Strategic Studies Institute

As the Army downsizes its personnel while still being asked to conduct a wide variety of missions globally, the need for increased effectiveness is paramount. Those interested in the possibilities presented by the Army's recently developed regionally aligned forces (RAF) concept will find this monograph thought- provoking and of particular interest. While the United States has long recognized the importance of "helping others help themselves," the author contends that, as Operation IRAQI FREEDOM demonstrated, U. S. Army conventional forces continue to falter in the realm of security force assistance. In a personnel and budgetary constrained environment, doing more with less will become more important, as will the need to build partner capacity. In this monograph, Captain (Promotable) Liam Walsh, an infantry officer and veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan, seeks to answer how the Army's principal tactical formation-the brigade combat team-can best respond to this challenge and opportunity.

China's global rise has prompted numerous discussions and studies of this historically monumental phenomenon and its implications for the world. On the one hand, China's emergence as a global player has generated a lot of optimism for global development and economic convergence. On the other, it has spurred concerns about possible collisions on the world stage as existing and emerging powers seek to retain and redesign their roles and influences. Related opportunities and fears have been especially pronounced in countries neighboring China, including in Central Asia where the newly independent and post-Soviet republics face a possibility of yet another imperial expansion due to strategic advances of the "Middle Kingdom." As the strongest power on the planet, the United States has a major stake in China's and the region's future because both directly affect the U. S. global standing and the U. S.-led global economic and security order.

The U. S. defense export system is in need of significant reform to reduce the impact of its core inefficiencies and weaknesses. The International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) create serious problems for the U. S. defense industry and thereby weaken U. S. national security in several important ways. While the ITAR is mostly successful in preventing U. S. arms from being used against the United States and its allies, the manner in which the ITAR regulations are enforced presents excessive barriers to U. S. firms that impede their ability to compete in the global defense market. These firms are important contractors to the U. S. military, and their success enables the United States to maintain a technological and industrial advantage. Additionally, when U. S. allies choose to purchase defense products from ITAR-free firms based outside of the United States, U. S. Army interoperability with foreign forces decreases.

Henry Sokolski has written an excellent, short book about what he sees as our not so peaceful nuclear future. While short in length, it covers a lot of ground, and because it is extensively footnoted, it can lead readers to the broader literature. The book provides a good picture of the growing stockpiles of separated plutonium and the stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, as well as the likely expansion of nuclear power programs in additional countries. When reading the book, my thoughts turned to the Per Bak book, How Nature Works, and the concept of self-organized criticality and its descriptions of computer simulations and experiments leading to avalanches in sandpiles. This may be a useful way of thinking about the possible consequences for nuclear weapon proliferation as the stockpiles of fi ssile material grow.

cCicero once pointed out that the crucial sinew of war is, and always has been, "endless streams of money." Wars throughout history have been waged for only as long as the money has held out. If silver and gold continued to pour forth from a state's treasury, then a ruler or government could tap a never-ending supply of soldiers and war materiel. However, soon after the supply of coin was expended, armies began to vanish and sources of supply would dry up. Only when new methods of providing long-term finances started to evolve, first in the Netherlands and soon thereafter through the Bank of England, do we begin to witness progress toward a financial revolution that was still evolving at the start of the 20th century. By World War II, however, this process was complete. For the first time in recorded history, a major war was fought where the manpower and productive capacity of states was exhausted before any major state's finances gave out.

Stories about unmanned vehicles now appear regularly in the national news-and not always in good ways. Within the last 2 years, privately-owned drones have crashed on the White House lawn, surveilled the U. S. Embassy in Paris, and buzzed German Chancellor Angela Merkel. When used in military operations, autonomous weapon systems (AWS) have the potential to save lives as well as apply lethal force across land, sea, and air. In this Letort Paper, Mr. Jeffrey Caton posits that the development of AWS policy and doctrine should characterize autonomy not as a discrete property of a given system, but rather as a function that varies in its strategic, operational, and tactical context and mission application. Further, he argues that AWS design, planning, and operations should be tempered with the purposeful consideration of human judgment and control as well as legal and ethical standards that foster international credibility.

The announcement that the Human Terrain System (HTS) was brought to a close in the fall of 2014 met with a flurry of responses. Commentators assessed the character and content of the social science research program and several identified plausible legacies that it may bequeath U. S. Armed Services. Often the conclusions therein were mixed, hinting instructively at the absence of a strong empirical record of the program. Therefore, this book is a welcomed larger study of the HTS, one of the first investigations to delineate the experiences of former program members, chart the stance of the American Anthropological Association, and gain engagement both from the U. S. Training and Doctrine Command, and a manager from the first primary contractor, BAE Systems. As a scholarly assessment of the complex interplay of these perspectives, the book becomes part of an attempt to find a platform for collaboration and discussion on what has become a profoundly polarizing subject.

In the past year, oil prices have plummeted. At first glance, the U. S. economy as a whole appears to be a big winner. Newspaper headlines talk about "America's oil independence." In Carlisle, PA, we can gas up our cars in late-March 2015 for less than $2.50 a gallon. That means more money in our pockets for consumer goods. Therefore, consumers are big winners and are rejoicing. Is it time for a victory parade? Not so fast, says Dr. Leif Rosenberger, the Chief Economist at U. S. Central Command. As someone who has spent 3 1/2 decades connecting economics and security as a scholar, educator, and now a practitioner in the U. S. Government, Dr. Rosenberger reminds us that, in economics and international business, appearances can be deceiving. He points out that shale oil producers in the United States are learning a bitter lesson about the cyclical nature of the international oil market. The more they produce, the more oil prices fall and the more their profits get squeezed.

Albert Einstein famously stated that: "Any fool can know; the point is to understand." Over the past 20 years, the United States has known that there exist people with a profound hatred of all that it and the West are, and all that it stands for. During that time the American people and our allies abroad have known war in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and we know that today in Syria, Iraq, in Nigeria and North Africa those enemies plan and plot more violence and more hatred against us. Yet, do we really understand? If there is one observation that has been repeated by military commanders and policymakers alike from almost every nation in our various coalitions, it is the idea that we have not understood our adversary properly. Our nations have the world's most sophisticated intelligence gathering capabilities. We are masters of electronic intelligence, of human intelligence, of signal intelligence, open-source intelligence, and technical intelligence.

The United States is likely to face crucial grand strategic decisions in the coming years. This being the case, it is essential to have a rigorous, well-informed debate not simply about the nation's current grand strategy and policies, but about the most salient grand strategic options and alternatives open to the United States as well. In this monograph, Professor Hal Brands contributes to that debate through a probing analysis of one particular grand strategic alternative that has become increasingly prominent in recent years-the concept of "offshore balancing." Offshore balancing entails a large-scale strategic retrenchment of America's current presence overseas, and it has often been touted by its supporters as a sort of grand strategic panacea-an option that will allow the United States to improve its overall geopolitical position while simultaneously slashing the costs of its global posture.

During a recent address to the National Defense University on U. S. counterterrorism strategy, President Barack Obama cautioned that "we must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us." His comments hinted at the dramatic transformations of the U. S. military and national security apparatus since September 11, 2001 (9/11). Notable among these have been a new operational emphasis on the threats posed by nonstate actors and individual combatants. This trend represents a major shift from the Cold War era paradigm focused primarily on conventional threats from state-based adversaries. This strategic reprioritization has evolved into new military doctrines focused on the task of defeating networks rather than formations and technical innovations designed for identifying, screening, and targeting individual combatants on the battlefield.

The Army War College Review, a refereed publication of student work, is produced under the purview of the Strategic Studies Institute and the United States Army War College. An electronic quarterly, The AWC Review connects student intellectual work with professionals invested in U. S. national security, Landpower, strategic leadership, global security studies, and the advancement of the profession of arms.

The Middle East is facing a period of great instability and uncertainty. The region is beset with civil wars, sectarian conflicts between Sunnis and Shias, the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and its competition with al-Qaeda, and conflicts between countries and factions opposing and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and like-minded Islamist groups. The question arises as to whether an Arab regional order can be found amidst these conflicts and, if so, what types of opportunities and challenges does it pose for U. S. interests and policies in the region? Middle East expert Gregory Aftandilian, the author of this monograph, argues that there is, indeed, a new Arab regional order, but it is essentially two orders: one has arisen in the wake of the tumult in the so-called Arab Spring countries, which has led to conflicts between Islamist political organizations and their opponents; the other is a result of the Houthi takeover of large parts of Yemen, which has exacerbated Sunni-Shia...

This manuscript examines the increasingly important form of rivalry and statecraft that has become known as "gray zone strategies." In regions from Eastern Europe to the South China Sea, such tactics in the hands of ambitious regional powers pose a growing challenge to U. S. and allied interests. This monograph aims to provide a broad introduction to the issue to help leaders in the U. S. Army and the wider joint Department of Defense and national security community better understand this challenge. Dr. Michael Mazarr, a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation and Associate Program Director of the Army's Arroyo Center there, defines the issue, examines the most notable current cases of gray zone strategies, offers several hypotheses about the nature of this form of conflict, and suggests a number of policy responses. The monograph emphasizes that many gray zone tools and techniques have been employed for centuries.

The use of drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles, has increased exponentially in the last 10 years, and this trend is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. But with this increased use has come increased controversy, in particular closer scrutiny of the legal and ethical dimensions of the use of armed drones. In this monograph, British academic and practitioner Dr. Shima Keene provides a comprehensive assessment of the lethal use of drone technologies, measured in terms of their legality, morality, and overall effectiveness in the fight against terrorism and counterinsurgency operations. Dr. Keene is a subject matter expert in the field of asymmetric warfare and counterterrorism, and a former Director of the Security Technology Short Course at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, where she conducted research into both technical and ethical aspects of the deployment of UAV technologies. In her monograph, she explores the legal and ethical bases...

Morocco is seeking to position itself as a regional security provider in West Africa. Over recent years, Morocco has emerged as a key partner for the development of variety of sectors in different West African countries, but it also aspires to contribute to peace and stability of this African sub-region that continues to face important challenges and significant threats. In particular, a range of initiatives is under way to combat religious extremism, terrorism, and transnational organized crime including illicit drug trafficking, which remains a major threat to peace and security in the region. At a time of deepening budget constraints, bilateral cooperation with reliable and moderate regional partners offers a potential means of reducing costs while still maintaining regional reach in order to pursue U. S. security objectives. Morocco's new efforts and initiative offer synergies with U. S. priorities for the region. Morocco, with its geographic location, political stability, and close cultural ties...

As this monograph goes to press, the nuclear agreement negotiated between Iran and the so-called P5+1-the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council consisting of the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, plus Germany-is the subject of heated debate within Washington. The negotiations that produced the agreement perhaps best exemplify the efforts by the Barack Obama administration to use diplomacy to address the most vexing security challenges of the day. The United States and Iran have struggled to overcome mutual hostility and distrust stemming from the 1953 coup against the Mohammad Mossadegh government and the 1979-80 hostage crisis, not to mention Teheran's use of Hezbollah as a proxy against American ally Israel. Yet despite this, the administration persisted over several years to first intensify and broaden economic sanctions against Iran, and then to engage in painstaking negotiations with an authoritarian country that routinely and methodically employs...

A large part of Europe, especially Eastern, Northern, Central, and South-Central Europe including the Balkans, has been dependent on Russian natural gas since the Soviet times. Little changed with the breakup of the Soviet Union as Russia was no longer perceived as a strategic adversary. Moreover, Russia's dependence on gas sales in Europe as a source of important revenue for the state-owned Gazprom was considered a guarantee against the use of gas supply as a strategic tool by Moscow. However, a dependence on the Russian energy supply resulting from a system of pipelines built back during the Cold War has increasingly proved to be a disrupting, negative factor in European energy security. This dependence already has negatively manifested itself several times throughout the region and has a potential to massively disrupt European military, economic, and humanitarian situations if a substantial and/or prolonged interruption of the gas supply occurs.

For over a decade, SSI has published the annual Key Strategic Issues List (KSIL) to inform students, faculty, and external research associates of strategic topics requiring research and analysis. Part I of the Academic Year (AY) 2015-2016 KSIL, referred to as the Chief of Staff of the Army Special Interest Topics, consists of five critical topics that will be addressed by the USAWC as Integrated Research Projects. Part II: Priority Research Areas, has been developed by the U. S. Army War College in coordination with Headquarters Department of the Army (HQDA) and Major Commands throughout the Army. Part III: Army Warfighting Challenges, developed by ARCIC, represents those critical issues associated with the Army Operating Concept, "Win in a Complex World." The KSIL will help prioritize strategic research and analysis conducted by USAWC students and faculty, USAWC Fellows, and external researchers, to link their research efforts and results more effectively to the Army's highest priority topics.

As a region with abundant resources and rapidly growing transit potential surrounded by nuclear-armed powers, Central Asia is increasingly drawing the attention of global players. Russia is actively seeking to rebuild its economic influence via the newly created Eurasian Economic Union. China is expanding its reach through a recently launched Silk Road Economic Belt. Other actors are jockeying for their share of the region's pie, as well. But the United States and India are enjoying only very limited presence in what is increasingly becoming a critical part of the world. In this comprehensive and insightful account, Mr. Roman Muzalevsky, an author of a book and several monographs on global trends, great power politics, grand strategy, and connectivity issues, explains why India lags behind other actors in the region and what needs to be done to unlock its potential as a rising great power and shore up its strategic presence in Central Asia.