Joint Doctrine, explicitly, and Army Doctrine, implicitly, recommend that military commanders and staffs exercise systems thinking in operational planning and execution. However, current Military Doctrine fails to fully explicate and apply a...
Irregular wars generate significant internal political debate over appropriate strategy and resource allocation, a function of the relative complexity and ambiguity of irregular wars. This study examines whether operational commanders in the...
This paper seeks to examine the changing nature of war and the environment in which it is fought. The fact that America is not applauding its successes at the physical level of war in waging the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and does not perceive the...
A systems perspective is beginning to permeate doctrine. This perspective calls for an analysis of the key systems of an adversary. PMESII is an acronym that stands for political, military, economic, social, infrastructure, and information systems....
On September 11, 2001 a relatively obscure Islamic organization, executed an attack against the United States with catastrophic effects. Most of the United States, as well as the world, could not fathom how a single organization could conceive,...
UN missions in Africa reflect the changing nature of post-Cold War peacekeeping operations which involve large scale deployment of UN peacekeepers to settle mostly intrastate conflicts. The main question this thesis addresses is “What are some of...
Tactical level nuances between COIN by an external and an internal actor are barely distinguishable. The successful COIN practices for an external actor listed in FM 3-24 COIN manual of US Army include maintaining a constant, forward presence with...
Hybrid threat actors seek to master unrestricted operational art in order to reconcile overmatch and protect or advance their interests. As interest-based rational actors, hybrid threats translate strategic intent into unrestricted distributed...
Transitions in post-conflict environments from the means of violence to representative compromise are extraordinarily complex and fraught with risk. They require significant vision, planning, and detailed interaction among a wide variety of...
"Presidential Study Directive on Mass Atrocities/PSD-10" and the 2010 National Security Strategy elevated mass atrocities to a core national security interest. This study argues that PSD-10 will be implemented in a world where international borders...
This study examines the doctrinal definition of deterrence, reviews Bernard Brodie's deterrence theory and discusses the impacts of his theory upon state and nonstate actors. The study further defines the terms asymmetry and asymmetrical threats...
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) provide crucial intelligence collection, and lethal targeting capabilities for United States, and other armed forces around the world. In Iraq and Afghanistan, they continue to demonstrate their value to commanders...
With the U.S. high domestic consumption of illicit drugs, a relationship has formed between transnational gangs and powerful Latin American drug cartels. The ineffectiveness of the war on drugs, along with the high cost of such a program, begs the...
The premise of this monograph is that the Elements of Operational Design are incapable of linking the tactical employment of forces to strategic objectives and that Systemic Operational Design is a viable alternative. This monograph introduces the...
This study addresses how operational and strategic commanders best implement strategies to accomplish their specific goals by analyzing the three distinct tasks that strategic commanders must accomplish in order to successfully build the support...
This study investigates the role of sub-state actors and leadership in the stabilization, the collapse or the renewal of the African state. Understanding the root causes of the mutations occurring in today's African states will help to build...
The purpose of this monograph is to provide operational commanders and staff with a glimpse of the potential of non-lethal power of culture. This monograph suggests that it maybe possible to weaponize culture, specifically through the use of...
Negotiation has become for many military leaders a daily task in their role of stabilizing, securing, transitioning, and reconstructing. Negotiation is a means of providing commanders with an alternative to solutions involving the use of force....
A long conflict has been going on in the Kivu region of Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Today, in its later stages, the conflict has become an amalgamation of insurgencies by the former Rwanda Armed Forces (FAR) and genocidal forces...
The War of the Triple Alliance, fought from 1864 to 1870 between Paraguay and the Triple Alliance of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, was a Latin American regional war that spiraled out of control to become one of the bloodiest international...