Perspectives matter. Susan Colbourn pointedly explains, “The scholarly obsession in the United States with centering the United States is stunting our ability to analyse foreign affairs, leading too many of us to assume the United States can influence everything.” How can we escape this tendency? What perspectives are we missing? What should we understand about other influential forces at work? How do the world views of others drive miscalculation? These questions serve to focus the fourth quarter series of 2022 at The Strategy Bridge. We seek submissions that specifically address these questions. We look forward to seeing your submissions!
Writing Strategy 2022
Earlier this year, The Strategy Bridge asked civilian and military students around the world to participate in our sixth annual student writing contest on the subject of strategy. The response was once again amazing. We’ll publish the winners and some additional submissions earning an honorable mention in the coming weeks. In the meantime, congratulations to all the winners!
Asymmetric Advantage or Achilles Heel: Logistics in the U.S. Military
Poor tactics may not always lose the battle, and outstanding logistics do not guarantee operational victory, but poor logistics consistently portend defeat. The U.S. military has not faced a major failure of logistics in the last 100 years. Can the Department of Defense prevent its asymmetric advantage in logistics from becoming an Achilles heel?
The U.S. Risks Arctic Irrelevance
All Americans—be they beach-going Floridians, skiing Coloradans, or ranch-owning Texans—are citizens of an Arctic nation. But how many realize that? A lack of national arctic identity has contributed to a minimalist approach to policy in the Arctic region, leaving the U.S. strategically vulnerable. With Russia’s Northern Sea Route and Canada’s Northwest Passage both likely open year-round by the early 2030s, arctic policy indecision is a huge blind spot in great power competition. Although arctic awareness is slowly increasing as a topic in American policy circles, twenty-first century U.S. Arctic Policy has remained minimally resourced and underprioritized. If policymakers fail to address these strategic shortfalls, the U.S. risks arctic irrelevance by 2030.
Optimizing U.S. Strategic Policy: A Regional Approach to Ethiopia
Ethiopia provides a unique opportunity to strengthen and encourage regional institutions to act as arbiters in parallel with U.S. aims and strategic interests. Ultimately, a regional approach gives policymakers greater global flexibility to respond to the persistent challenges threatening U.S. interests in Africa while avoiding the pitfalls of unilateral engagement.
2Q22: Weak Links in Framing, Geography, Domains, and Doctrine
Each and every day, dedicated national security professionals devote themselves to preparing for future events—the defense of allies and partners, response to cyber attacks on infrastructure and critical networks, humanitarian crises, etc. As Donald Rumsfeld once opined, these are the “known knowns. For the second quarterly series of 2022 on The Strategy Bridge, we asked our contributors to ponder the equally important “unknown unknowns” and, insofar as this is possible, to characterize potential U.S. national security weaknesses and the threats most likely to blindside the U.S. and its allies…to make them “known unknowns,” as it were.
The 2022 Strategy Bridge Student Writing Competition on Strategy
The Strategy Bridge’s Student Writing Competition is back for 2020! The competition is open to students attending civilian universities and military war or staff colleges at every level, including distance learning, correspondence, and fellowship programs between 1 Jun 2019 and 31 May 2020. The competition deadline is 1 Jun 2020. Winning articles will be announced in July 2020 and published on The Strategy Bridge thereafter.
Making and Implementing Strategic Choices is Hard
The Department of Defense (DoD) must make important strategic choices about the future. This requires understanding the future environment, determining future objectives, and shaping the department’s capabilities to meet future challenges. Each of these steps are difficult, but changing the allocation of resources is particularly challenging. For new/reprioritized capabilities to come into being, the Pentagon’s Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) system will need to operate.
Thinking Strategically: Economics, Resources, and Strategy
1Q22 Requirements: At What Cost
To begin 2022, we asked contributors what areas of strategic competition require increased attention and how to resource those areas. As we begin this year of transformation on The Strategy Bridge, we are grateful for each and every submission and for each and every member of our community. We appreciate the creative and diverse approaches to answering our calls for submissions for 1Q22, and we look forward to more engagement with our community—with you—in the year ahead.
2Q22 Call for Strategy Bridge Submissions
A Year in #Reviewing
How do you read? It’s a simple question, but it may not have a simple answer. In a time when we are seeing less of each other, whether because of a pandemic, increased telework as a result of the pandemic, or self-imposed technological isolation, how we read has the potential to vary as much as how we interact with others on a daily basis. Some of us have difficulty ingesting books that are not printed on dead trees while others embrace the freedom of having someone else read books to us while we drive, hike, or run on a treadmill. ‘To read’, like a book itself, holds many different meanings.
1Q22 Call for Strategy Bridge Submissions
The imperative to make choices in the face of constrained resources, to devote resources to some purposes and to sacrifice other purposes, remains a perennial concern, handed down from the founding of the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS) and the Systems Analysis effort founded under Robert McNamara in 1961, and it is on this question that The Strategy Bridge focuses in our first series of 2022. Submissions should conform with our guidelines and must be received no later than 12 January 2022.
Mind the Gap: How the U.S. Coast Guard Can Navigate the Window of Vulnerability in the Indo-Pacific
When the U.S. Coast Guard’s unique capabilities, authorities, and less threatening white hulls are considered in totality, novel solutions that mesh with the service’s strengths emerge. Cooperation on mutually beneficial Coast Guard missions serves as an opportunity to develop confidence-building measures and knit a resilient architecture that will inoculate two superpowers from conflict.
A Friend in Need: A Call for Rejuvenating U.S.-South African Defense Relations
With its emerging emphasis on strategic competition, the United States must focus on renewing its engagement with potential allies on the African continent. The rise of insurgencies in West and East Africa, the geostrategic importance of natural resources from the continent, and the ability to provide a credible alternative to China that offers African countries the freedom to self-determine their economic futures necessitates a new approach towards African countries as vital and enduring economic and security partners.
The Roots of Victory
Our fourth quarterly series for 2021 begins with Sir Michael Howard's observation that the "roots of victory and defeat often have to be sought far from the battlefield." We have selected a wide-ranging collection of responses to flesh out this remark…As we wrap up this year of transformation on The Strategy Bridge, we are grateful for each and every submission and for each and every member of our community. We have relished the creative and diverse approaches to answering our calls for submissions throughout 2021, and we look forward to more engagement with our community—with you—in the coming year.
Science Fiction and the Strategist 3.0
Reading widely in a professional capacity increases a person’s capacity for generating imaginative options to solve complex problems. Reading science fiction provides this variety. We hope this list provides additional variety in personal and professional reading programs, and guides readers through their journey to discover the insights that science fiction offers national security professionals.
Data Analytics in the Combatant Command: Improving the Approach to Decision-Making
To complete their missions, combatant commanders will, out of necessity, leverage data as a weapon system as it constitutes the basis of information development within the commander's decision space. With new sensors, the amount of collected data continues to climb, making more data available for transformation into actionable information supporting decision-making. Given the enormous volume of data that presently exists and the supply of trained analysts within a command, the commander and staff are assumed to have the capability to effectively employ data analytics to support the planning and execution of operations within the area of responsibility decisively. The perception is partially true.
Writing Strategy 2021
Earlier this year, The Strategy Bridge asked university and professional military education students to participate in our fifth annual student writing contest on the subject of strategy. The response was amazing, with more submissions than our small team of volunteers could handle. We’ll publish the winners and some additional submissions earning an honorable mention in the coming weeks. In the meantime…Congratulations to all the winners!
4th Quarter 2021 Journal Call for Papers
Sir Michael Howard wrote that the "roots of victory and defeat often have to be sought far from the battlefield." Provide a tailored thesis-driven argument exploring that thought using historical case studies, political theory, or other avenues of inquiry. This quarter’s series seeks compelling arguments to advance the conversation in the realms of strategy, national security, and military affairs.