managing strategic risks arising from multiple, unforeseen sources. In this article, the authors discuss how active duty Army capacity affects America's strategic risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Military doctrine on stability operations reflects a"planning- school" approach, which assumes rebuilding the capacity of weak or failed states is a matter of preparation and technique. This article argues the problems of stabilization are not just those of process; they reflect deep-rooted philosophical differences surrounding the viability of these operations and the approaches used. When it comes to state-building, military doctrine lacks a basis in an uncontested "theory of victory." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers an author's reply to the responses to his article “The Centurion Mindset and the Army’s Strategic Leader Paradigm” published in the Autumn 2015 issue of the journal.

The debate over NATO burden-sharing needs to be reappraised continuously on both sides of the Atlantic. This re-look requires methodological rigor as well as an appreciation of the principles on which the Alliance was founded. While European allies have not been pulling their weight, additional funding will not constitute a panacea. The burden-sharing debate is ultimately not about defense accounting, but about military planning and agreeing who should do what for defending the European continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how regional and global priorities challenge America's evolving European strategy. The need to "reassure" Eastern and Central European allies in the face of Russian assertiveness calls for greater US strategic engagement in Europe. Conversely, defense-budgetary pressures, the Asia "rebalance," and the willingness to avoid excessive escalation with Russia constitute ongoing limitations to a significant US military engagement in and around Europe. That is the essence of America's European dilemma- how to invest sufficient resources in Europe as toensure credible deterrence while keeping enough military and diplomatic bandwidth to pursue other global geopolitical objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perhaps the most significant by-product of America's involvement in Vietnam was the decision to move from conscription to an all-volunteer force. The Gates Commission recommended this change, but identified several concerns regarding costs, quality, and the nature of the force that persist forty years later. This article examines the success of the All-Volunteer Force and its appropriateness for a democratic society [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Army 2025 is now being built and it needs to have all the right expert knowledge developed into its practitioners and units for immediate use when called upon. That is an immense task given the crunching defense reductions now ongoing. Analyzing the current state of the Profession using Army data on the bureaucratizing influences of the drawdown, on leadership and trust within the ranks, and on the development of moral character of future Army professionals, the author arrives at a less than sanguine conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an interview with retired U.S. military officer David H. Petraeus. Discussed are four tasks of a strategic military leader which include obtaining big ideas from the team, communicating them within the organization, implementing with those ideas and refining and augmenting them. Also tackled is the process of updating leader development courses.

Within increasingly complex operational environments, the Army's apolitical approach to war represents a political blind spot. This condition undermines the Army's ability to match military means to political objectives and to set the conditions for victory. To correct this blind spot, the Army must leverage reflective conversations about the political aspects of conflict. To develop this ability in its soldiers, the Army should increase its use of mentoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US Army is under pressure. If trends persist, it will soon shrink to its smallest size in nearly 70 years. While there are sound arguments for the current drawdown, reasonable policies can still yield unintended consequences. In particular, we argue American landpower helps make America's conventional and nuclear security guarantees credible. Since these guarantees stabilize alliances, deter aggression, and curb nuclear proliferation, landpower's relative decline could have serious implications for the broader security situation of the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the history of the Cold War to illuminate insights that can help assess debates about American grand strategy today. As will be shown, calls for dramatic retrenchment and "offshore balancing" rest on weak historical foundations. Yet Cold War history also reminds us that a dose of restraint-and occasional selective retrenchment-can be useful in ensuring the longterm sustainability of an ambitious grand strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of the Anglo-American "market-security state" in the past few decades has created contradictions in how Britain and the United States conceive and conduct their armed conflicts abroad. For those who bear the brunt of the fighting, killing and dying, the accentuated political distance between the frontline and the civilian world produces a particular kind of alienation. Creative measures are needed to help those who must navigate the transition between the war and the mall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the current inadequacies of the civil-military relations model advanced by Samuel Huntington and embraced by the US military, the tensions and realities of security policy development, and the professional responsibilities military leaders have for providing the best military advice possible to political leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strategic uncertainty is the disparity between what one knows, and what one needs to know in order to make a responsible decision; it permeates defense decision-making. Because of strategic uncertainty, planners must maximize the robustness against surprise in striving to achieve critical goals. This article describes the decision methodology known as "robust-satisfying" and the integration of this method with other military decision-making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Army culture does not currently value or incentivize education and broadening for senior leaders, as it did prior to 1950. Various structural factors, such as the creation of a mega-bureaucracy, co-equal service branches, and a fixation with tactics, have contributed to the decline in numbers of educated and broadened leaders in the molds of Generals Pershing, MacArthur, and Eisenhower. The Army's strategic performance since the Korean War is symptomatic of this cultural decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2015 National Military Strategy identifies war with a major power as a "growing" possibility. The more the United States demonstrates it is willing and able to undertake a big war, the more unlikely it is that it will have to do so. Thus, the US military should undertake analyses, wargames, and exercises focused on rapid expansion of the force, to include creating new formations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a framework to aid uniformed strategic leaders in reflecting on the last decade of conflict. This framework takes into account emerging historiography, time-tested military theory, and a holistic understanding of military history to help prepare officers to offer strategic advice in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-war drawdowns often include a re-negotiation of the terms of civil-military relations. After World War II the US Army's command culture was marked by Army Utopianism, an expansive vision of the Army's place in American society. This article sketches the history of Army Utopianism, noting its contribution to failing strategies in Vietnam, and argues for greater attention to the link between operational concerns and the Army's domestic political strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes Hamas' strategic and political calculations during the 2014 conflict with Israel in Gaza. I argue Hamas did not plan the conflict, which came mostly in response to Israel's crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank (Operation Brothers Keeper). However, Hamas sought to use the conflict to reverse its increasingly weak strategic position, and had some success in doing so. However, given Gaza's continued physical and regional isolation, Hamas' enhanced position coming out of the conflict is not likely to be long-lived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through oil smuggling, kidnapping, human trafficking and extortion, ISIL is one the best funded militant groups the United States has confronted. Avoiding a protracted conflict with ISIS requires a more integrated financial and military strategy to undermine the group's territorial control and reach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to benefit those among the readership currently engaged in designing the strategies and tactics of the struggle against the Islamic State (IS) group, a movement led by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi that has become the scourge of Iraq and Syria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's concept of military strategy is very different from that of the United States. This article examines the various components of the strategic thought of the People's Liberation Army and how its theory of strategy can be applied in contemporary times. Among other things, the article offers US analysts a template for confronting Chinese strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article underscores the exercise of land warfare as a critical component of any military strategy. It points out the existence of a unique demand for the strategic effect that can only be delivered through control gained by the use of landpower. It concludes that while landpower cannot claim utility in every contingency, it remains a major consideration for policymakers and strategists in determining national policy objectives and its relationship with other elements of national power.