Decisive Point Podcast

This podcast assesses the American-Russian economic relationship, identifying how Russia exploits strategic asymmetries to gain advantage in the space below armed conflict and how the United States can modernize its economic statecraft. It draws upon a wide range of comparative research, from US-Russian military thought to the American-Eurasian economic interrelationship, to evaluate the full range of economic statecraft within a single dyad of countries in the context of coercion theory. This analysis will assist American policymakers in reforming priorities and processes according to principles of economic statecraft to sustain ongoing American coercion and set conditions for advantage upon the return to bilateral competition.Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss2/10/Keywords: Russia, geopolitics, hybrid warfare, geo-economics, economic statecraft, gray-zone warfare​Episode TranscriptStephanie Crider (Host)Welcome to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production featuring distinguished authors and contributors who get to the heart of the matter in national security affairs.The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the podcast guests and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.The guests in speaking order on this episode are:(Guest 1: Ryan J. Orsini)(Host)Decisive Point welcomes Major Ryan J. Orsini, author of “Economic Statecraft and US-Russian Policy,” which was featured in the summer 2022 issue of Parameters. Orsini is a US Army infantry officer assigned as a student at the Command and Staff General College (Command and General Staff College) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He holds a master of public policy degree from Georgetown University. Ryan, I’m glad you’re here. Thanks for joining me today. Let’s talk about the US, Russia, and economic statecraft. Please lay the groundwork for us. What is your working definition of economic statecraft for this scenario?(Orsini)Thank you for the question. Thank you for having me. So, put simply, economic statecraft is the use of a nation’s economic means in pursuit of either geopolitical or domestic goals. That’s everything from trade policy, industrial policy, sanctions—it’s a big bucket. Now, here, I address a small portion. So I’m speaking, specifically, the US-Russian dyad and a particular spot on the conflict spectrum: the gray zone, the space between peace and war.But, really, I’m addressing two fundamental questions: first, how Russia uses its economic means, both licit and illicit, to sort of punch above its weight class and garner international influence, extracting these gains despite US deterrence policy and overall advantage in economic means. And then I ask, “What can the US do to leverage the economic instrument and really achieve the coercion it desires?” So I put forward the policy recommendation of domestic coordination, international cooperation, and transatlantic transparency.(Host)Well, let’s break it down. Walk us through them. Let’s start with domestic coordination. What needs to happen here?(Orsini)So US economic statecraft—it often lacks unity of effort. Its authorities and its resources are spread across branches of government and the interagency. What does this look like in practice? Well, first, it’s organization. Identifying a lead agency or task force. There are lots of options. I propose some, but, really, this agency serves a couple critical roles: assessing the changing Russian vulnerabilities to US economic leverage over time, evaluating the effectiveness of US policy over time, and ensuring that coordination across the interagency of the statecraft.Second is priority. Unlike in the defense community, there is no overriding document. There’s no national defense strategy guiding the economic tool. And also it’s about economic lines of effort. For instance, in this new era of great-power competition, how do we prioritize counterauthoritarian influence operations versus counterthreat finance?These are guiding principles that can really help guide the overall economic instrument. And, finally, it’s process: creating the legal mechanisms that the interagency can use to enforce antimoney laundering in the modern age to protect both privacy and access to data that it needs to be effective on today’s global stage.(Host)International cooperation: What does that look like in your plan?(Orsini)I’m looking in particular since the 2014 Crimean crisis. And if you look in the snapshot, the US economic statecraft has often lacked the broad international enforcement or has failed to maintain it over time. And, ultimately, this dilutes or nullifies intended effects of economic statecraft. So what does this look like? Really, it’s working with like-minded international bodies, political, economic, intelligence agencies. And the key is to work within the current overall Eurasian politic.So I offer a mix of positive and negative economic inducements. We often forget that economic statecraft is also positive inducements—how to prioritize sanctions and sanctions relief. And, ultimately, the big goal here is to align the incentive structures and build resilience for other states from Russian influence.(Host)Your final point was transparency, and I need to point out it’s not just about dollars and rubles exclusively. This included Bitcoin, (Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges or) INSTEX, the central-bank digital currencies, and you also mentioned the US Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020. Can you walk us through this part of your plan?(Orsini)So data might not quite be the new oil per se, but it really is the key to understanding Russian influence as well as how effective American statecraft can be against it. And you offered a bunch of mechanisms by which Russia can exploit these blurry legal and financial structures. And that starts here in the US.We have a myriad of antimoney-laundering laws that help define beneficial ownership across economic transactions. I point to plenty of potential legislation or legislation that is in execution right now.And why is it transatlantic? Well, the hub of international finance still runs a lot through New York City, London, and Brussels. So at end state, it’s about building actionable attribution and accountability. And these mechanisms within the international community—we can really garner a lot of influence just within our like-minded partners.(Host)Before we go, do you have any final thoughts?(Orsini)Knowing the readers of Parameters, I’d like to bring this idea of consolidating gains to making temporary advantage enduring. And, you know, there is a nonmilitary aspect to the American way of war. The economic tool usually shapes, and it usually translates advantage into some enduring outcome. But we often build it around a military action. I’d encourage the listeners, wherever you are in the interagency and whatever instrument you are a part of—think about how your piece can support this economic tool. It’s not normally how we think of it, but in a world where deterrence is really our largest contribution, it may be how we focus going forward, and this is a place where Russia has had success. It’s a playbook that they can bring off the shelf and utilize. And so, pending the results of ongoing conflict, it’s something they might likely go back to. It behooves us to look at this environment and shape it while there is a policy opportunity here now.(Host)Thank you, Ryan. Listeners, you can read this article, “Economic Statecraft and US-Russian Policy,” to get details about how Russia exploits strategic asymmetries to gain advantage in the space below armed conflict and how the United States can modernize its economic statecraft. Visit press.armywarcollege.edu. Look for volume 52, issue 2.If you enjoyed this episode of Decisive Point and would like to hear more, look for us on Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or any other major podcasting platform.Author information:Major Ryan J. Orsini, US Army, is an infantry officer assigned as a student at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He holds a master of public policy degree from Georgetown University.

In this podcast, Colonel George Shatzer, director of the Strategy Research and Analysis Department of the Strategic Studies Institute at the US Army War College, discusses books of relevance to US Joint planners and strategists, as well as those of allies and strategic partners. He applies his experience and education as a US Army senior strategist to extract insights useful to anyone contemplating how to confront the challenges of today’s strategic environment.Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss2/16/Keywords: NATO, Russia, Ukraine, integrated warfare, Russian military theoryEpisode TranscriptStephanie Crider (Host)Welcome to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production featuring distinguished authors and contributors who get to the heart of the matter in national security affairs.The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the podcast guest, and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.The guests in speaking order on this episode are:(Guest 1: George Shatzer)(Host)Decisive Point welcomes Colonel George Shatzer, director of the Strategic Research and Analysis Division in the Strategic Studies Institute at the US Army War College. Colonel Shatzer authors the (Strategic Research and Analysis Division or) SRAD Director’s Corner in Parameters. In the 2022 summer issue, he covers Russia and Ukraine.SRAD Director’s Corner is relatively new to Parameters. In it, you review books of possible interest to contemporary military strategists—especially, those serving in US Army and Joint positions. The summer issue contains the second installment of this section, and the focus is on Russia and Ukraine. Thanks for being here.(Shatzer)Well, thanks for the opportunity to discuss the article and this important issue.(Host)This conflict has not unfolded the way many people thought it would. Your piece emphasizes the value of knowing your enemy, and how it’s a pathway to understanding oneself and the kind of war on which we’re embarking. It’s through this lens that your reviews are written.(Shatzer)That’s right. As I mentioned in the article, the day-to-day demands of commanders, leaders, and strategists to ensure our nation’s security can be all-consuming. There are endless demands on time when you are preparing to deter war or to be ready for it, and those demands are mostly internal or focused on ourselves. Even with the assistance of very dedicated intelligence professionals, it can be easy for decisionmakers and strategists to lose sight of the adversary’s views or motivations.So, taking the time to read works such as those that I profile in the review series can help us build insight on what the adversary is thinking.(Host)How does Oscar Jonsson’s The Russian Understanding of War: Blurring the Lines between War and Peace inform this topic?(Shatzer)Jonsson’s book was fascinating. I really appreciated how thoroughly he built a case through his review of pre-Soviet, Soviet, and modern Russian military writings and doctrine. He argues that the current Russian view of the very nature of war, not just its character, has fundamentally changed.In brief, Jonsson asserts that Russian leaders and security professionals believe that the US and the West have become so expert in information and psychological warfare that the nature of war is no longer defined by armed violence. Instead, they believe that the nature of modern warfare is defined by political and social subversion and that these means now have effects akin to those of armed force, when you consider what subversion campaigns have done to governments recently.And what the Russians are referring to, of course, are the so-called “color revolutions” in the early 2000s, particularly in countries such as Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and Belarus, but also in the Arab Spring events in the Mideast in 2011. What most in the West saw as populist grassroots movements by oppressed peoples to demand a voice in their otherwise corrupt governments, the Russians saw as coordinated subversion campaigns engineered by the US and the West to overthrow legitimate governments and trample traditional social values in those countries. And, more broadly, the Russians view these movements as the opening moves of a campaign—an undeclared war, in effect, by the US and the West intended to destroy the Russian state and nation as they exist today.So understanding this perspective is important for a couple of reasons, I think. First, it clarifies the motivations for the current Russian war in Ukraine. From the point of view that Russia is defending itself against an undeclared US and Western war, then most any action is justified. In fact, Russia has been very open for many years now, well before its 2014 intervention in Ukraine (the Ukraine crisis), that Ukraine is in essence a vital national interest for Russia. And Russia has been clear that it would act to defend its security interest there—namely, the ethnic Russian people that live in Ukraine and the territory of Ukraine that borders the Russian state, which is also, in Russia’s view anyway, actually the land of the larger Russian nation.There are also a host of other factors that make Ukraine important to Russia that I mentioned in the article—chiefly, the agricultural and industrial capacity there as well as the Black Sea coast. So this all gets to the second reason why the Russian perspective is important to consider: It gives us a better sense of Russia’s commitment to their so-called “special military operation” there.A lot of attention has been paid so far in the war to the Ukrainian will to resist, but we should also be gauging the potential Russian will to persist. Accepting that Russia views its vital security interests as bound up in Ukraine to the point that those security concerns are even existential for Russia, then it would seem to suggest Russia will not end their invasion readily. When we also consider that Russia has been trying to destabilize the Ukrainian government for at least 10 years at this point through support to rebel groups in the eastern regions of Ukraine and even with the direct, unconventional intervention of its own soldiers in 2014, then we see even more clearly the depth of Russia’s investment. Russia will not give up in this conflict quickly.(Host)Neal Jesse’s Learning from Russia’s Recent Wars: Why, Where, and When Russia Might Strike Next was your next choice. What does it add to the conversation?(Shatzer)Neal Jesse’s book brings in an additional layer of analysis on past Russian modern interventions and aggressions since the end of the Soviet Union. Particularly, he focuses in on the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute in Azerbaijan; the civil war in Tajikistan; the Transdniestria conflict in Moldova; the Abkhazia and South Ossetia conflicts in Georgia; the wars in Chechnya; but, especially, the 2014 intervention in Ukraine (the Ukraine crisis). Jesse’s commentary on Russia’s actions in Ukraine in 2014, which he wrote in 2020, I think, are particularly insightful.Despite corruption issues and other problems in Ukrainian government, Jesse contends that Ukraine actually did a fair job at dealing with the resistance groups and Russian infiltrations. He argues that it managed to stabilize the security situation and largely forwarded Russia’s primary aims. His analysis makes one wonder what lessons Russia might have failed to learn in 2014 about Ukrainian resilience, actually.Additionally, from his assessment of past Russian interventions, Jesse lays out a pattern of operations that Russia might use in a future conflict with Ukraine, and those assessments actually seem to hit the mark exactly with what we see going on there today: subversive activity to destabilize the situation, deployment of regular military forces, information campaigns, eventual violation of borders, seizing terrain, and the threat of nukes as strategic blackmail. As Jesse correctly concludes, quote, “The Russian threat to Ukraine is the most obvious and the most constant.”(Host)There’s no shortage of books on this topic. In fact, you very kindly suggest some at the end of your article. Why did you choose these two to focus on?(Shatzer)What I try to do with the article series is review one work that has a more, you know, theoretical, policy, or strategic focus and pair it with a review of a second book that is still strategic but offers a deeper look at theater, strategic, or even operational questions.I did that in the first article, with reviews on two excellent books examining the security challenge China poses to the US. So Jonsson’s Blurring the Lines and Jesse’s Learning from Russia’s Recent Wars are a very good companion set of books. They’re both concise, at about 200 or fewer pages each. Both still managed to pack in an impressive amount of detail and some thoughtful analysis that I find very relevant to understanding what’s happening in Ukraine today. And together, the two books do a great job of encompassing theory, policy, strategy, and operations in a way that I think leaders and strategists will find useful. There are plenty of other books worth considering on this topic, and I do list a few of those at the end of the article, but I recommend these two as fine places to start if someone is looking for short, insightful works.(Host)I wish we had more time. I need to wrap it up, though. What are your final thoughts before we go?(Shatzer)So there’s been a fair amount of attention in the media recently about the upcoming 9 May Victory Day (V-E Day) celebrations in Russia and whether or not President (Vladimir) Putin will take the opportunity of those celebrations to declare war on Ukraine. I don’t think Jonsson’s or Jesse’s book really provides any direct insight into that. Who knows what Putin may decide to do on a particular day? But if their books are any kind of guide, I think we can be fairly confident that Russia will only deepen its commitment to the war in Ukraine.And the other point I think I would make in closing is returning to the earlier aspect about understanding the enemy and the difficulties in doing so, I argue that even understanding the enemy, as a concept itself, is sometimes misunderstood. It’s a mistake to think the goal is to somehow predict what the enemy will do; not even the enemy knows what they will do in a particular situation. Instead, we should be trying to build an appreciation for knowing enemy habits and weaknesses—you know, identifying real vulnerabilities. The other point is to understand the motivations so that the limits of their will is made clear. If we know where the enemy is vulnerable and the limits of their endurance, we will have a major edge in competition in conflict with them. Understanding the enemy is also a pathway to understanding ourselves because it frees us from our limited perspectives. And because war is fundamentally defined by those involved in it, then this knowledge goes a long way towards understanding the kind of war on which we are embarking.(Host)Thanks so much for joining me today. It was a real pleasure.(Shatzer)Thanks again for the opportunity to talk about this today.(Host)Listeners, if you’d like to learn more and check out Colonel Shatzer’s other book recommendations, visit press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters. Look for volume 52, issue 2.If you enjoyed this episode of Decisive Point and would like to hear more, look for us on Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or any other major podcasting platform.Author information:Colonel George Shatzer is the director of the Strategic Research and Analysis Department in the Strategic Studies Instituteat the US Army War College.

This podcast examines critical issues for the field of strategic studies raised by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including the waning of major war, strategic coercion, and “War Amongst the People.” Drawing on previous scholarship and current events, this commentary considers the questions raised by the first major war of the twenty-first century. It provides recommendations for scholars and senior leaders on how to work together to address the questions of strategy and policy that have and continue to arise as the war progresses.Keywords: Russia, Ukraine, strategic coercion, gray zone, compellenceAuthor information:Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria II had a distinguished career in the US Army and is currently the editor-in-chief of the US Army War College Press, which includes Parameters. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy, the US Army Command and General Staff College, and the US Army War College. He holds a doctorate in modern history from Princeton University and is the author of six books, including War’s Logic: Strategic Thought and the American Way of War (2021), Military Strategy: A Very Short Introduction (2017), Reconsidering the American Way of War (2014), Clausewitz and Contemporary War (2007), Imagining Future War (2007), and After Clausewitz (2001), and more than 100 articles and monographs on strategic thinking, military theory, and military history.

While propaganda and disinformation have been used to destabilize opposing forces throughout history, the US military remains unprepared for the way these methods have been adapted to the Internet era. This article explores the modern history of disinformation campaigns and the current state of US military readiness in the face of campaigns from near-peer competitors and proposes education as the best way to prepare US servicemembers to defend against such campaigns.Keywords: propaganda, disinformation, media literacy, military education, inoculationRead the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss1/9/Download the full episode transcript here: https://media.defense.gov/2023/Nov/15/2003341248/-1/-1/0/DP-3-16-PODCAST-TRANSCRIPT-FITZPATRICK_GILES.PDFAuthor information:Dr. Meghan Fitzpatrick, a strategic analyst with Defence Research and Canada (DRDC) Centre for Operational Research and Analysis (CORA), is a widely published author on trauma and resilience. Her current work looks at how militaries are navigating the increasing importance of the information environment. Since joining DRDC, she has received recognition for her research, including the CORA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Defence Analysis.Dr. Ritu Gill has a PhD in social psychology from Carleton University and is currently a section head with DRDC. Her research examines online influence activities, specifically, how the Internet and social media influence the information environment, including the analysis of online audiences, and how deception techniques employed by adversaries, such as disinformation, impact audiences. She has been part of international defence research collaborations and was co-lead for the NATO Human Factors and Medicine Research Task Group “Digital and Social Media Assessment for Effective Communication and Cyber Diplomacy.”Major Jennifer F. Giles, US Marine Corps, is currently a communication strategy and operations officer, a foreign area officer who advises commanders’ strategic and cultural engagement plans in the Pacific theater, and an instructor at the Marine Air-Ground Task Force Staff Training Program. She wrote Disrupting Disinformation: Force Protection through Media Literacy Training and recently spoke on media literacy and adversary disinformation for the Defense Information School “DINFOS Live.”

The root cause for the defeat of the Armenian forces in the second Nagorno-Karabakh War was flawed military doctrine inherited from the Soviet Union. This article analyzes the major problems faced by Armenia, uncovers the main reasons for unsuccessful innovation, tests empirical findings against some of the most authoritative theories in the field, and outlines current research on the conflict, while substantiating the analysis with established scholarship in the field of military innovation.Keywords: Armenia, The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, Innovation, Military Innovation, Civil-Military Relations​Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss1/10/Download the full episode transcript here: https://media.defense.gov/2023/Nov/15/2003341247/-1/-1/0/DP-3-15-PODCAST-TRANSCRIPT-AMIRKHANYAN.PDFAuthor information:Colonel Zhirayr Amirkhanyan is currently a PhD candidate at the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. He was the head of defense policy planning branch of the Defense Policy Department at the Ministry of Defence of Armenia.

Current events warrant a review of US civil-military relations doctrine. This article examines eight principles of military subordination to elected civilian officials and addresses the fundamental question at the heart of civil-military relations theory and practice—what options, if any, does the military have when civilian leadership disregards military advice? Examples drawn from US history provide an important framework to understand the complex interrelational dynamics at play.Read the monograph: "Civil-Military Relations: Guidelines in Politically Charged Societies" by Patrick PatersonKeywords: civil-military, apolitical, civilian, defense policy, US Constitution, professionalismEpisode TranscriptStephanie Crider (Host)Welcome to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production featuring distinguished authors and contributors who get to the heart of the matter in national security affairs.The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the podcast guests and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.The guests in speaking order on this episode are:(Guest 1: Patrick Paterson)(Host)Decisive Point welcomes Dr. Patrick Paterson, author of “Civil-Military Relations: Guidelines in Politically Charged Societies,” featured in the spring 2022 issue of Parameters. Paterson is a professor of practice of national security studies in the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. He completed his PhD in conflict resolution at Nova Southeastern University. His latest book, The Blurred Battlefield, published in 2021, addresses the need for hybrid doctrines on the use of force for Latin American militaries combating violent crime groups.Thank you so much for joining me today, Dr. Paterson. Your article lays out eight standard practices for military officers regarding civil-military relations in a politically charged society. Please, briefly walk us through them.(Paterson)Sure, I’d be happy. Thanks for the opportunity to speak about it.I’ve studied civil-military relations here at National Defense University very, very closely, both in foreign countries as well as in the United States. And what I realized is that there’s lots of material available, and you could look at Samuel Huntington or Thomas Bruno and Peter Feaver and Eliot Cohen and all the top scholars on civil-military relations.But what we’re missing, in my opinion, is clear guidance, practical rules that military officers should follow when they’re trying to adhere to the expectations of civil-military relations. And so what I tried to do was provide a succinct description—what I believe are the eight practices that are the most important for senior military officers as they interact with their civilian counterparts.The first key principle is perhaps the most important characteristic of a professional armed force. It’s to remain apolitical. Take, for example, the posture of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the president’s annual State of the Union address. The chairman, the vice chairman, and the chiefs of staff of each of the armed forces sit near the front row of Congress, but they don’t respond. They don’t applaud. They don’t react in any way, sitting unemotionally in their chairs, because any sort of reaction would be construed as political advocacy.Number two is to provide candid military advice. Senior military officers are required to provide the objective truth about military policy. It should be nonpartisan, nondeliberative, and oftentimes must include advice that’s contrary to what the politicians want to hear. Or there’s something that goes against the current policy. So the rule is to advise on how to use the armed forces not to advocate for a specific course of action.Number three, civilian authorities retain extensive control over all aspects of defense policy. This is contrary to a lot of the conventional thinking that I encounter. The belief among many students of US national security are that there’s two distinct spheres of authority between civilian and military officials. Civilian officials will oversee the larger, strategic interests of the country, including when to deploy the military, whereas the armed forces, on the other hand, make the operational and tactical decisions on how to use the military if it’s called to action.But scholars today disagree with that conventional thinking, and most civil-military relations scholars like Dr. Richard Kohn or Dr. Peter Feaver believe that civilians have extensive control over nearly all aspects of military policy. Civilians have most of the authority and can make decisions about the employment of the military.The fourth rule is that senior military officers must be very cautious when providing congressional testimony. The military has a dual responsibility to both the executive and the legislative branches. According to the Constitution, the military serves at the direction of the president in his role as commander-in-chief and certain designated officials, such as the secretary of defense. However, to maintain the checks and balances that are so critical to our system, Congress also provides oversight, identifies the military budget, determines the size of the armed forces, and has the authority to declare war. For these reasons, senior military officers oftentimes are called before the elected leaders of Congress to testify on military strategy and operations. This can be very tricky though, serving these two coequal branches of government: the executive branch represented by the president; the legislative branch represented by the Armed Services Committee.So then the question is what should senior officers do when they’re required to testify before Congress on a policy that they may have disputed with the president or the secretary of defense. And the answer is follow the institutional requirement to provide candid advice and options on using the military.The fifth rule is to never publicly criticize defense policy or civilian officials. To do so is a form of insubordination and disrespect that may undermine the authority of civilian leaders or the confidence that other servicemembers have in him or her.The sixth principle is perhaps the most debated. Should military officers remain apolitical once they retire from active-duty service? Retired senior military officers are normally held in very high esteem, according to public opinion polls. They continue to wield a lot of political influence. And the conventional thinking is that retired officers should avoid criticizing defense policy or civilian defense officials, just as they did while they were in uniform. It’s also against the Uniform Code of Military Justice, even though these prosecutions for this kind of stuff are rare.The seventh and eighth of the principles of civil-military relations both concern how to respond to legal and illegal orders. And these are the last two. When given a legal order, either from a civilian or military officer or from a civilian official, military servicemembers are expected to comply with the order without delay.The last: Military personnel must not abide by orders that are illegal. That sounds very simple, very straightforward. However, what constitutes illegal is often ambiguous and confusing. Subordinates who received dubious orders may find it challenging to determine if the order is truly contrary to an established legal precedent. Most military officers do not have a lot of legal background and may not be privy to all the decisions that went into that command, and therefore they may not know that it’s actually illegal to do what they’ve been instructed to do.So what does a senior military officer do if he or she is confronted with an illegal order? What are their options? I think they have three choices. First, comply with the illegal order. Second, agree to follow the order but move slowly; do some foot dragging or shirking of the order and hope somebody intervenes to correct the situation. And third and last, refuse to follow the order and keep a clear conscience.So this concludes the eight practical guidelines that I’ve identified for civil-military relations in the United States. It’s really important that we teach these topics to our rising senior officials so that when they are in front of Congress or facing dubious commands from their senior civilian counterparts, they know exactly what guidelines they must follow.(Host)Why are these sometimes difficult to apply?(Paterson)Yeah, that’s a great question, Stephanie. First of all, we had . . . the constitutional loyalty of senior military officers is to the Constitution, not to the secretary of defense or to the president. And that’s why we have two coequal branches of government to provide oversight of the military.Most people believe that the senior military officers’ allegiance should be straight to the commander-in-chief. But that’s not true. You have to respond to Congress and the congressional figures as well. In addition, it’s also difficult because the courses of action that the military may prefer—that they feel very strongly about—may be contrary to what the president or the secretary of defense prefer.Hence, therefore, they have to abide by orders or by commands that they don’t personally agree with. But part of their military discipline and part of the subordination to civilian officials that’s so important in our system is for senior military officers to abide by those commands from the civilian leadership without question.(Host)Please tell us a little bit about how officers can find a balance or strike a balance in this arena.(Paterson)Yeah, that’s another great question. Knowing these rules and having specific examples of how to apply them based upon our history, I think, is the most useful. At National Defense University, we teach about these issues all the time. There’s lots of examples to draw from. It’s one thing to sit in our ivory towers and talk about how important it is to do this, but to actually put it into practice on the ground, under stress, under time limitations is an entirely different thing. Using those examples, many which I cited in my article, I think, are the most useful. It’s almost like a tabletop exercise of sorts for a senior military officer to be presented with this ethical or legal dilemma and then asking them and seeing how they would respond, seeing what their decision process is, and then advising them if their decision was appropriate or inappropriate.These days, in Washington, really the motivation for me to write this article, Stephanie, was because of the very controversial civil-military relations tensions that we saw during the last couple years of the Trump administration. The June 1st, 2020, Lafayette Square incident; the civil rights protests over the murder of George Floyd; the question about the use of the military and domestic law enforcement support was another very delicate issue that was raised; and then, finally, the January 6th insurrection on the Capitol—the first time that our Capitol has been attacked by a mob since the War of 1812. All these are perhaps indicative of what senior military officers must wrestle with in the future. Our society is very, very divided at the moment over the political issues, and I don’t see that getting any better, unfortunately. So senior military officers must understand what their guidelines are, what their rules are on how they abide by these orders.For example, if the military had been ordered to support National Guard and police during the domestic disputes, for example, if the Insurrection Act had been activated, would the military have complied with that? That’s a very dangerous situation because generally most of our military are not trained in police law enforcement tactics, escalation-of-force tactics. And as many senior military officers said after the Lafayette Square incident, they recognize that it was very, very dangerous to use the US military in that sort of role.So these kind of questions come up. And then, at the end of the last administration, when General Milley had to decide if he was going to perhaps support a diversionary attack by the president, when he contacted his Chinese counterpart to confirm that there was no military operation underway—is really an extraordinary event in the US civil-military relations history.It’s unlike anything we, I think we’ve ever seen since the very tumultuous days of the Vietnam War, when the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, and President Johnson were trying to use the military and means and methods, which they disagreed. And if you read the book Fourth Star, there was almost a point in 1967, I believe it was, when the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff were about to resign in protest over the policies of the secretary of defense. I don’t think we’ve reached a point as bad as that until recently. And for these reasons, it’s really important to understand and revisit not just a theory, but also the practical guidelines of civil-military relations in the United States.(Host)This was a real pleasure. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for your contribution to Parameters.Listeners, if you’re interested in diving a little bit deeper into “Civil-Military Relations: Guidelines in Politically Charged Societies,” I urge you to read the article. Paterson includes quotes, insights, and examples that we did not cover in this episode. You can find it at press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters. Look for volume 52, issue 1.Author information:Dr. Patrick Paterson is a professor of practice of national security studies in the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. He completed his PhD in conflict resolution at Nova Southeastern University. He has a master’s degree in national security studies from the Naval Postgraduate School, a master’s equivalent from the Argentina Naval War College in Buenos Aires, and a master’s degree in political science from American University. His latest book, The Blurred Battlefield (2021), addresses the need for hybrid doctrines on the use of force for Latin American militaries combating violent crime groups.If you enjoyed this episode of Decisive Point and would like to hear more, look for us on Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or any other major podcasting platform.

Does it matter if more countries have nuclear weapons? Will the weaponization of space make nuclear weapons less of a threat or even obsolete? In this podcast, author Henry D. Sokolski gives an overview of his monograph, Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future, and explores potential future nuclear trends.Keywords: strategy, drones, nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, nuclear energyRead the monograph: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/933/Episode TranscriptStephanie Crider (Host)(Prerecorded Decisive Point intro) Welcome to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production featuring distinguished authors and contributors who get to the heart of the matter in national security affairs.The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.The guests in speaking order on this episode are:(Guest 1: Henry D. Sokolski)(Host)Decisive Point welcomes Mr. Henry D. Sokolski, author of Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future, published by the US Army War College Press in 2018. Sokolski is the executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington, DC. He previously served in the Senate as a nuclear military legislative aide, in the Pentagon as deputy for nonproliferation policy, and as a full-time consultant on proliferation issues in the secretary of defense’s Office of Net Assessment.Welcome, Henry. Let’s dive right in. In your 2018 book Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future (Second Edition), you cover a lot of ground. Please give our listeners a brief overview of the book.(Sokolski)The reason I wrote the book was, you know, any serious social scientific field—economics, demographics, political science—they all use what they know about the past to give you a bird’s-eye view of what they think the future will be. And I noticed that there was really no book that took the matter of nuclear weapons and projected into the future. The military science, if you will, of nuclear proliferation was a blank sheet.I took it upon myself to try to take a look at maybe, you know, a half-century, a little more than a half-century, and asked, you know, “What trends do we see?” And based on those trends, and assuming they continue, where are we going to be, you know, in 10 or 20 years? So, I focused on, detailed, four trends. And the trends that I found that were interesting is that the difference between the largest and smallest nuclear weapons arsenals has gotten much, much smaller. It used to be that what we had, which was at one point, during the Cuban missile crisis, 25,000 nuclear weapons, was easily an order of magnitude more than what the Russians had, which was 2,500, and what they had was again another order of magnitude more than the British had—actually two orders of magnitude. So there was, like, a thousandfold difference between the largest arsenal and the smallest at the time.Now the difference is about one order of magnitude. Russia and the United States have thousands. The smallest arsenals that we know of now are about 100 or thereabouts.Another trend is that the amount of surplus weapons and civilian materials that could be quickly converted into bombs—that’s highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium—there used to be almost zero. Everything that we had and the Russians had went immediately into weapons. There was very little civilian activity in the way of power reactors. And so, there wasn’t a civilian stockpile or any surpluses. Everything went into weapons. Or naval reactors.Well, that’s changed. Now there’s tens of thousands of bombs’ worth of highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium. Not only in military stockpiles on reserve in the United States, Russia, France, and Great Britain, but there is civilian stockpiles of separated plutonium in places like Japan. And you can change or convert this material into weapons reasonably quickly. And you’re talking about thousands of weapons’ worth. Well, that’s different, and that’s new.The third trend was the ability to make this stuff. It used to be there was only two places: Russia and the United States. Well, three. And Great Britain. Well, now there’s lots of places, comparatively, that are separating plutonium or enriching uranium. The ability to make a large amount of this stuff reasonably quickly with these machines and plans is totally new compared to half-century or so ago.And then, finally, the number of states that have long-range, nuclear-capable missiles has changed. It used to be Russia and the United States were the only ones that had them. And now 31 nations have them.And if you take the range yards of these missiles, and you just draw them from where they’re based, it’s very disturbing where they overlap. They overlap in places where there’s a history of war or fear and loathing of wars: Eastern Europe, Middle East, Pakistan, India, and East Asia.Well, that’s new as well. So reviewing these trends I sort of concluded that it was a mistake to celebrate how relatively fewer nuclear weapons there are, and there are a lot fewer. I mean, we got rid of, and the Russians got rid of, at least for deployed weapons, we had up to, together, something like 70,000 weapons. Well, today that number is several thousand. So there’s a big reduction.And a lot of people celebrate that, and they should. And people say, “Well, OK, there are a few more nuclear states than there were in 1950.” There are now nine, but that’s not too bad. I think emphasizing those points may be less than a complete thought. The reason why is this could change far more quickly today than at any time previously.You know those trends that I mentioned suggest that it only takes a few short years for the countries that have nuclear weapons to get a whole lot more, and countries that don’t have nuclear weapons to get not just, like, one or two, but, you know, maybe several score of them relatively quickly.Let’s add to this. They have a way of delivering these things to trouble spots and getting dragged into wars in trouble spots. And then you can add, there are some trends towards launching on warning, and certainly we’ve read about this recently in the case of China, and I think it’s been our policy in the US for at least a decade or two or three to probably do that ourselves.There certainly are doctrines for early use of nuclear weapons in places like Russia and Pakistan, possibly North Korea. Now all of this kind of makes you a little worried, I think, or it should, and I thought, “Well, this is an important message.”Now I don’t think any of the worst nuclear use or spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable. And I made some recommendations in the book principally focused on China, which at the time was considered a little edgy.I originally wrote this book about a decade ago. When I say, “the book,” or at least those two chapters—I wrote a version of it in an article or two.What really stunned me is how little attention my arguments had or got. At the time, going to zero was all the rage. So I decided to do another chapter on what other people thought. And there are three categories of thinkers. There are arms controllers who oppose nuclear weapons and see their spread as destabilizing. They want these things to be eliminated. The next group are the supporters of nuclear weapons. I guess you would call these people “hawks.” And they see the weapons, at least in current hands, as somehow stabilizing because deterrence. And they oppose the spread as well, but they say, “Well, if they’re friends, maybe it’s OK.” Then, finally, there’s academics. This group sees the spread of nuclear weapons to all nations either as stabilizing or inconsequential.The other thing that was odd was that it didn’t matter which group you looked at; none of them really said the commonsensical thing. And I think anyone would say, if they were untutored in these matters, and what would they say? Well, fewer weapons in fewer hands is better, but it’s really risky. You got to know what everyone’s doing. And if you don’t, you might not want to get rid of yours.(Host)What in the book has held up well?(Sokolski)Well, I guess the short answer is a lot. Quite an extensive discussion in the book about two trends that needed practical policy attention and were focused upon in the recommendation section. One of the trends that I highlight is this spread and the further building of facilities in support of what’s called “a fast reactor.” And these machines are designed to use fast neutrons. It is a terrific machine if you want to make weapons. I noticed that this idea was something that the Chinese were toying with, the Russians had played with a lot. We have put it aside until recently, and it has enormous military applications. You get into this, and the breakout period and the amount of material that you can convert into bombs, in the first instance, will be very short. And there’ll be a lot of material. Do you really want to go down this route unless it’s clearly economic, which it clearly is not. I then focused a little bit on China. If you get the latest copy of China Military Power from the Pentagon—they do this annually—it cites a Western think tank that did a study pointing out just how many nuclear weapons China could have in about eight years if it exploited its civil nuclear program with regard to fast reactors and the recycling of the material.Well, the numbers were stunning, even under conservative assumptions. And they cited those numbers and took them on and made them official. And the number was at least 1,000 nuclear weapons by 2030, which is not that many years from now. That puts China roughly with the United States and Russia, as far as the number of deployed strategic warheads, possibly.And of course, we’ve seen, recently, photographs where they’ve made 350 silos. We’re now worried about this, so that projection of that concern in the book from a decade ago turned out to be pretty good.(Host)What has changed since then that deserves mention?(Sokolski)In the second edition, I touch upon forms of diplomacy that might make sense. I’m not sure how viable those forms of diplomacy are now, given the bad relations with China and with Russia. Maybe that’s wrong. I think you’re still going to have to have diplomatic positions on the controllers. Strategic weaponry, if only to have a position that you and your allies can unify around and to identify bad behavior that even if the Russians and Chinese don’t agree to, they will know that we will take umbrage if they go over certain lines.More important than what may or may not be found is what was missing. There was some discussion in that diplomatic section of what would constitute bad behavior in space. You know, maybe we want to start saying, “You can’t get your satellites very close to our most important military satellites.” Maybe we need safety zones, or they sometimes call them “keep-out zones” or “defense zones.” I don’t think it was a complete thought in the book though. And what wasn’t a complete thought was—let me be clear—was that space technology and missile technology has become very accurate and very plentiful and very widely available in the form of drones, if not ballistic missiles. Those developments, I think, may be really important to thinking about the future of nuclear weapons. Let me explain.In 1915, at Passchendaele, the killer app, the strategic weapon par excellence, was chemical weapons. Seventy-five years later, it was so far into the background—we have them, but nobody thought we would use them that much . . . was not considered to be the top-dog strategic weapon anymore. During the 20s, we imagined that chemical weapons would be dropped by airplanes and decide the war overnight.None of that ultimately was the case. Similarly, in 1915, battleships were the thing. But certainly, after the Second World War, battleships were nothing as compared to aircraft carriers. So what happens is military science changes what is militarily or strategically important as a weapon. And the question is: Could that happen with regard to nuclear weapons? I think, to some extent, it’s actually happening. In the case of space, what’s happening is the front lines of strategic deterrence are gravitating away from the surface of the Earth into space.Our eyes, ears, voices, and our nervous system for both our civil and military systems on the ground are all based in space. If we lose access to those things or those things are disabled, it doesn’t matter what our military strength on the ground is, nuclear or nonnuclear.And so I think the opening rounds of combat in the future may very well be in space. Now, you could say that’s kind of good news because, first, we have an advantage there that I think we can exploit. But, in addition, you’re not killing people.The model for nuclear weapons, after all, came from the air-war series of the 1920s. And that was if you could bomb away the military capital; the industrial capital; and maybe, literally, the capital—political capital—of the country, and do that quickly with bombers, you would win.And if you could threaten to do that credibly, you could get your way without fighting. Well, we’re moving toward new forms of warfare where you could disable a nation without doing that level of decimation. We’re seeing this a little bit in the Ukraine war, although the Russians are behaving as though it’s medieval period and they’re in siege tactics. But the Ukrainians are taking out individual generals with drones; they’re taking out tanks and armor with individual drones which are highly precise. And they’re using intelligence to maintain control of the narrative of the war. It is far less destructive a war. If we are moving in that direction, precision and space-based advanced systems and control of space become terribly important in a way that might make nuclear weapons about as relevant as the top weapon as chemical weapons became after the Second World War, which is to say a lot less. Now, that’s a pretty optimistic view, but I think it has to be articulated, and I don’t think it was before.(Host)You’ve written several things on new-generation warfare and precision strike. How might they alter the key points of your book?(Sokolski)Yes. One article was “Doctor Strangelove’s New Passion: Precision-Guided Mayhem,” which talks about the revolution in precision guidance and how original theories about it may have been a little off. And the second was something called, “Are We Ready for the Next Convulsion?” I don’t think the book did justice to any of those things because I don’t think I had those thoughts.(Host)It’s incredible how quickly these things evolve.(Sokolski)The Russians were writing about new-generation warfare for some time. What’s odd is that we thought they were masters of disinforming, spooking folks, using precision-guided munitions to take out certain nodes and that they would show this in the war against Ukraine. Well, that didn’t happen. But they had been writing about that for some time. I was not familiar with that literature, and I think, to be honest, it was a little confusing when I did read it, and so it was easy not to understand it, but I think maybe we didn’t pay enough attention to it ourselves, and now we are.(Host)The clock has run out on us, I’m afraid. This was a pleasure, Henry.If you enjoyed this episode of Decisive Point and would like to hear more, look for us on Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and any other major podcast platform.Author information:Henry D. Sokolski is the executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, Washington, DC. He previously served in the Senate as a nuclear and military legislative aide, in the Pentagon as Deputy for Nonproliferation Policy, and as a full-time consultant on proliferation issues in the Secretary of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment. Mr. Sokolski also served as a member of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Senior Advisory Group, on two Congressional nuclear proliferation commissions, and has authored and edited numerous volumes on strategic weapons proliferation, including Best of Intentions: America’s Campaign against Strategic Weapons Proliferation.If you enjoyed this episode of Decisive Point and would like to hear more, look for us on Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or any other major podcasting platform.

This Canadian contribution to Parameters’ Strategic Lieutenant series shows how domestic context creates the conditions for professional military education reform to a greater extent than the global strategic context. The podcast assesses the junior officer education delivered by Canada’s military colleges and analyzes interviews with key stakeholders responsible for the formulation and implementation of reform at the military colleges.Read the article here: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss1/11/Keywords: education reform, strategic context, leadership, professional, military educationEpisode Transcript Stephanie Crider (Host)Welcome to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production featuring distinguished authors and contributors who get to the heart of the matter in national security affairs.The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the podcast guests and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.The guests in speaking order on this episode are:(Guest 1: James R. McKay)(Guest 2: Ali Dizboni)(Host)Decisive Point welcomes Dr. James R. McKay and Dr. Ali Dizboni, who coauthored “Developing Strategic Lieutenants in the Canadian Army” with H. Christian Breede and Pierre Jolicoeur. The article was published in the spring 2022 issue of Parameters.McKay is the current chair of war studies at the Royal Military College of Canada and was educated at Bishop’s University, the Royal Military College of Canada, and King’s College London.Dizboni is an associate professor and the current chair of the Military and Strategic Studies program at the Royal Military College of Canada. He received his master of science degree and PhD from the Université de Montréal in the fields of political science and international relations. He’s fluent in Arabic, English, French, and Persian.Breede is an associate professor of political science at the Royal Military College of Canada and the deputy director of the Centre for International and Defence Policy at Queen’s University as well as the associate chair of the Royal Military College’s public administration program. He holds a PhD in war studies from the Royal Military College of Canada and has published on the topics of foreign and security policy, with a research focus on societal cohesion and technology.Jolicoeur is a professor of political science at the Royal Military College of Canada. A specialist of the conflicts in the former Soviet republics, he is currently writing a book on Russian foreign policy.Thank you both for your contribution to Parameters and for joining me on this podcast today. The Parameters Strategic Lieutenant series asks what leads governments to reform entry-level officer professional military education: the global, strategic environment or the domestic, political environment? Your article says the Canadian answer tends toward the latter. So, let’s unpack this. Please tell us a little bit about the Canadian military education system.(McKay)The Canadian military education system for junior officers is oriented on a couple of sources.You have those that enter the officer corps through the Canadian military colleges, which (like American military colleges) are degree-granting institutions. We have two of them, but they are ”triservice.” So what that means is, at the Canadian Armed Forces level, we’re primarily educating them and socializing them into the profession of arms.The services handle the lion’s share of the training. And I say “lion’s share” because some of it does belong to the Canadian Armed Forces.So they tend to be a four-year degree program with four pillars, which include physical fitness; second language, so everyone has to meet a certain standard of the other official language; the degree; and the military training they do receive at the college, which is triservice and tends to focus on general service requirements that would be applicable whether they’re a soldier, sailor, or aviator.(Host)What have been the drivers or sources of change within the Canadian Armed Forces?(McKay)I’m going to answer this by describing two games.The first is the long game. And that’s the need for institutional reform that takes multiple years, straddles electoral cycles, straddles the crises that occur in the international system that necessitate responsive force.The short game is how an armed force like the Canadian Armed Forces needs to be able to respond to the shifting domestic and international situations. The challenge with that is it can rob the long game of resources. The demands of the short game can be too great.But having said that, the biggest driver for change, which creates the long game, was a concern in the immediate post-Cold War that the Canadian Armed Forces’ performance in international operations was not sufficiently reflective of Canadian values. We had an incident that became a national scandal, and public demand was significant for reform and that the armed forces operate in ways that Canadians would be comfortable with.Now, this is unusual because, generally speaking, foreign and defense policy are not normally significant political issues—there’s been a rough, broad consensus. So, in that sense, when it comes election time, all politics tend to be local. So you might not win an election as one of our political parties from a foreign or defense policy issue. But you could lose one, which means they tend to focus on the domestic.So we’ve had adjustments occur as the result of the short game, which can influence the ability of the institution to continue to focus on reform. But the real driver was public demands.(Dizboni)One point comes to my mind is the 1990s’ new generation of operation—peace operation. And that new generation of peace operation obviously required, as James was saying, the long-game thing—some skills beside the training—like, properly military training. And that generation of peace operation in the Balkans and other regions is a departure from the blue helmet and toward something new that Canadian Army and other NATO member countries needed to explore. So here comes in the long-game concept education component.(Host)What reforms have been carried out to date?(McKay)Most germane to the education of junior officers and the Strategic Lieutenant series, we’ve created a single headquarters to oversee education, which tends to be in the hands of the Canadian Armed Forces as opposed to each and every service. While they have their (professional military education or) PME institutions, the entry-level and the upper-year ones are equivalent of war colleges. And the senior staff colleges rest in the (Canadian Armed Forces’ or) CAF’s hands; services still have their own.We went to an all-degreed officer corps. Minor exceptions . . . but right now, the expectation is commissioned officers will all have a university degree. We began to reform our publications that talk about the foundational material of Canadian civil-military relations and the foundational material of leadership—so, leadership manuals that lay out the doctrine, so to speak, for how we lead. And that was in the hands of the leadership institute hosted by the headquarters that oversees education.We also—and it’s in the middle of a rewrite—created a publication that explains the profession of arms and that relationship between state, society, and its armed forces.We also engaged in reform at the Canadian military colleges and created a core curriculum. Those familiar with postsecondary education will recognize this as the adoption of a liberal arts philosophy, which meant that we looked at what officers ought to know, translated across into academic courses, and then said, “Right, regardless of degree program, all officers should take—and there’s a variety of courses in history; political science; literature; that four-letter word for arts folks, math; science; and psychology.” And this is throughout the curriculum. And this is something that is also being refreshed within the college.(Host)Thank you, James and Ali. It was such a pleasure talking with you.If you enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more, look for us on Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and any other major podcast platform.Author informationDr. James R. McKay is the current chair of war studies at the Royal Military College of Canada and was educated at Bishop’s University, the Royal Military College of Canada, and King’s College London.Dr. H. Christian Breede is an associate professor of political science at the Royal Military College of Canada and the deputy director of the Centre for International and Defence Policy at Queen’s University, as well as the associate chair of the Royal Military College’s public administration program. He holds a PhD in war studies from the Royal Military College of Canada and has published on the topics of foreign and security policy with a research focus on societal cohesion and technology.An associate professor and the current chair of the military and strategic studies program at the Royal Military College of Canada, Dr. Ali G. Dizboni received his master of science degree (1997) and PhD (2000) from the Université de Montréal in the fields of political science and international relations. He is fluent in Arabic, English, French, and Persian.Dr. Pierre Jolicoeur is a professor of political science at the Royal Military College of Canada. A specialist of the conflicts in the former Soviet Union republics, he is currently writing a book on Russian foreign policy

Early in academic year 2018, a group of US Army War College faculty and students came together in pursuit of an integrated research project devoted to an examination of contested deployment and the growing realization the US homeland can no longer be considered an inviolable zone in preparing for war. Expecting free movement of forces in mobilization, movement to ports of embarkation, and deployment against the nation’s adversaries is beneath reason. Two oceans and benevolent neighbors to the north and south can no longer be considered a significant buffer against internal and external enemies. Adversaries of the United States will seek to disrupt or disable the movement of its forces long before they can be placed in combat against foes overseas, and the nation must be prepared for this opposition.Read the IRP: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/948/Download the full episode transcript here: https://media.defense.gov/2023/Nov/15/2003341246/-1/-1/0/DP-3-11-PODCAST-TRANSCRIPT-TUSSING-POWELL-LEITZEL-CONTESTED-DEPLOYMENT.PDFKeywords: COVID-19, strategic seaports, hybrid warfare, infrastructure, Interstate Highway System

The lessons of counterinsurgency have deeper implications for cyber conflict than previous research has identified. Two decades of experience in Iraq and Afghanistan provide insights into the cyber strategy of defending forward including treating major cybersecurity and technology companies as host-nation partners and focusing on winning the hearts and minds of global netizens.Read the original article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol50/iss3/9/Keywords: counterinsurgency, cybersecurity, Afghanistan, Iraq, cyber conflictEpisode TranscriptStephanie Crider (Host)Welcome to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production featuring distinguished authors and contributors who get to the heart of the matter in national security affairs.The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the podcast guests and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.Decisive Point welcomes Dr. Jason Healey, author of “A Bizarre Pair: Counterinsurgency Lessons for Cyber Conflict,” featured in the autumn 2020 issue of Parameters. Healey is a senior research scholar at Columbia University School for International and Public Affairs, specializing in cyber conflict, competition, and cooperation. This episode of Decisive Point reexamines Healey’s article through the lens of Russia and Ukraine.The guests in speaking order on this episode are:(Guest 1: Jason “Jay” Healey)(Host)Welcome back to Decisive Point, Jason. Let’s talk about your 2020 article “A Bizarre Pair: Counterinsurgency Lessons for Cyber Conflict.” That is a bizarre pair. Can you lay the groundwork for us, please?(Healey)Sure, absolutely. Cyber has long been realized, back to at least the early 90s, as an interesting method of irregular warfare.Some of the very first writing on this—people like John Arquilla and Dorothy Denning and Winn Schwartau—would write about how technology-dependent societies are going to be open to asymmetric attack because of these cyber vulnerabilities and cyber capabilities—especially the United States, which has historically had these oceans, and we didn’t have to worry about direct attack—that adversaries could use cyber as irregular warfare to affect us. In fact, we could use cyber as irregular warfare against them. We could have advantages by being a high-tech power.And so that aspect had been relatively well written about. The effects of it were maybe exaggerated; we thought maybe cyber would have more impact then, in the 90s, than we do 20-odd years later. But the ideas were relatively well baked.What I was trying to do with this article is to flip that around—to say, we’re 20-plus years into fighting irregular warfare ourselves, especially counterinsurgency and civil wars, so what can we take from those hard-won lessons? To think and apply them to fighting and winning in cyberspace.(Host)You laid out some pretty specific lessons. Can you walk us through those? What lessons can cyber take from counterinsurgency?(Healey)The lessons that I took—of saying, “Boy, what can we learn about how to win in cyberspace based on the lessons from irregular warfare”—really fit in three areas.The least interesting, I thought, was on deception: For both cyber and irregular warfare, the attackers are relying on deception to succeed. That was a parallel, but I wasn’t quite sure what we take from that. The other two, I thought there were stronger recommendations.First is that cyber conflict really depends on the host nation. Now, the host nation in this case isn’t an actual nation; it is the technology companies, the main cybersecurity companies that are out there. And they are creating and maintaining the terrain of cyberspace. I had helped set up the very first cyber command back in 1998. One of my friends from there went on to Verizon. And he said, “Jay, every day at Verizon and the other big tech companies and carriers, we are creating new cyberspace. We can bend cyberspace if we need to.” And governments and militaries can’t do that.The US military is great at spying and shooting back and maybe sharing information that we’ve learned from spying. But that’s about it. Whereas these companies—the Verizons, the AT&Ts, Deutsche Telekom, PCCW, CrowdStrike, Mandiant, Microsoft, Google—they have this incredible role that they can play that is really—you could think about it as supported command, or, with a different mindset, as the host nation. They can do things. And it’s almost always better for them to do it than for the military to do it themselves.So one lesson was on deception. The other was the role of the private sector as host nation. The third was to me less clear, but, I think, suggestive. And that’s the role of firepower.In a normal military fight, such as in Ukraine in 2022, more firepower is a pretty good thing. For example, for the Ukrainians, more firepower leads to better battlefield outcomes. And yet we’ve learned over 20 years that’s not always true when you’re in a civil war or you’re in an insurgency. Applying more firepower might create more enemies than you’re taking off the battlefield. It’s not always true; we don’t always know where it’s true or not. And that may be true for cyber conflict.It might be true that if we say, “Oh, look at what the Russians are doing; look at what the Chinese are doing. This is unacceptable”—our unleashing the military, our giving fewer rules or looser rules of engagement, fewer points and fewer reasons for them to have to check into the White House for oversight, less having to check back to say, “Hey boss, I’ve got this shot. Do you want me to take it?”—that might help us impose friction on our adversaries, which is the current military strategy. Defend forward, persistent engagement: That might be successful in winning particular tactical engagements. But it might not be correlated to actually winning in cyberspace. And in fact, past a certain point, it might be negatively correlated, and, by taking these shots, we are causing them to just build back better. Because in cyberspace, it looks like offense is relatively inexpensive. So by pushing back hard, it might just engender a reaction where they come back worse. Or we’re taking these shots, and the shots we’re taking are on allies. We’re taking down Russia, but they happen. Now, in the military, we call it gray space. But gray space means computers in Germany and Amsterdam and Thailand and Japan or in India—countries that we would like to be on our side. But by using the euphemism of gray space and applying military power, by taking these shots and by defending forward, we might not be convincing these countries that we have their best interests at heart.(Host)Thank you. You also offered several recommendations for going forward. Can you address those for us here?(Healey)The first one is a point that I’ve been making for a while.I had written the first military history of cyberspace, the kind of thing I would have liked when I was a military officer. One of the ways we learn how to be good at what we do is by learning history. I mean, that’s what makes institutions like yours so great: We look back at history to teach officers today. What would you do if you were walking the fields of Gettysburg? How would you handle this?So, I did this military history of cyber conflict, and it astounded me that almost zero cyber conflicts were ever decisively resolved by government—any government anywhere, much less by militaries. The only exceptions were where it was only the military or government itself that was being affected. Every other case where it was a larger cyber conflict, it was always the private sector—and I’ll stick by the word “always”—that was able to decisively resolve the issue.So, to me, we’ve got a significant lesson to learn: How can the military, if it wants better solutions than this, how can it work with buy-in through the host nation of these technology companies that are in the position? To switch the metaphor, there are nine players on the field; when the ball is hit, it’s almost always going be a company in the private sector that’s in the position to make the play.Now they might not be able to see the ball very well when it’s hit to them. We can help with intelligence. They might not have the skills to make the play. We can help with that. We can do exercises. We can help. They might not have a glove. That’s OK. We can help them with capabilities.But what we shouldn’t do—and this is what (the National Security Agency or) NSA did for years and (United States) Cyber Command did for years—was trying to push them out of the way and say, “I’ve got it. I’ve got it. The US government, the US military is here. And we will make the play. This play will be made at Fort Meade, Maryland, and your job is just to share information with us and tell us about the problem.”Now, that gets to a big civil-military relations issue. Because in the military we are not trained to think about civilians, the private sector, in a way that says they play a critical role in fixing this. It just doesn’t fit into that (Samuel P.) Huntington role of what a professional officer does and what the role of the military does. So we’ve got this substantial civil-military issue to try and get our enlisted, our officers, and especially our general officers to see this issue differently and to see the private sector as allies; to not denigrate them as just, “Well, they only want profit. But we in the military, our values are better because we’re out for national security, and they’re just out for profit.” It’s not a helpful attitude.(Host)Let’s apply your article and all the things that we’ve talked about to Russia and Ukraine, China and Taiwan. What are your thoughts on that?(Healey)The article, I think, is a bit less useful for Russia and Ukraine. Because there, it’s not irregular war; it’s real war. So, we have to switch to the mindset of saying, “OK, under what circumstances can cyber be effective on the battlefield? What missions is it able to do well, and what can we expect next?”Many of my colleagues have been a bit mystified that cyber hasn’t played a better role, more of a role, on the Russian side. And for the most part, I think that mysticism of why the Russians haven’t been better at cyber is pretty similar to why they haven’t been effective at anything. It’s not like they’ve been so great in Ukraine, and their air forces work, and their armor is working. Well, no, they’ve been suboptimal—which is academic speak for “They stink”—across almost every single one of their missions. Maybe artillery would be an exception.And so, perhaps it’s no surprise that cyber hasn’t been as effective as we would have thought. They didn’t do the preparation necessary for cyber capabilities to have the effect. They didn’t do that preparation because many of them didn’t know a war was coming. And even if they did think a war was coming, they thought it was going to be fast.So now where I think you’re seeing many of the cyber experts looking is, “OK, we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop,” now that the sanctions are hitting, now that Russia’s economy is disentangled from that of the West. Beforehand, why would Putin ever want to disrupt the energy markets of the West or the financial system of the West? Well, now, he might as well do it. Because there’s not going to be any blowback on him.So, I think if we don’t see those kinds of attacks in the next three to six months, we’re going to have to really question whether cyber has the potency that we thought it did—at least in 2022. Now, for those that argue cyber is irregular warfare or for cyber as irregular warfare, boy, there’s a ton to learn on this. The Ukrainian (information technology or) IT army, one of their digital ministers is daily coming out and nominating targets for Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians to attack. And many of those targets aren’t just Russian; they’re grocery stores that are still operating in Russia. Wow, a lot of lessons for people that want to study cyber as a tool for asymmetric warfare!(Host)What about China and Taiwan?(Healey)Well, I think the arguments that I make in that article are best under certain geopolitical conditions. Because whenever we look at “OK, is cyber escalatory or not? Is cyber effective or not? Does it help you coerce an adversary or not?” It comes down to “OK, well, are you in a state of crisis or a state of relative peace?” And I think we as scholars haven’t been good at analyzing those conditions. So I think there’s a lot of case there on how China has been using cyber as a tool of asymmetric warfare against Taiwan.Are there lessons based on my article for can Taiwan succeed, you know, being informed by irregular warfare and how they respond? Possibly. I think the argument, for example, about the host nation—they have got a different relationship with their companies than we do. A lot of the companies that matter in this space are American and not Taiwanese, though the Taiwanese have a lot in that space. So yeah, I do think there would be quite a bit in the article to study that.(Host)Do you have any final thoughts before we go?(Healey)Yes, and this gets down to firepower. Remember I said, “I think it’s pretty definite, on the evidence, that we can see the private sector as the supported commander, as the host nation.” That’s pretty established. What’s less established is whether or not there’s a point where more firepower leads to worse national security results. And I think this really comes into how the White House and others can look at (United States) Cyber Command’s missions of defend forward, of persistent engagement. If I were back at the White House, I would have said, “OK, we’ll will give you these additional authorities. We’ll give you the agility you ask for so that you can defend forward. But you have to tell us, you have to be very clear, how will we know this is winning? If we give you these new authorities, this new agility, these looser rules of engagements, what are the results going to look like? And are we going to see the results in two years? Are we going to see the results in four years? Are we going to see the results in 20 years?”Because it has been four years. This happened in 2018. I suspect they ought to have something to show for it by now and not just successful engagements, not just “We took this action, and we disrupted this adversary operation,” right? We’ve learned from 28 years of Iraq and Afghanistan, you can win all the tactical engagements you want; that doesn’t relate to the national security results that you promised the policymakers.And so, I think we really need to do better. (United States) Cyber Command needs to do better, at least than it seems to be, about what’s the criteria for success. How long should we expect results? And that way, we can more definitively answer, “What’s this impact of firepower, of increased cyber capabilities, on the national security results of security and stability that we said we were going to do this for? We said we were going to do this to defend forward for persistent engagement.”(Host)Thanks so much, Jay, for your time and for sharing your insights on this topic. This was a real pleasure.(Healey)Hey, thank you.(Host)If you have enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, look for us on Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and any other major podcast platform.About the author: Jason Healey, senior research scholar and adjunct faculty at Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs, is the editor of A Fierce Domain: Conflict in Cyberspace, 1986 to 2012.If you enjoyed this episode of Decisive Point and would like to hear more, look for us on Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or any other major podcasting platform.