One of the effects from the September 11th terrorist attacks was an intensified United States strategic partnership with the Central Asian states. Geographically, Central Asia is critical to the GWOT. In support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF)...
A key requirement of military forces following major hostilities is to reestablish security. Lasting security can only be achieved with the restoration of civil authority, the reestablishment of the rule of law, and the institutions that uphold the...
Historically, fog and friction have exacerbated the best laid battle plans of even the most intuitive wartime commanders. To mitigate these ever-present elements, the U.S. Army emphasizes the decentralized execution of AirLand Battle. Paramount to...
For approximately the past ten years, the Army has been engaged in large-scale counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. These campaigns have forced the Army to reevaluate how it approaches its role in advising host nation forces. This...
The 2008 National Defense Strategy identifies promoting security as one of the nation's strategic objectives, using Security Force Assistance (SFA) as a method to build partner capacity. The primary threat addressed is violent extremist...
Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 irrevocably changed the European geopolitical framework. After 1935, Mussolini would come increasingly under Hitler's influence. Hitler would also begin to free Germany from the restrictions imposed by the...
The United States Army largely missed the signs that a new threat was approaching, after the end of the Cold War, and was slow to understand and adequately plan for the changes that have since come to fruition. So how does the U.S. Army improve?...
This monograph examines the nature of air-ground operations within the context of interdiction and close air support, and their relationship to the Fire Support Coordination Line. The primary research question for this study was whether changes to...
This study examines the proposition that military institutions in underdeveloped or developing countries offer significant advantages when they are given a role in national development. The investigation focuses mainly on the non-military and...
The Arab Spring has demonstrated the power and potential of social mobilization and collective action as a form of political warfare in support of unconventional warfare strategies. This power and potential is not isolated to the Arab Spring or to...
Military organizations are normally quite resistant to change the way they operate. As Eliot A. Cohen and John Gooch note in ‘Military Misfortunes,’ militaries have failed on occasion to anticipate, learn, and adapt to changes in the nature of...
This paper challenges the idea that the thinkers who developed the American Theory of Limited War prior to Vietnam were grossly in error. A framework for the elements of the theory is constructed through a discussion of the historical American way...
During the Vietnam War and the years following, there has been a contentious debate regarding the nature of the conflict. Some proponents argue it was an insurgency while others claim it was a conventional war, with each side advocating the...
The Army conducts operations in complex environments with Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental and Multinational (JIIM) partners. Doctrine provides several concepts designed to create and sustain effective partnerships. One of these concepts, the...
The purpose of this monograph is to examine whether the Principles of War, as defined within the U.S. military's Joint Publication 3-0, Joint Operations, can be applied to cyber war. Since 2005, the U.S. military recognized cyber conflict as a new...
Since the end of the Second World War most modern armies have been conventionally structured and equipped to fight high intensity conflicts against like armed nations. Congruently, there has also been many low intensity conflicts in which similarly...
Since September 11, democracy has come to dominate the discourse as authoritarian Middle East regimes, even if they are friendly to Western interests, are perceived to be at the root of the existing international state of insecurity. Promoting...
In the words of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, "The United States, our allies, and our partners face a spectrum of challenges' We must balance strategic risk across the responses, making the best use of the tools at hand within the U.S....
Although the U.S. had conducted amphibious operations since the Revolutionary War, it was not until after the Spanish-American War that the military services attempted to codify procedures in doctrine. Early emphasis focused on command...