Decisive Point Podcast

Counterinsurgency does not increase the legitimacy of, or support for, central governments engaged in internal conflicts. Recent research shows quantifiable degrees of government legitimacy, national identity, and population security are necessary precursors and accurate predictors of a government’s ability to outlast a civil uprising. Because the first two predictors—government legitimacy and national identity—can be measured and do not increase during a conflict, the probability of government failure in most cases can be accurately predicted when the conflict starts.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol51/iss2/4/

The rapid decline of the Peruvian left-wing insurgent organization Sendero Luminoso was not only the result of the arrest of its leader. An analysis of the precipitous weakening of the organization using two social movement theories finds other factors were involved in the demise of the organization as well. These factors—participatory politics, support for the military among the rural population, and alienation of the population by Sendero Luminoso—provide insights to effective counterinsurgency tactics.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol51/iss2/5/

As the European Union deals with yet another crisis— the COVID-19 pandemic—it must adopt a grand strategy based on unity, policy, and proportionality: cohesion over inaction, policy over process, and regional imperatives over global ambitions. An analysis of past strategy documents and a study of current international trends stress the need for a Union capable of shaping its own environment rather than reacting to it. The pandemic should accelerate Europe’s journey toward power maturity and responsibility.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol51/iss2/6/

Army General Matthew Ridgway’s actions throughout his career provide a valuable example of the appropriate time and place for serious dissent by military leaders. Ridgway demonstrated the importance of selectively and pragmatically expressing open disagreement in response to operational decisions a military leader deems unnecessarily risk American lives and economic resources.

Read the original article, “Matthew Ridgway and the Value of Persistent Dissent“, by Dr. Conrad C. Crane: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol51/iss2/3/

Predoctrinal deliberations about the employment of the US armed forces, captured in Joint Doctrine Notes, remain critically understudied. Using comparative text analysis, this article identifies changes in recent Joint Doctrine Note depictions of military strategy. These changes risk distorting the logic of military strategy, sacrificing means-ends integration to organizational impulse, and raising the prospect of future shortfalls in US strategic effectiveness.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol51/iss2/9/

In an era of great power competition centered on warfighting domains other than land, the US Army faces difficult and likely painful choices. This reality, coupled with looming budget cuts, means the Army must reconsider its approach to capabilities and total force structure, its role in homeland security, and the relationship between its active and reserve components.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol51/iss1/6/

In 1971 Dr. John R. Thomas documented the involvement of the Soviet Union in the Middle East from the start of the Cold War. Like its name and borders, the motivations for that country’s involvement in the region have changed. Russia today promulgates relationships with the governments of the Middle East in a nonideological, more limited manner primarily through economic relationships, in energy and arms sales in particular, and in efforts to mitigate terror threats to the homeland.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol51/iss1/15

In 1971 Colonel Duane H. Smith analyzed the unified command structure, examined an existing proposal for change, and suggested improvements. He illustrated how this structure must account for the challenges of the contemporary strategic environment and balance several tensions, such as effectiveness versus efficiency, flexibility versus focusing on a specific mission, and forward-deployed versus home-station forces. Many of Smith’s insights remain applicable to the unified command structure and global force management processes today.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol51/iss1/12

A look back at F. Gunther Eyck’s assessment of reforms enacted under US Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson may reveal as much about the historiography of the early 1970s as it does about Stimson’s reform efforts themselves. Eyck’s 1971 evaluation, among the first in a decade of scholarship examining successes and failures of Progressive Era Army reforms, raises important issues but avoids broader considerations of the sociopolitical realities of the United States at the turn of the twentieth century.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol51/iss1/16/

Writing in 1971, economist Dr. John P. Hardt assessed the trajectory of the Soviet economy arguing the need for reform and evaluating the willingness of key actors in the Soviet bureaucracy to support such policies. Fifty years later, Hardt was remarkably prescient with regard to structural difficulties such reform posed and the costs of delay. The pervasive role of internal and external security concerns in the following decades, however, resulted in economic decisions that defied traditional economic analysis.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol51/iss1/14