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To successfully navigate stormy and uncertain seas requires operating by an internationally agreed-to set of standards and norms affectionately known as the Rules of the Road. There are rules like these that apply to all the global commons -- what we in the Department of Defense have classified as domains, namely, land, sea, air, and space. There is now another domain. This is, of course, cyberspace, which is referred to herein as the Cyber Sea. Upon it, we set sail each day in the company of a billion other adventurers -- many embarking on voyages with distinctly crossed purposes. Over the last 10 years, for instance, the number of Web sites devoted to what we in the West consider Jihadist terrorist sites has increased a thousand-fold, exploiting the freedom of the Web as a forum to spread poisonous propaganda, raise funds, and recruit converts. Jihadists also use the Internet as a virtual classroom to teach others how to make bombs and plan attacks. This leads to an important question: How do we -- individually and collectively -- balance free and open access to such a virtual realm with the protections and regulations necessary to ensure our continued access to an environment that is safe and secure and contributes to the prosperity of humanity as a whole? If we are going to successfully exist in this domain, we need to do so together, combining the military and civilian, foreign and domestic, and public and private sectors. For example, NATO's new cyber defense policy is a coordinated multinational approach to enhance our collective and individual cyber defense capabilities to prevent threats and improve our responses to cyber attacks. In the 1980s, the international community came together to negotiate UNCLOS. Now, we need to contemplate a similar undertaking regarding the Cyber Sea. This can only happen if all interested parties adopt a common vision for security built on trust and confidence, and achieved through coordination, cooperation, and partnering., Published in Joint Force Quarterly, n65 p61-67, 2nd Quarter, April 2012.

Since its creation in 1963, United States Southern Command has been led by 30 senior officers representing all four of the armed forces. None has undertaken his leadership responsibilities with the cultural sensitivity and creativity demonstrated by Admiral Jim Stavridis during his tenure in command. Breaking with tradition, Admiral Stavridis discarded the customary military model as he organized the Southern Command Headquarters. In its place he created an organization designed not to subdue adversaries, but instead to build durable and enduring partnerships with friends. His observation that it is the business of Southern Command to launch "ideas not missiles" into the command's area of responsibility gained strategic resonance throughout the Caribbean and Central and South America, and at the highest levels in Washington, DC. Pursuing his vision for the Americas with limited resources, Admiral Stavridis made the most of every ship, airplane, Soldier, Sailor, Airman, Marine, and Coastguardsman committed to the region, employing each on constructive missions designed to create goodwill and mutual respect. Perhaps Jim Stavridis' most enduring contribution to Southern Command is the newly constructed headquarters complex in Miami. The new building, which finally creates a permanent lodgment for the command in the city that the Admiral correctly describes as the "Gateway to the Americas," is a testimonial to his persistence, persuasiveness, and credibility within the Department of Defense and the U. S. Congress. More than a building, the new headquarters is tacit recognition of the importance of the command and acknowledgment that Miami is the single right location for the institution that, as much or more than any other, expresses our commitment to peace and stability in this hemisphere.

The goods of the world move predominantly by sea. Across that broad global commons, trade generally flows freely and well. Yet there are places today where the term "outlaw sea" applies.1 Piracy, sadly, flourishes in several key choke point regions of the world's sea-lanes of communications. We must tame this outlaw sea. To many, the word "piracy" conjures images of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century swashbuckling rebels brandishing cutlasses and flintlocks under the ominous skull-and-crossbones flag, a la Walt Disney World's "Pirates of the Caribbean" attraction. But to those who have been victims of their blades and bullets, the word invokes a darker "profession"-and one that continues today., Published in Naval War College Review, v63 n4 p73-83, Autumn 2010.

Operationally, the U.S. military is essentially organized geographically. The world is divided into six combatant commands with wide-ranging responsibility for Department of Defense (DOD) activity across a defined theater. At U.S. European Command, for example, our area of focus is the 51 countries that make up the European continent, stretching from the Bay of Biscay in the Atlantic Ocean to the far Pacific shores of Russia. Our area runs from the Mediterranean to the North Pole, and includes Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Israel outside of Europe. It is an area with close to 800 million people, more than 10,000 nuclear weapons, and the most powerful collection of armed forces and the highest gross domestic product among the half-dozen combatant commands. We are, of course, enormous consumers of intelligence. Our dedicated intelligence apparatus runs above 1,800 people, all focused on our particular theater of operations. Yet I often ask myself the question, and no pun is intended: Is this the most intelligent way to organize ourselves in the area of intelligence? I think we can save resources, operate more efficiently, and provide commanders at the theater level and below better intelligence by organizing ourselves better. As we look into the next decade, expending the time and energy to rethink the shape of theater intelligence structures and organizations is an investment worth making. Balancing analytic agility needed to support commanders against their demands to enable operational forces puts our defense intelligence enterprise on the horns of a dilemma: where and how should it create analytic agility and at the same time maintain functional alignment over the long haul? The key is agility: we should apply some of the principles of special operations to our theater intelligence approach., Pub. in Joint Force Quarterly (JFQ), n56 p104-108, 1st quarter 2010.

The attacks of 9/11 and the continuing conflicts with terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq, and around the world stand as stark evidence that military commanders today face a changing world and an emerging set of challenges. Beyond the conflicts with extremist organizations, the broad security challenges of the twenty-first century are far more diverse -- from counternarcotics to cyber warfare -- all of which will unfold in an unforgiving 24/7 global news cycle. Because the extant challenges are transnational and nontraditional, the joint commander of today needs to be able to integrate the efforts of a wider and more disparate set of organizations than ever before -- from national intelligence services to charitable giving organizations. To develop this integrative capacity, the commander must be more knowledgeable in joint, interagency, and international operations. Additionally, in this age of globalization, an effective joint commander must be especially adept at strategic communications and ideally speaks at least one foreign language. Producing such leaders with the requisite skills in the joint, interagency, and international arenas, however, will not be easy. Within the U.S. Navy, the segment of the officer corps responsible for mastering such duties?the Unrestricted Line community?is already, through sheer task saturation, approaching the limits of what current career patterns permit. Today, line officers must master platform operational skills, develop expertise in technical fields, and gain at least a nascent knowledge of joint operations., Published in the Naval War College Review, v62 n2 p27-41, Spring 2009.

At U.S. Southern Command, we work to develop strategically important partnerships throughout the region for source-country drug control programs and interdiction. The primary aim of these efforts has been to limit the availability of illicit drugs such as cocaine to drive up prices and discourage use. This is hard and important work, done at a very reasonable cost. Consider it a hedge to ensure that our Latin American and Caribbean neighbors remain friends and partners with whom we will continue to engage productively and sensibly. Clearly, the drug threat to the United States is of enormous size and importance. It needs to be treated as such through a variety of solutions. Much of the work to be done is on the demand side, and there is a wide variety of policy ideas out there to address demand. On the supply side, there is much that can be done with producing nations to discourage growth and processing. Our focus in the military on detection and monitoring is likewise a part of the solution set. We should devote more resources to the problem of drugs in every dimension -- demand, supply, and interdiction. With a land and air border that extends over 7,500 miles, a maritime exclusive economic zone encompassing 3.4 million square miles, a vast number of people admitted into the United States every year, more than 11 million trucks and 2 million rail cars crossing our borders, and 7,500 foreign-flag ships making 51,000 calls in U.S. ports every year, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the drug challenge -- if we think sequentially and in isolation. But together, we can think, act, and work in parallel to solve the dilemma by building partnerships that keep our borders open to legitimate trade and travel, while reducing the threat of drugs throughout our society., Published in Joint Force Quarterly, v51 p109-113, 4th Quarter 2008

Simply stated, the objective of strategic communication is to provide audiences with truthful and timely information that will influence them to support the objectives of the communicator. In addition to truthfulness and timeliness, the information must be delivered to the right audience in a precise way. This generalized approach can be applied to essentially any organization, to the Department of Defense (DoD) broadly, and specifically to the individual nine combatant commands of the United States. Our approach at U.S. Southern Command is to consider strategic communication as an enabling capability for our policy and planning decisions and actions; provide truthful information about those decisions or actions; communicate it in a timely and culturally sensible fashion; use messengers who are likely to be well received; measure the results of our efforts diligently (clearly our hardest challenge and greatest shortcoming); and adjust both message and method of delivery accordingly. In the Southern Command's region -- 32 countries and 13 territories, including some 450 million people speaking 4 principal languages and dozens of dialects -- our view is that nothing we do is more important than strategic communication. In attempting to discover the right approach for strategic communication in the Southern Command's diverse region, we have examined a series of examples of strategic communication. These case studies include the announcement of involuntary feeding of detainees at Guantanamo Bay in August 2005; publicity for a humanitarian exercise in the Dominican Republic in the spring of 2006; and the cruise of the Navy's hospital ship, USNS Mercy, through the Pacific in 2006. Each of these recent case studies is worth thinking about in somewhat more depth as we consider an appropriate approach for the Southern Hemisphere., Published in Joint Force Quarterly, n46 p4-7, 3rd Quarter 2007.

A paradox is emerging as the revolution in military affairs (RMA) moves ahead: the larger the magnitude of the revolution, the greater the possible long-term advantage to a potential enemy. Why? The answer lies in the second revolution. The system of systems--a complete architecture of detection, selection, display, targeting, and attack--will revolutionize war. Related; advances information warfare will complement and enhance the progress made in the first revolution. We will adjust and integrate these developments with new organizations, doctrine, and tactics, techniques, and procedures, many of which will be integrated into the Armed Forces by early in the next century, and other industrialized nations will gradually follow suit. Indeed, some components are already entering service, and others are being aggressively purchased, programmed and researched. Both doctrine and operational concepts are undergoing study and change. Joint Vision 2010 makes it clear the we are on the leading edge of this first revolution, evolving the military for a "challenging and uncertain future." We are moving into the first revolution., The original document contains color images.