The ultimate question begged by these musings is to consider what effect more than fifty years of trying to implement business management models into the American military has had? Are we more efficient and monetarily lean than ever before? It doesn’t seem so. We have the world’s most expensive military, with the costliest equipment and highest operating margins. It is difficult to draw a direct causal argument, despite the apparent correlation in time, and beyond the scope of this article to do so. The argument is simply that military effectiveness is a matter that ought not to be judged by monetary value (profit or cost-savings efficiency) of the services performed, and it is thus not appropriate for business management models. More bluntly, whenever a public organization (as opposed to a private one) is so conceived the result will be unavoidably perverse.
The Origins of Non-Proliferation (Grand) Strategy in the United States and Great Britain
All strategies have origins; none are conceived wholly from scratch. This axiom holds true even for states’ most fundamental strategies; indeed, the grander and more foundational the strategy, the more deeply rooted its historical and cultural origins. Yet it can sometimes appear otherwise: new strategic realities can emerge, if not overnight, then in the space of, say, a fortnight, a month, or a year, and states can be left scrambling to articulate a coherent response. The advent of nuclear weaponry was one such instance. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki stand as a watershed to which historians and policy-makers are inexorably drawn. What came before stands as pre-history; what follows is a brave new world, demanding brave new strategic visions. So runs the logic.
Secrecy and Signaling: The Israeli Approach to Nuclear Weapons
Not Dead Yet
Numerous voices have claimed that the day of conventional war is over. For years, these voices have predicted that “war amongst the people,” or “hybrid war,” or “gray zone operations,” or “distributed security missions,” are the new face of war. But conventional war—however it may be changing—may not be as dead as some believe. Danger is already emerging from the confluence of several unfolding trends.
Negotiating an Advance: How Negotiation Can Shift the Digital Battlespace in Favor of the U.S.
it is important to reintroduce many of the well understood concepts of strategy to the cyber-Security debate precisely because it adds clarity to an otherwise murky topic. While it is good to come to the right answer, it is also important that we understand the strategic relationships of different behaviors so that we can consistently prescribe proper policy. Understanding why negotiations are a good idea today will better help us determine if they are a good idea tomorrow, and hopefully forestall deleterious decisions based upon improper analogs.
The Intersection of Cyber and Nuclear War
The Economics of Conventional Deterrence in Europe
Superpower: A Personal Theory of Power
A state can exist as poor or rich, powerful or weak, and even very crude military strategies may suffice because a state can appeal to the order provided by alliances with superpowers and international conventions sustained by superpowers to meet their control needs. On the other hand, a superpower must, by definition, remain preeminently powerful and well resourced. This modifies a superpower’s definition of control.