U. S. Army Command and General Staff Col

This book examines the conditions that the United States must set to ensure that the international community will recognize the legitimacy of preemptive actions and avoid recrimination and isolation. Case studies will be examined within the framework initially laid out by the United States Secretary of State, Daniel Webster in the Caroline Case of 1842, imminence, necessity, and proportionality, and the impact the terrorist attack on 11 September. These evaluation criteria will be first used to evaluate three case studies drawn from the Israeli experience and political decisions in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the 1981 Israeli raid on the Iraqi nuclear facility at Osirak, and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The Israeli case studies establish an understanding of Webster's tenets of preemption, and the resulting isolation, from which threats identified by the United States National Security Strategy of 2002, can be evaluated. Under consideration are, respectively, a conventional threat, the development of weapons of mass destruction, and finally terrorism. The case studies used to illuminate these threats are the 2003 invasion of Iraq and potential conflicts with North Korea and Iran. Based on the legitimacy of the action, an attempt will be made to evaluate considerations required to establish conditions for a legitimate preemptive attack.

In September 2012, the Department of the Army published new capstone doctrine, ADP 1, The Army, in which the concept of military professionalism occupies an especially prominent place. Coinciding with the release of The Army, the Chief of Staff declared that 2013 features a focus on professionalism, titled "America's Army-Our Profession," in an effort to better understand the idea of military professionalism. Military history can and should contribute to an understanding of American military professionalism. Investigating the nature of professionalism in the officer corps serving during President George Washington's administration, the central argument of this study is that early Army leaders demonstrated a particularly American style of military professionalism. The early officer corps grappled with the same elements described by the Army's current doctrine as fundamentally characteristic of military professionalism: trust, expertise, service, esprit and stewardship. Understanding the strengths, weaknesses, challenges, and limitations of the early officer corps' approach to professionalism in light of these five key characteristics provides important background and a useful conceptual framework to more fully understand the American military tradition and today's doctrine concerning military professionalism.

The US Army relies on tactical-level leaders, not for their physical warfighting skills, but for their ability to employ cognitive thought during stressful situations. Cognitive tasks include sensing patterns, deciphering complex environments, creating novel solutions, and synchronizing multiple battlefield systems, to name but a few. The physiological response to combat can degrade that cognitive capability, preventing leaders from performing tasks critical to unit success. This book approached tactical combat leadership from a brain-based perspective, seeking ways to enhance leader cognitive performance. To do so, it explored the physiological aspects of threat response and examined the field of neuroscience to understand brain function. Relevant to combat leadership are the principles that: (1) the brain sacrifices cognitive resources to respond emotionally, (2) stress degrades the form of conscious attention know as "working memory," and (3) certain brain areas can be deliberately activated to exert control over emotions. Further research resulted in a menu of techniques that tactical leaders can use to regulate the emotional response and improve cognitive performance in combat.