Decisive Point Podcast

Statistics behind reported suicide rates in the military are often insufficiently analyzed and portray a distorted picture of reality. Several models for identifying individuals at risk for suicide have been proposed but few show adequate predictive power to be actionable. Instead, a collaborative and consistent effort to address core drivers at the individual level may be more useful.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol50/iss4/3

US military Joint and Army civil affairs doctrine have failed to consider the operational relevance of gender, posing a risk to mission accomplishment and force protection. A comparison of NATO and Australian Defence Force doctrine reveals gender considerations have been included in Allied doctrine in recent years. US land-force operational planning can provide an example of how a focus on civil affairs doctrine could jump-start the process to address the larger doctrinal gender deficit quickly and effectively.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol50/iss4/4/

This commentary responds to Matthew Valasik and Shannon E. Reid’s article “The Alt-Right Movement and US National Security” published in the Autumn 2021 issue of Parameters (vol. 51, no. 3).

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss1/16/

Episode 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 guests in speaking order on this episode are:

(Guest 1 Dr. Shannon Reid)

(Host)

Decisive Point welcomes Dr. Shannon Reid, coauthor of “The Alt-Right Movement and National Security” by Dr. Reid and Dr. Matthew Valasik, featured in Parameters’ Autumn (Fall) 2021 issue. Retired US Air Force Major General Charles J. Dunlop replied, disagreeing with Reid and Valasik’s articles. His thoughts as well as Reid and Valasik’s reply are in the Parameters Spring 2022 issue.

Reid is an associate professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is the lead author of Alt-Right Gangs: A Hazy Shade of White. Valasik is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Louisiana State University. He’s the coauthor of Alt-Right Gangs: A Hazy Shade of White. Dunlap retired from the Air Force in 2010, after more than 34 years of service. He currently teaches at Duke Law School and is the executive director of its Center on Law, Ethics, and National Security. His 1992 essay “The Origins of the Military Coup of 2012” was selected for Parameters’ 40th Anniversary Edition. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.

Shannon, thanks for joining us. I’m glad you’re here. Your article talks about the white-power movement and its history with the military from the Civil War to today. What was the overarching goal of your original article?

(Reid)

So the overarching goal of the main article is to really bring attention to the fact that we have a white-power/far-right issue in the military, and it’s not a new problem. As you mentioned, we go back all the way to the Civil War. But it is an area of focus that needs attention and cannot continue to be pushed out of the way as something we don’t want to focus on.

(Host)

Military-affiliated citizens supporting DVEs (that’s domestic violent extremists)—how bad is it?

(Reid)

Part of the problem is we really don’t have any idea. The issue with not studying something is that we only have anecdotes and guesses. While Major General Dunlap said we’re overestimating, the truth of the matter is we really don’t know if it’s an overestimation or underestimation because all we’re seeing is when somebody either commits a violent crime or gets in trouble for supporting white-power messaging and is removed from the military. So all we are seeing is a very tail end of what the problem is. But if we continue to say either (a) we don’t want to look at this because we feel like it does a disservice to the image of the troops or (b) assuming that we’re overestimating, because it’s only a proportion of the individuals who are part of these groups really does not allow us to tackle the actual problem, but rather allows it to continue fairly unfettered. Because they know that no one is really interested in looking into it in a more in-depth way.

(Host)

Dunlap, in his reply to you, gave an example illustrating how, he says, the numbers are small. And he also notes that exaggerating the problem beyond what data shows dangerously erodes public confidence in the armed forces. It diminishes the propensity of minorities to join, and it gives succor to America’s enemies around the world. You say your position is concentrated on the need for the US military to finally confront this problem head on. What would that look like?

(Reid)

It’s sort of a multistage process. As you look at people who have talked about their involvement, either in the white-power movement generally or in the intersection of the military and the white-power movement, a lot of it has to do with personal, individual, and group vulnerability. The same way we talk a lot about gang membership or mental health risk, (posttraumatic stress disorder or) PTSD, and suicide—just because it’s potentially a small portion of the population doesn’t mean that there are people who are not at risk for long-term consequences from this action. So when we think about “OK, what would studying this really look like,” a lot of people are bringing these ideologies or beliefs in with them, and it continues once they’re there. Or are they sort of becoming—and I use the word “indoctrinated” very loosely—but, you know, sort of becoming wrapped up in this movement while in the military because of either what they’re seeing or what they’re being exposed to? Because that really impacts how we intervene and how we move to prevent further polarization or further extremism.

But the bottom line is we don’t know. So if we can get surveys or research done as people are coming in or coming back from deployment—so, figuring out those points of inflection where risk is the highest—then we are able to develop prevention programs the same way we do for others. Again, probably small numbers, but large impacts.

So we don’t dismiss suicide risk amongst the military because it’s only going to be a small proportion, right? We take that seriously, or we hope people take that seriously. We tried to take PTSD seriously. We take veteran homelessness seriously. And, so, dismissing something simply because it’s a small number, potentially, is to give the people who are at risk for this behavior no support and put them on a path that leads to a lot of risky behavior and can really change their lives in a negative way.

(Host)

There was some commonality in your views, and Dunlap does agree. In fact, I’ll quote here. He says, “Let’s be clear about something. The military, like American society in general, needs to stamp out racism and white supremacy. In this respect, I believe, Valasik and Reid have some ideas worth pondering.”

Do you have any final thoughts?

(Reid)

Because they are the military—similar to the police, where we’ve seen this issue in law enforcement generally—we are giving them extra skills and assets and a belief system that the far right is trying to exploit. They bring something to the table that potentially an average citizen doesn’t. And, so, it becomes more imperative to really root out this problem. Because it’s more than just racism. It’s beyond, you know, “I don’t like so-and-so.” And I know he talks about, you know, “We don’t want to cause distrust in the military.” But the problem is that distrust exists because these people are showing up on the news and are being seen at things like the Capitol riot or Unite the Right or Portland protests. I think it erodes trust more not to be doing anything about it than it does to try to expose a problem and say, “We’re going to move forward to deal with this in an efficient and effective manner.”

(Host)

Thanks for joining me today, Shannon, and for sharing your thoughts on this topic.

(Reid)

Thank you.

(Host)

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 article addresses the impact of diversity, equity, and inclusion on talent management. It explains how systemic bias impairs the US Army’s ability to harness cognitive diversity. It stresses the value of cognitive diversity among teams and senior leadership and how cumulative bias impacts the entire career cycle of an individual. It concludes by offering practical suggestions to reduce bias in the assignment, promotion, and selection processes.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss1/4/

Episode Transcript:

Stephanie 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.

(Guest 1 Danielle Holt)

(Guest 2 Susan Davis)

(Host)

Decisive Point welcomes Lieutenant Colonel Danielle Holt, US Army, and Colonel Susan Davis, US Army, authors of “Interrupting Bias in Army Talent Management,” featured in Parameters’ Spring 2022 issue. Holt is a general surgeon assigned as deputy chief, Department of Surgery at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and Uniformed Services University. She’s a graduate of the US Army War College and holds a doctor of medicine degree from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Davis is a physical therapist assigned to the People First Task Force. She’s a graduate of the US Army War College and holds a doctor of physical therapy degree from Baylor University.

I’m happy you’re here, Sue and Danielle, welcome. Let’s talk about your article. In it, you say, “Army Talent Management must include development of a more innovative and inclusive culture to meet future threats.” There were some significant changes to the system in 2020, let’s start there. What changed?

(Davis)

Hi, this is Sue, and thanks for having us. Absolutely, I’d say 2019 and 2020 were huge changes in the Army, in the talent management arena, and it was very exciting. The Army is trying to keep up with contemporary practices and modernize the system, if you will, and they had been working for several years on many initiatives. And there were some big ones that were rolled out in 2019 and 2020.

Specifically, the ones that we talk about a little bit—and that are probably the most well-known as well—is, first, the Army talent alignment process—which really simply is a new way of determining where officers go for their next assignment. It essentially is a electronic platform that generates a market-style hiring system. Much like the civilian side, resumes are exchanged, interviews may occur, and you can exchange information, etcetera. And then, officers that are slated to move and units that may have an open position indicate their preferences, and they run an algorithm, and this then determines where an officer goes next. That was a very big change in the legacy system. It was more just a conversation with a career manager or—if you’re in the (Army Medical Department or) AMEDD—a consultant. And so, this was a big change. And so, we talk about it a little bit.

And the other one was the Command Assessment Program. And this was a new initiative to do a very thorough assessment of the candidates who are potentially going to be commanders at the O-5 and O-6 level. And instead of just reviewing their written record and evaluations and where they had been, they brought them in for four or five days of a battery of assessments and interviews and gathered much more information and data on them. So, we talk about these specifically, one, because they’re very impactful—they represented really big changes—but also because, like all personnel management processes, whether in the military or civilian, they can be vulnerable to unconscious bias creeping in if it’s not mitigated. So, since that was the topic of our paper, unconscious bias, we did take a closer look at those two.

(Host)

You also make the case for diversity, equity, and inclusion as part of this process. Will you please expand on that for our listeners?

(Holt)

Sure. Hi, this is Danielle, and I really appreciate this opportunity. Let me start by saying, you know, I’m not in—an (human resources or) HR professional, I’m actually a general surgeon. And I started this project back in 2020, during Army War College, to really get a better standing of the tensions that our country has currently been facing. And so, the case for diversity, equity, and inclusion ultimately lies in the Army as a values-based organization, and that . . . the fact that we work in teams. So, our servicemembers come from a variety of backgrounds. Really, as work has sort of moved from this Industrial Age to the information age, where we’re competing in this knowledge economy, not only has work changed, but our future threats have really blurred these lines between competition and conflict, and then also between, you know, the physical, informational—you know—and cognitive warfare.

And so, this means that our teams really need to rapidly assess these changing conditions. And kind of a key foundation to that is creating shared understanding. So, we have to take a diverse group of people, rapidly understand the situation, and then innovate to be able to meet these threats. On top of that, we are also competing for talent. So, we have to attract people to an all-volunteer force. We have to retain those individuals through their career life cycle. And, in addition, we’re competing with the private sector, so, particularly, in these technical fields. But we also have to maintain a technical and economic advantage over our near-peer adversaries.

And so, ultimately, innovation, I think, requires cognitive diversity to kind of tap into this collective knowledge of the team. And so, what I mean by that is each team member has different strengths and weaknesses and, ideally, we can sort of offset each other’s strengths and weaknesses. In more general terms, the literature kind of describes this as the idea that a team, made up of average performers—if all of the performers contribute—will often outperform teams where you have one top performer that’s driving the team. Really a go-to reference for me for this is the Diversity Bonus: (How Great Teams Pay Off in the Knowledge Economy) by Scott Page is a great book.

And so, really, the key for cognitive diversity—for that to work—you need an inclusive environment, you know, so all the team members can pitch in. And ultimately, I would argue this ability to sort of create an inclusive team, it’s probably one of the top competencies for Army leaders, you know, and really contributes to this process for diversity, equity, and inclusion within talent management.

(Host)

Your article talks a bit about unconscious bias. What is it, and how does it constrain cognitive diversity?

(Davis)

Unconscious bias is—it’s really the way you automatically feel about something: in favor or not in favor. It’s your very quick judgment or assessment of something, and, sometimes, it’s shaped by your emotional state or situational cues. But it’s the collective experience of your brain; everything you’ve been exposed to, the way you were raised, your culture. And your brain shapes your bias and that . . . that can have a little bit of a negative connotation. So, just a neutral way to explain it is System-1 and System-2 thinking in your brain.

System-1 is shortcuts, or it’s when your brain, again, uses all . . . everything it’s been exposed to and comes up with a heuristic. And System-2 is much more thoughtful, analytical, methodical. And, just to be clear, System-1 is not necessarily bad in many situations—it actually helps us get us through the day. So, if you go to a restaurant: “What should I order?” You know, you don’t need a decision matrix, you don’t need 20 minutes. It’s OK to just go with System-1 thinking. And it’s important to note our brain does these nice shortcuts for us unconsciously. So, for the most part, you are really unaware, except maybe retrospectively, and it’s very tempting to think that we can control it, but we really can’t. It’s just part of human nature and the way our brains work.

So, with human resource processes or personnel management processes where humans are involved, unconscious bias and that System-1 thinking is not helpful. And it actually can be quite detrimental, both to candidates being considered for various things, but it can be really detrimental to the organization if they’re trying to build a cognitively diverse force. So, bottom line is, if you don’t embed some processes to counter unconscious bias within personnel processes, then leaders are subject to this bias. And the most common one is, like, an affinity or familiarity bias, and you’re going to favor officers you know or that look like you or that you maybe went to the same school with. And then, ultimately, along the way, you end up having less cognitive diversity on the teams or in the senior level—where you really need it to be able to interpret and analyze and offer solutions quickly to the Army’s toughest challenges.

(Host)

Your article also mentions structural models for diversity, equity, and inclusion, including assignment distribution, evaluations, and psychological safety. Can you please give us a synopsis of your recommendations on this?

(Holt)

I would think of structural models as really just frameworks for how you approach this very complex, you know, challenging problem of diversity, equity, and inclusion. But I think, for me, it really boils down to insider and outsider group dynamics. In this paper, we focus primarily on the practical changes that can be made at the system level and focus on those changes in assignments, command selections, and evaluations. But also really highlighted some of the best practices that have already been implemented during this Army talent management transformation.

I really appreciate Brené Brown’s perspective on diversity, equity, and inclusion and say much of the challenge that surrounds this topic really stems from a sense of belonging and belonging to that insider group. You know, in the military, we would call that camaraderie, and I feel like this is really the essence of our organization. Belonging, you know, happens at multiple levels—but, really, it can be simplified down to the individual or interpersonal level and, then, at the group or organizational level.

And so, I would say at the individual level, belonging requires trust—trust between your teammates, trust with your leaders. And then, at the organizational level, you need to develop this sense of psychological safety. And so, those two components, at the individual and at the group or organizational level, allow us to get back to developing the shared understanding and mutual trust. And these are really the entire foundation for mission command, and this is really what drives our ability to meet our mission and to face our future threats. I think if we can generate a sense of belonging, then you can allow people to fully commit to this greater sense of service for something bigger than themselves. And I think it’s ultimately rooted in our Army ethic, and that’s what separates us from our adversaries.

We have to be careful as we implement this market-based approach that we don’t encounter some of the same problems that the private sector has had with respect to diversity, equity, and inclusion. But I think, ultimately—I’ll close out by saying I think if we can create this sense of belonging, we can really foster this greater purpose. I think our doctrine is really some of the best and the most comprehensive guidebooks thought that’s out there on leadership. Our ethic is, essentially, codified in our country’s founding documents and these notions of freedom and liberty and justice, you know—it’s really what inspires people of all backgrounds to volunteer for our organization, you know, and, ultimately, self-sacrifice for our country.

Thank you again for, you know, allowing us to discuss our paper.

(Host)

It was a pleasure. I’m so glad you could join me. 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 article delivers a novel economic analysis of US dependence on China for rare-earth elements and sheds light on how Western nations may exploit the limitations of limit pricing to break China’s global monopoly in rare-earth element production and refinement. This analytical framework, supported by a comprehensive literature review, the application of microeconomic and industrial organization concepts, and two case-study scenarios, provides several policy recommendations to address the most important foreign policy challenge the United States has faced since the end of the Cold War.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss1/6/

Episode 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 guests in speaking order on this episode are:

(Guest 1 Gustavo Ferreira)

(Guest 2 Jamie Critelli)

(Host)

Decisive Point welcomes Captain Gustavo Ferreira and Major Jamie Critelli, authors of “China’s Global Monopoly on Rare Earth Elements,” featured in the Parameters Spring 2022 issue.

Ferreira holds a PhD in agricultural economics from Louisiana State University. He’s a senior agricultural economist with the US Department of Agriculture and serves as an agricultural officer at the 353rd Civil Affairs Command, US Army Reserves. Critelli is a civil affairs officer serving in the 353rd Civil Affairs Command, US Army Reserves. He’s an independent farm business owner and has worked globally in agriculture supply-chain rules on five continents. He holds a master of business administration and supply chain management from ETH Zurich. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.

Gustavo [and] Jamie, thanks for joining me. Let’s jump right in. Your article sheds light on how Western nations may exploit the limitations of limit pricing to break China’s global monopoly on rare-earth element production and refinement. What’s the working definition of “rare earth elements” here?

(Ferreira)

Good morning, Stephanie. Thank you for having us. So rare-earth elements are a set of 17 different metallic elements that fall into two different categories. You have the heavy and the light based on the separation process (once they get mined and get processed), which tends to be rather complex. And contrary to what the title suggests, rare-earth elements are abundant in the Earth crust. They have their rarity status coming from being typically highly scattered and mixed together with other minerals, and they’re rarely found in concentrations that make it profitable to extract. Oftentimes, they are a byproduct of other mining activities.

It’s important to understand rare-earth element reserves tend to be geographically more concentrated than other natural resources, such as oil and gas, but they’re also in line with other key mineral resources, such as copper, where they’re concentrated in one or two countries at the global scale.

In terms of uses, it’s important to highlight they’re desired because they have unique characteristics, such as magnetic strength, and, consequently, they’re used in a wide range of ubiquitous consumer goods, such as flat-screen TVs and cell phones. Other important industrial applications include wind turbines and electrical vehicles. And one that’s typically a very visible application of this resource is in the military space. These minerals are key inputs for many weapons systems, such as jet fighter engines, missile guidance systems, satellites, ammunition, and so on. It’s always good to put a number on it to emphasize the current demand for these inputs. An F135 fighter jet (engine) requires about 920 pounds of rare-earth minerals—just to put it into perspective.

Also, looking forward, as the global economy continues to transition to lower-carbon, renewable energies, analysts estimate that the demand for these minerals will continue to grow at a very rapid pace. That is because cleaner energy technologies such as electrical vehicles, electrical batteries, generators, and wind turbines will consume close to half of all the rare-earth element production. They are going to be a major driver for these resources.

And lastly, one thing that must be emphasized is the heavy environmental cost that goes along with producing these minerals. They produce an enormous environmental footprint, and that’s the reason why it’s concentrated in certain countries, such as China. They generate waste gas, acid-containing sewage water, radioactive wastes, and so on. It’s a pretty high environmental cost.

(Host)

Thanks, Gustavo. How did we get here, and what is the state of rare-earth elements?

(Ferreira)

To truly understand how this industry has evolved to what we see today, we must understand the paths that China and the United States have followed for the past three or four decades regarding rare-earth elements. In the case of the United States, this country was once self-reliant and the world’s leading producer. From the 1960s to the 1980s there was a mine, the Mountain Pass mine, located in California. It was the world’s primary source of rare-earth elements. However, following decades of neglect, underinvestment by the US government, and a lack of interest by the academic community in this field, we had a gradual loss of know-how and the skilled labor force that’s required for this industry. Altogether, this led to a slow decline of this industry in the United States. This trend culminated in the shutdown of that Mountain Pass mine in 2002, following some regulatory issues and an environmental incident that involved a pipeline spill carrying contaminated water. So, there was kind of the nail in the coffin for that particular operation. It confirmed the decline of this industry in the United States.

Because of that, we lost nearly all our rare-earth production capacity, and we became gradually a net importer of these minerals—with, now, China becoming the main supplier, accounting for 80 percent of our imports.

Which is a good segue to how China was able to fill that gap. This didn’t happen overnight. This was a long-term effort by the Chinese government. It was a concerted effort that involved high-profile investments in national programs, the development of teams, and labs that will exclusively focus on studying production of rare-earth elements. And this long-term focus definitely yielded significant results and set the conditions for China to expand its production from the 1970s and 1980s. As the US started to decline, China picked up that slack. Then, China also made the decision to declare these minerals a strategic resource. So, they kind of set the political tone. They recognized the importance of this going forward, and they even were able to endure and accept the environmental degradation that would entail. They were willing to take that cost, given the national strategic importance of this resource. As a consequence, they started producing and exporting more and more throughout the 1990s and 2000s. That expansion of production had an impact on global markets in the sense that they flooded the market with large amounts of rare-earth minerals. They plunged the global prices, which resulted in many Western producers no longer being able to compete at those low costs and filing for bankruptcy, further reducing production in the West.

Another key shift in China was once they secured production and became the global powerhouse, they started shifting towards developing a more integrated supply chain. What I mean by this is they no longer were just simple raw-material producers, but they started investing in processing. And so, they could control the entire supply-chain process from mining all the way to the final products, such as magnets or oxides that are used by the final end users in the West. So, they created a whole supply chain, to include all value-added products, and now they control about 80–90 percent of that value-added refinement capacity. Even the United States or other Western countries that still mine rare-earth minerals—they have to export them to China in order to be refined there and processed to the way it could be used by the final end users.

(Host)

That leads right into my next question. China dominates the rare-earth element global market. How can we overcome that? Or maybe I should be asking you: Can we overcome that?

(Critelli)

Well, the short answer is “yes.” Thank you again for having us, Stephanie.

China did not arrive at a point of rare-earth element market leadership overnight. Once they realized how valuable these materials were, they set a decades-long course to arrive at the position they’re at today. Unfortunately, we can’t rely on market forces alone to correct this. In the short term, we only have two levers. We either become better at recycling or repurposing existing rare-earth elements or we stockpile these items, regardless of price, so we’re not supply-constrained by a foreign power.

So, in terms of recycling or repurposing, this of course is hampered by the limit-pricing efforts done by the Chinese and by the complete lack of a domestic rare-earth element recycling stream. We just don’t have it. We would have to build it up. And as Gustavo mentioned, there’s quite a bit of waste involved with this that we would need to address as well. As far as stockpiling, those efforts are a good strategy, but they would also be hampered by limit pricing. A lengthy discussion on the stockpile framework is also needed. What portion is for military use versus domestic use? How large of a stockpile? What mechanism would there be to extract an item from the stockpile? Because it can’t just be cost alone. And this would be to prevent inequities and to promote the national defense.

But if we were looking at a longer time horizon, say five to 10 years, then we do have many more options. First and foremost, we can build out the rare-earth element smelting, refining, and processing industry. Basically, build it back. This would be to process domestic and foreign sources of (rare-earth element or) REE concentrates. Most likely, it would have to be vertically integrated though to attract the capital investment needed to build and sustain it. And it quite possibly would have to be carved out as a legal monopoly.

Another option is to have continued Department of Defense collaboration with our allies and their businesses by employing mechanisms such as reciprocal defense procurement for the security of supply arrangements.

More (research and development or) R&D is an option you hear all the time, but here there’s a couple of different avenues. One is more R&D investment to improve the processing yield on turning those concentrates into final products or to minimize the waste stream. And this is akin to how fracking revolutionized the gas-drilling industry. If you could figure out a way to get a better yield with less input, it’s cheaper.

Continued focus on recycling: As I mentioned earlier, I believe we could leverage American ingenuity to recycle the world’s REEs. Problem solved.

And then, finally, there should be a change in procurement strategies domestically—and this would be to cement the fix—focusing less on costs and focusing more on balancing cost with supply disruptions. Perhaps there could be local content rules considered for key items such as REEs, much like Brazil has put into place.

You know, I’m left thinking that we bail out many other industries, but one that is at the heart of so many other critical industries hasn’t seen the investment required by government to address the issue. This is an industry that is marginally profitable and requires substantial capital investment. And, therefore, America needs to front the investment to help realize our national security and assist with the collective global security as well.

(Host)

Gentlemen, if you could pull it all together for us, what are your conclusions on this topic?

(Critelli)

As we sit with you today, Stephanie, the world is pulling itself out of (coronavirus disease 2019 or) COVID. And it is watching itself, in dismay, become involved with the unfolding situation in Ukraine. These are not dissimilar issues, though. Both events stood or stand to impact our supply chains on an unprecedented scale. Both COVID and the Russian invasion disrupt the availability of key products and commodities. Both continue to have second- and third-order impacts we didn’t plan for—and, unfortunately, these impacts could have been averted to a degree with more preparedness.

I’m encouraged in our post-COVID world. People now talk about decoupling Chinese and American supply chains for the first time in a generation. I wonder what conclusions people will come to when they contemplate ongoing scarcity events, well in the future, involving tiny amounts of key elements that the mighty US military-industrial complex can no longer obtain—or the reality that it will now take several decades to get ourselves back onto a sound footing. The question will be whether we have the political will now to address this challenge head on, much as China has done over the past few decades.

Sun Tzu is attributed the following statement: “take advantage of the enemy’s unpreparedness; travel by unprepared routes and strike him where he has taken no precautions.” Thank you for letting us speak with you today.

(Ferreira)

And I would like to add, just as a concluding remark, that, perhaps, we have a window of opportunity to overcome this dependency. It’s all because while in the past China was capable of flooding the market with cheap supplies and flushing out all competitors, they got to the point that, now, they are such large consumers themselves of those resources that they no longer can afford to apply those same tactics. They’re constrained on their end, which presents an opportunity for us to reinforce our industry and support the development of our domestic processing industry.

And the political will is there. There has been a series of executive orders that have been recently approved, which signal the political support going forward, which is key. These are 10- to 20-year-long investments, and we’re going to need that to continue in the political arena so this project can materialize and we can soften our dependency.

Because at the end of the day, the Chinese do think this is a critical issue. So, our political class should think the same as well as our military. So again, thank you for having us here. It was great having this conversation with you.

(Host)

I’m delighted to have you.

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.

In this podcast, strategist David Katz argues American military strategists must incorporate multidimensional power projection into their planning processes to counter adversarial actions by gray-zone actors. By developing a more complete concept of power projection, the United States can apply its resources more effectively.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol48/iss4/5/

Episode Transcript: Multidimensionality: Rethinking Power Projection for the 21st Century

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 guests in speaking order on this episode are:

(Guest 1 David Katz)

(Host)

Decisive Point welcomes David Katz, author of “MultiDimensionality: Rethinking Power Projection for the 21st Century,” featured in Parameters’ Winter 2018–2019 issue. Katz works as a senior analyst at US Special Operations Command, J35 Transnational Threats Division, Counterthreat Finance. A West Point graduate, he served in the US Army as an infantry officer and Green Beret captain. He also worked as an institutional investor and advisor before founding his own firm that provided advanced analytics on more than $3 billion dollars of clients’ private equity investments.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.

Your 2018 Parameters article argues that American military strategists must incorporate multidimensional power projection into their planning processes to counter adversarial actions by gray-zone actors. Let’s start there. Please briefly walk us through the basic concept of your article.

(Katz)

Well, when you stand on the shoulders of giants—in this case, two senior (People’s Liberation Army Air Force or) PLA Air Force political officers who wrote Unrestricted Warfare: (Two Air Force Senior Colonels on Scenarios for War and the Operational Art in an Era of Globalization), I think we should start with that, which was published in 1999.

I think it opened up an entire, new range of military operations. In this case, it was unrestricted—hence the title, Unrestricted Warfare. So that’s where I start from in order to develop multidimensionality. I think that as a critique, the US strategy community has tended to gravitate from unrestricted warfare into what they call “informationalized warfare,” where it’s really the principal child, as they see it, of unrestricted warfare.

But philosophically, I think there’s a profound question to consider. And that is, “What is warfare if it’s unrestricted?” What isn’t warfare? In fact, let me restate that. If warfare is unrestricted, as the PLA Air Force political officers, Colonel Qiao Liang (pronounced “Crow”) and Colonel Wang (Wang Xiangsui) wrote in 1999, if warfare is unrestricted, what isn’t warfare? We need to consider that, which led me down a path to multidimensionality.

Now, two questions I typically get are: “What’s the difference between multidimensionality and multiple-domain operations, or MDO?” And, “What’s the difference between multidimensionality and concepts like (diplomatic, information, military, economic, financial, intelligence, and law enforcement or) DIMEFIL?” And we’ll get there. But I think let’s just go down sort of the nuts and bolts of multidimensionality.

Multidimensionality is really just a strategic framework where we, as US strategists, consider every available dimension of power projection or engagement, and we pick those from that available universe where we possess a usable advantage, whether it’s strategic or tactical, whether it’s persistent or transitory.

For example, a single instance of power projection can range from a scaled, macro power projection, like multiple nuclear strikes, to the most micro and granular, which could be a single instance of a single person conducting a single credit card transaction or making a single phone call. That counts as power projection as well.

So, the instance of power projection that we’re looking at, through the dimension we select, may be bilateral, that source to target, which is the way we typically consider power projection. But it can also be indirect, or perhaps even intermediated: intermediated projection, like his power projection traversing through a network with multiple intermediate entities.

So, the bottom line is that we must expand our concept of power projection and campaign planning to both encompass all of the operational advantages that we possess and to integrate them coherently and comprehensively into the actions that we take. So that’s kind of the nuts and bolts of multidimensionality.

The next question I typically get is, “How do you do it? What are the mechanics of multidimensionality?” Well, so the obvious question is: “Why do we even have mechanics in multidimensionality?” And so, the question then becomes when warfare is unrestricted.

In the 19th century, definitions become unmoored. Department of State, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security—we need a precise means to describe what we intend to do and how we intend to do it.

Let’s get down to the brass tacks. Power is something that you apply to a target in order to bring about a desired change in its state. Power is described, I think, by its behavior against the target, and it could be grouped into classes. In other words, class defines the behavior of power against the target state. For instance, “kinetic” is a class of behavior with multiple subclasses that can range from lobbing artillery rounds to tackling somebody.

So power has a behavior. That behavior is classified. And power must come from someplace, so, consequently, it must have a source, and it must deliver something that acts against the target. So, you have a payload. Power projection is really the process of delivering an instance or instances of power within a single dimension. And the means of delivery, the path of delivery, is called a vector. So, at its bottom, the mechanics of multidimensionality is projecting power is really described through four essential elements: the class or behavior; the source where it comes from; the payload that it delivers; and the vector or path that it utilizes to deliver that payload, from where it came from to where it’s going. And that, in a nutshell, are the mechanics of multidimensionality.

(Host)

So, your piece addresses multidimensionality in the South China Sea and in the Middle East. Let’s apply it to Russia in the Ukraine.

(Katz)

That is a great question. One of the things we should consider regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is to nonkinetically extend the tactical, kinetic Ukrainian battlespace into strategic areas where we hold structural advantages. We have structural advantages in strategic maneuver. We have a blue-water navy, we have a blue-water coast guard. We have a permanent presence along Russia’s perimeter. We also have structural advantages in the political economy. As the world’s largest developed economy, we exert a geo-economic gravity that skews the world political economies into our orbit. We are the largest and most lucrative market for anyone to sell into. The US shepherds the global maritime commons, which is a globally scaled, integrated system of shipborne freight distribution, economic trade, and financial risk management whose physical passage is guaranteed under US stewardship.

But the US shepherds other systems of international diplomacy and commerce and law that arose from the wreckage World War II that have facilitated worldwide economic growth. In short, the USA currently is the world sysadmin or systems administrator.

Now the interesting thing about systems is that, once created, they tend towards stability as a means of preserving the benefits that they deliver to their participants or constituents. And they can react against changes that pose a risk to their purpose in their transformative processes, just like an immune system reacts to a viral infection.

So, consequently, the US, I believe, can harness systems of international commerce, diplomacy, and law and their tendency to maintain a present state for our advantage. So, specifically: How about a nonkinetic, maritime exclusion zone exercise in the Bering Straits (Bering Strait) as an example? It would integrate law enforcement through the Coast Guard with United States and Canadian special operation forces, perhaps, and perhaps US Navy assets. It would demonstrate capability, capacity, and strategic depth by extending the Ukrainian battlespace thousands of miles and beyond Russia’s capability and capacity to respond quickly. It would demonstrate localized US escalatory dominance.

But most importantly, nonkinetically, it threatens core Russian and Chinese economic interests because it threatens the Northern Sea Route. For folks that are not familiar with the Northern Sea Route, it goes from Murmansk all the way over into the Arctic Oceans (Arctic Ocean), down the Bering Straits (Bering Strait), and goes from there to Dalian and Shanghai and all of the factories on China’s coast. So by threatening the North Sea route (Northern Sea Route), just demonstrating the capability to conduct a chokepoint operation in the Bering Straits (Bering Strait), we could force Russia to use alternative routes like a land route and the use of the Suez Canal, which could add 10 or more days to transit to whatever it is they want to move to market. This threatens Russia’s commercialization of its vast mineral and oil wealth in its far north. It threatens Russian and Chinese energy and commodity trading shipping routes. To right now, Russia wants to develop the billions of dollars of mineral wealth stuck in their Murmansk peninsula (Kola Peninsula) and sell it and ship it to Chinese factories on the Chinese eastern seaboard. And in order for that to happen, it has to transit the Bering Straits (Bering Strait). So that’s a quick and dirty example of how you would use multidimensionality to extend a battlespace and to force your adversaries to respond in dimensions where they are not expecting it.

(Host)

Here’s a quote from your conclusion in 2018: “In an era of coercive gradualism, nuclear provocation, and gray zone competition that purposefully occupies the space between war and peace, dimensionality might offer a better, more innovative, and imaginative way to respond to some of the world’s worst actors, while reducing risk and promoting peace.” Final thoughts?

(Katz)

The rule in warfare is to never telegraph your moves. Never come where your enemy or adversary is expecting you. By expanding the dimensions through which we project power, we can come at our adversaries in ways and with means that they are not expecting at all. So when you face the salami slicing that China is doing in the South China Sea, they set it up specifically so that if you engage them, and it did mention that they want you to engage them, which is physical kinetic action, they already have an escalatory dominance against whatever you can do. It’s a lose-lose proposition for the United States. But we can bypass all of China’s missiles and fleets and submarines by phoning in a purchase order to the headwaters of a supply chain inside China. Buying out an entire production cycle worth of a critical component. Warehousing it. The next company on that supply chain would have to scramble for parts at higher prices and a latency that would cascade down that supply chain, growing like a snowball going downhill into an avalanche. And then you wait for the next production cycle and dump those same critical components into the supply chain at below cost. So you’re creating a bullwhip effect where everyone on the supply chain doesn’t know what price it is, they don’t know what the supply is, and they don’t know what the duration of what they’re doing. Eventually, that supply chain falls apart. You can do that all nonkinetically. And that’s just a one-dimensional approach that could augment the 7th Fleet going into the South China Sea or could be done to the exception of the 7th Fleet driving their boats around the South China Sea. So, we need to be a lot more inventive on what we’re doing. And as both a strategist, a campaign designer, and an operator, I get to practice some of these tools and techniques. So, it’s like Yogi Berra’s old quote that in theory, theory works in practice, and practice, not so much. I get to do both. So I may have an unfair advantage against other strategists and can campaign designers on it. But we cannot fight a twenty-first-century war with nineteenth-century definitions. We need to expand what we consider to be warfare. The Chinese brought it up first. It’s unrestricted. We need to play in that ball game.

(Host)

Thank you, David, for sharing your insight on this topic.

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.

In this podcast, Pfaff argues understanding the ethical logic available to one’s adversaries will allow US leaders and planners to leverage China’s behavior and optimally shape US policies and actions.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss1/7/

Episode Transcript: Chinese and Western Ways of War and Their Ethics

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 guests in speaking order on this episode are:

(Guest 1 Anthony Pfaff)

(Host)

Decisive Point welcomes Dr. Anthony Pfaff, author of “Chinese and Western Ways of War and Their Ethics,” featured in Parameters Spring 2022 issue. Dr. Pfaff is the research professor for strategy, the military profession, and ethics at the Strategic Studies Institute at the US Army War College and a senior nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.

Welcome, Dr. Pfaff. I’m glad you’re here. Let’s talk about China and the West, war, and ethics. Your thesis for this piece posits how one fights shapes how one governs that fighting. The article relies on traditional and contemporary scholarship from both East and West to describe differences in how each views the practical and ethical aspects of war and how they can interact. Understanding the ethical logic available to one’s adversaries allows one to better understand their behavior as well as how to better shape one’s own actions and policies to avoid misunderstanding. Some people think China is unethical. Let’s just start there. In fact, you note that in December of 2020, then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe claimed the Chinese government has “no ethical boundaries” in their pursuit of power. Please expand on that.

(Pfaff)

Yeah. Sure. This is a common refrain. A big theme in it is that the other side—they’re unethical. And I wanted to write this because it’s not true. Now, they may be doing some things which by our own lights are unethical; they may be doing some things that are unethical by their own lights. What I’m not doing in this paper is adjudicating. And I’m not saying that there is a moral equivalency between the kinds of things China does and the kinds of things the United States does. I’m not saying there’s a moral equivalency between the kind of aims that the United States has and China has. I think we can make arguments that a lot of what the Chinese do is in fact unethical.

However, it is wrong to say they aren’t considering it. There is a fairly rich conversation even in their own People’s Liberation Army (PLA) journals and think tanks and conferences, and all that, where they do raise these kinds of concerns. So what I wanted to do is kind of map out: How do these concerns arise, and what shapes how they get expressed in Chinese policy in Chinese thinking as well as our own? And I thought it was important to contrast it with how we do it so a reader can understand, “Oh, this is sort of a natural process that all security communities, states—however you want to define it—do.” These are almost unavoidable categories but do affect not how we just think about fighting, but how we think about the norms governing that fighting. To say the other side just doesn’t have any is to oversimplify and to miss a lot. It risks misinterpreting what in fact the other side actually thinks it’s doing and thinks it’s responding to.

(Host)

Let’s talk about the ways and ethics of war. What do you mean by this, and how are the Western and Eastern ways of war different?

(Pfaff)

In terms of what I’m talking about here, in terms of what a way of war is and how it relates to the ethics of war, I’m basically employing the idea the way Colin Gray and Martin Shaw kind of articulated. We’re just really talking about how we organize the fight. In this case, that way of war is how you organize to fight against what you think is your most serious adversary. Again, it doesn’t mean to have a way of war that’s aimed at a peer competitor doesn’t mean that you don’t use your military for other things.

But what it does mean is that you think that—the way I characterize the Western view—if you think that defeating an adversary requires imposing your will on that adversary, then that’s your logic of your way of war. And it’s going to have a grammar to it, borrowing from Clausewitz. And so how do you impose your will? Well, you eliminate the other side’s ability to resist. And once you achieve the military objective, which is eliminating that resistance, you pretty much achieved your political objective, which is to defeat the adversary.

There’s another way of thinking about it, and I think this characterizes the Chinese way. And this is explicit in a very old book, very famous, written by two Chinese colonels (now one’s a general) called Unrestricted Warfare. I think they really do capture . . . they’re kind of explicitly comparing Sun Tzu and Clausewitz. And they’re saying, hey, where the Americans want to impose will, we have to do something else because we can’t really resist it. They’re writing right after the Gulf War, and they’re saying, “Hey, we’ve got to figure out something else.” The way they describe their logic is, “We’ve got to get them to accept our interests because we’re not going to be able to impose our will.” Rather than eliminating resistance, you’ve got to change minds. And changing minds is a lot more complicated because now there’s no necessary connection between the force you use and the outcome you get. Because now the target of your coercive efforts gets to decide how much punishment they will take.

So you can’t know in advance. It’s a little bit more complicated, but you can now see where the ethics comes in, right? If I’m imposing will and I’m eliminating resistance, I’m going to assume a just cause—so that gives me already a moral imperative to win. So that eliminating resistance comes as its own imperative. But I have other imperatives too: (a) to avoid harming those things that are not necessary to eliminating resistance. We have rules about not harming noncombatants, avoiding destruction of monuments, historical sites, etc. Any civilian infrastructure that’s not directly related to warfighting generally is off limits because it’s not central to the logic of warfighting, which is eliminating that resistance in order to impose your will.

The other way of thinking about it, it works a little differently. You end up getting a different kind of ethics. Because it’s more complicated, the cultural references that I mention in the paper include Sun Tzu, but, also, a lot of Confucian thinkers who were thinking about military policy and what we would consider national security. What they were thinking of—just from a practical perspective, there is an emphasis on precision and avoiding destruction.

And in some sense that’s just simply instrumental because you want to assimilate the other side and be able to use what they have. But it’s also a sense that what warfighting is about is really—we would use the language of aligning interests, but, in the text, they use the words like “harmony”—they want to harmonize. And it’s not that I need to eliminate the other side; I need to harmonize the other side.

This was certainly the way during the Warring States period that I talk about. It was very formative in Chinese versions of just-war theory that this was sort of really what was going on. It ended up being about consolidating power, but as a way of aligning everybody’s interest so they were all focused more or less in the same direction, often using words like harmony to describe what they were doing. But that doesn’t mean these wars weren’t very brutal, and they were certainly wars of conquest. But it’s interesting that in a lot of literature, those get condemned, and the ones that were less destructive—and the ones that were more about aligning interests and not just seizing territory—get kind of lifted up as “this is just,” where This other way is just brutal takeover.

So I kind of zero in on Sun Tzu’s articulation of this because he’s got this great passage where he talks about, you know, it’s better not to destroy the city; it’s better not to destroy the army. The less destruction you commit in order to get your goal, the better off you are. So what does that do? Well, it opens up other ways of going about things. And, so, what’s very effective? Things like deception, trickery, and so on. Even things that we would look at and go, “Oh, that’s treachery” become a way of minimizing the actual damage you have to inflict in order to align your interests.

Their expressions obviously get more complicated than that, but what you end up with is something that on the outside can look kind of utilitarian. And by utilitarian, I mean that’s a way of thinking about ethics where you maximize a certain set of consequences that are good. So generic utility theory might say what the right thing to do is to maximize happiness. The problem with theories like that is that they become very ”Means justifies the ends.” So, if you’re running a group of people, and you want to maximize happiness of the group, and six people in the group of 10 are unhappy, how do you make them happier? Well, you could make the six people happier, or you could just kill them. Either way, now you have 100 percent of people in your group, once they’re gone, are happy. You win, right? So we use utility theory here sort of as “You need more than that in order to come up with a full, robust ethic.” So the Chinese appear like that sometimes, particularly because of the Marxist-Leninist influences. The good of the party is what matters. And it’s not that that doesn’t give you an ethic; it actually motivates a lot of sacrifice and does shape the kinds of things that you do and don’t do in order to maximize the good of the party. But, as we’ve seen throughout history, it also enables a lot of things we would think of as pretty horrible.

So again, I’m not trying to argue some kind of moral equivalency. But, on the other hand, as you look through the literature, there’s this idea that . . . the Confucian literature and even pre-Confucian literature, they talk about the mandate of heaven. And the mandate of heaven is, basically, that’s your legitimacy to rule. It depends on the ruler embodying the virtues of justice and benevolence. That can get a little circular in practice, but you can kind of see how that’s going to impact decision making. So I might be like a Sun Tzu who is motivated to limit destruction just because he wants to use it later on, but it’s still going to shape the kinds of reasons one uses to go to war, the kinds of adversaries one takes on, and the kinds of ways you go about fighting it. But it’s not going to look as principle-based as the way we tend to go about it. It’s going to be more found in the character of decisions made and the character of how decisions are made regarding who to fight and how to go about changing their minds while still ensuring that one maintains the character of doing this in a just and benevolent way. And that might mean deception if the alternative is destruction.

(Host)

Your article offer s a discussion of ideals within two rich and complex traditions. Please, pull it all together for us. What are your conclusions?

(Pfaff)

Really, the whole point of the article, in a lot of ways, was just to introduce audiences on both sides, really, to “Hey, regardless of how we actually behave and how well we measure up to our own ethics—or anybody’s ethics for that matter—both sides, if we want to look at it that way, are having these conversations. And they’re having these conversations in roughly the same way: They’re doing it through journals and conferences, arguments, debates, op-eds. I think, to wrap it up, I would say both sides are having these conversations. It’s useful to get to know what the terms are and the resources they use. These aren’t final conclusions. Ways of war evolve. So do ethics of war. And that’s also part of the debate. What I hope to do is show the relationship so you can kind of map out how those do occur and can evolve.

(Host)

Thanks for joining me today. 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.

In this podcast, Tor Bukkvoll revisits his 2016 Parameters, article and examines Russian Special Forces and their potential use in Ukraine today.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol46/iss2/4/

Episode 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 authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.

[Decisive Point] welcomes Dr. Tor Bukkvoll, author of “Russian Special Operations Forces in Crimea and Donbas,” featured in Parameters’ 2016 summer issue. Bukkvoll is a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment. He’s a specialist on Russia and Ukraine, particularly in the areas of defense and security policy.

The guests in speaking order on this episode are:

(Guest 1: Tor Bukkvoll)

(Host)

Thank you so much for joining me, Tor. I’m really glad you’re here. We’re here to talk about your 2016 article, which opens with this sentence: “This article investigates the roles special operations forces (SOF) have fulfilled in Russian warfare against Ukraine—both in Crimea and in Donbas.” Please give us some background. Russian Special Operations Forces in Ukraine in the past—what do we need to understand here?

(Bukkvoll)

So what we need to understand, in terms of the role these forces have played in Russian policy towards Ukraine, is that they played a major—maybe the most important—role in the annexation of Crimea. And then, secondly, they played an important (but not so important) role in the warfare in Donbas. There may have been Russian Special Operations Forces in Ukraine, also, prior to the events of 2014. But I think it makes sense to start with the annexation of Crimea, because these forces played such an important role there. And that was, first of all, in terms of the so-called SSO, which in Russian stands for Sil Spetsial’nykh Operatsiy. This is a relatively new Russian special operations force that was firmly established in 2013 but had been built up for a number of years before that.

What you should know is that in Soviet times, special operations forces tended to be more like what in the West would be called light elite infantry. So, the famous Spetsnaz forces that we heard so much about, they are more like the US (Army) Rangers than the US special operations forces like (First US Special Forces Operational Detachment) Delta and the (US Navy) SEALs and so on. But this new force, SSO, was particularly built on the example—or was supposed to be—the Russian “Delta Force.” Specifically, the Russian military referred to “Delta” when they talked about SSO.

And in Crimea, this SSO force, they started their annexation by taking over the buildings or the parliament and the government in Crimea. And then they occupied those buildings for 24 hours—basically, it seems to me, from the sources I’ve seen, to check out what the Ukrainians would do at that time. Would they try to stop the annexation, or would they not? And the Ukrainians, for a number of reasons, did nothing or very little. And that became the first step in the annexation of the whole peninsula.

And the SSO continue to play a big role here in cooperation with Spetsnaz GRU, which is the special operations forces of the Russian military intelligence. These are the “Rangers” forces I talked about before that then worked in tandem with the SSO to take over most of the Ukrainian military infrastructure on that peninsula. So this operation, taking place on 27th of February 2014, is today one of the most important operations that Russian Special Operations Forces have ever done. And President (Vladimir) Putin even named the 27th of February as the day of special operations forces in Russia for the years to come.

That’s a relatively long answer on the role they played in the annexation of Crimea. Then later, special operations forces also played a significant role in the warfare in Donbas. So the warfare in Donbas from 2014 and onwards was partly a local initiative, but also very much a Russian government and Russian military initiative.

In the warfare in Donbas that took place up until the current war, special operations forces did basically two things. They trained and fought together with the local forces. That’s the one thing.

And then they also had the more special tasks. The empirical data for these is a little bit uncertain, but it seems that the special operations forces of the GRU also had as their job to liquidate commanders of the different units of the anti-Kiev opposition that the Russians did not like anymore. So, in the beginning, there were a lot of local commanders in Donbas that were kind of marionettes for the Russians. But then, gradually, these commanders became more and more dissatisfied with the line coming from Moscow. Russia just needed to get rid of them and put in other commanders of the rebellion, and that seems also to have been a job of the Spetsnaz GRU.

So that’s broadly what they did both in Crimea and later in Donbas.

(Host)

How might Russian special forces be playing a role in what’s happening in Ukraine now?

(Bukkvoll)

Yeah, so it’s early to say. I mean, the empirical data we have so far are very scattered, scarce—and you don’t know really what to believe. Russia has closed down everything that consisted of independent reporting. Ukraine has much more of that. But at the same time, Ukraine is a party to the conflict, so you can’t really trust those sources either. The first answer will be that we don’t know much.

But we know a couple of things. For example, we do know that the initial Russian aggression against Ukraine was supposed to happen very fast and with little use of kinetic force and that Russia expected Ukraine to fall, basically, in just a matter of days.

The most important operation in all of this was the plan to take the airfield in Hostomel, north of Kiev, to bring Russian airborne forces to that airfield, and then to use that airfield as a springboard to go into the very center of Kiev and capture or even take out the political leadership of the country. And this was done by the airborne forces—or this was attempted by the airborne forces—and especially with the airborne forces’ own 45th Spetsnaz special operations forces brigade. So what they tried to do in Hostomel was to bring in Spetsnaz from the 45th brigade with helicopters to the airfield, take control of the airfield. Then the rest of the airborne forces or other parts of the airborne forces would follow on and land bigger troops with planes on the airfield. And then they would take Kiev from there.

And it’s quite interesting. I found an article from one of the progovernment newspapers in Russia that actually described the whole operation and presented it as a victory. Obviously, that article had been written before the operation took place, assuming that everything would be OK. But then it wasn’t. Because the Spetsnaz that took the airfield, they lost the airfield; the airborne forces couldn’t land. And from there on, everything seems to have gone a bit south for the Russians.

So that’s an important part of special operations forces used in this war. We know that they tried something similar also with other airports. And we should also mention that this attempt to take Kiev through the airport at Hostomel—that operation is very similar to, for example, how the Soviet Union took over control of Prague in Czechoslovakia back in 1968, and also somewhat similar to what the Russians did in Pristina, in Kosovo, in 1999.

But I think, apart from that operation, the Spetsnaz in this war have basically been working in what in Ukrainian is called “DRGs”; that’s diversionary and intelligence-gathering groups. So they dress in civilian clothes and enter the different Ukrainian cities to do sabotage missions there and to bring intelligence back to the main forces.

I think that’s more or less what we know about the role of Russian Special Operations Forces in this war at the moment.

(Host)

You made several points at the end of your article. There’s two of them that I was hoping we could talk about today. The first one is that we don’t want Russia to export its SOF model to other countries. What are your thoughts on that?

(Bukkvoll)

I wouldn’t say that Russia has done this a lot. Actually, the SOF model to some extent is—at least in the beginning and especially with the SSO—they tried to imitate your model. But they did help Ethiopia establish special operations forces in 2002 and 2003. That was probably more of a somewhat commercial endeavor; basically, the Ethiopians were ready to pay for this, and that was money that the Russians could use.

But I think a more somber and problematic example is the cooperation between the SSO—the Sil Spetsial’nykh Operatsiy, this Russian “Delta Force”—and the Tiger division of (Bashar al-)Assad in Syria. Again, it’s hard to get details, but it does seem like the SSO has had a special responsibility for training, and also fighting with, Assad’s Tiger division in Syria. And that Tiger division seems to have been one of the most brutal of the Assad forces in that war.

So I think this is something really to look into, if it’s possible to find more data on that. And I’m also thinking here, in this respect, that one thing is that Russia is using special operations forces to train forces like Assad’s Tiger division, but there you may also have the effect that the extreme brutality we’ve seen in the civil war in Syria—especially with this Tiger division—may also have a kind of an influence back on the Russians. I wouldn’t be surprised if Russian Special Operations Forces, as a result of what they have done in Syria, come back home, let’s say, more brutal and less disciplined than when they left. We don’t know this for certain, of course, but it is imaginable that will happen.

I think those are the two main examples: the Ethiopia mission, which was more commercial, and then the Syria mission, which has been much more important and also sinister in a way.

(Host)

I’d like to bring up another point here. Unless there’s regime change, Russia’s relationships with many countries look like they will be be challenging for years to come. What are your thoughts here?

(Bukkvoll)

It depends on whether we have a regime change in Russia or not. But even if we have a regime change in Russia, it doesn’t necessarily lead to a Russia that is more easy to deal with than the one we have at present. So I am fearing a very difficult period for both the West and many other countries in how to deal with Russia. This is especially in terms of willingness to challenge both the West and to challenge other countries, which is obviously very strong at the moment. And I think we’re going into a different world than the one we had before the 24th of February this year.

But another side of this is that they are not doing a good job in Ukraine. They are losing a lot of military capability. They may continue to lose a lot of conventional military capability simply because if they continue the war—and if the Ukrainians continue to fight as well as they have done so far, and we continue to provide them with weapons—we might actually grind down their Russian military capability to a significant degree. And also, if the sanctions continue after this war is over, it’s going to be difficult for Russia to have the money to rebuild that military capability quickly.

So in terms of your question, I think that we should be very concerned, on the political side, in terms of Russian willingness to challenge the West. It will be very difficult for us. On the other side, the war in Ukraine may actually make Russia somewhat of a weaker military power then it used to be before the war in Ukraine started.

(Host)

I appreciate your time and your thoughtful analysis on this topic. Thanks, Tor.

(Bukkvoll)

Thank you.

(Host)

If you enjoyed this episode of Conversations on Strategy and would like to hear more, you can find us on any major podcast platform.

In this podcast, COL Maximillian K. Bremer and Dr. Kelly A. Grieco apply concepts from their 2021 article “Air Littoral: Another Look” to current events in Russia and Ukraine.

Read the original article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol51/iss4/7/

Episode 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 in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.

Decisive Point welcomes Colonel Maximilian K. Bremer and Dr. Kelly A. Grieco, authors of “The Air Littoral: Another Look,” featured in the winter 2021–22 issue of Parameters. Bremer is the director of the Special Programs Division at Air Mobility Command. He’s a 1997 distinguished graduate of the US Air Force Academy. He has an (master of public policy or) MPP from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and an (master of applied arts and sciences or) MAAS from the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies. Grieco is a resident senior fellow with the New American Engagement Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, which focuses on challenging the prevailing assumptions governing US foreign policy and seeks to develop effective solutions that preserve US security and prosperity. She received her PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The guests in speaking order on this episode are:

(Guest 1: Maximilian K. Bremer)

(Guest 2: Kelly A. Grieco)

(Host)

Welcome back, Max and Kelly. The last time you were here, we talked about your 2021 article “The Air Littoral: Another Look.” For our listeners who maybe haven’t heard that episode or read the article, please just give us a brief recap on that piece.

(Bremer)

OK, Stephanie, thanks. And thanks for having us back for this follow-up. We’re both very excited to have this chat and really appreciate you and Parameters reaching out to us.

Our original Parameters article talked about the area between the ground and the blue skies, and we refer to that as the air littoral—this region of transition that could be accessed from, and give access to, both the ground and the blue skies. It discussed what we saw as a progressively contested zone of transition, with this contestation coming from the increasingly democratized technology which allows improved access, persistence, and lethality in and through the air littoral.

We then went on to ask what that meant for the future Joint Force.

(Grieco)

I think the important thing here is that this article was really about the changing character of conflict and identifying that this convergence of threats, new threats to air superiority in the air littoral, meant that we need to update doctrinal concepts.

So, in the past, air superiority was either won or lost in what we’re calling “the blue skies.” And the blue skies are really where high-end fighters and bombers typically operate. And if you won air control—you won that battle for the blue skies—it typically conferred control at all altitudes. But what we’re seeing increasingly is that even if you win in the blue skies, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to actually have control of lower-altitude airspace.

And as a result, we really need to update doctrinal concepts around air control and not just think of it in terms of being localized in time and lateral space, but also think about vertical control as well. And that’s really important, I think, for both the Air Force and the Army to be thinking about—to conceptualize this air-control challenge as a vertical dimension—and will actually be more challenging, I think, for the Army and Air Force, than some of the traditional air superiority challenges because it’s going to be in a space that both Air Force and Army are going to be increasingly operating in and therefore interacting and need to have a common concept of operations.

(Host)

Let’s look at this through the context of current world events in April 2022. Russia and Ukraine: What are the takeaways here for the US military as it relates to your article?

(Bremer)

Well, failure is an excellent instructor. And I personally prefer to learn from the failure of others rather than from my own failures and experience.

So I think what we should be learning from is what failures we’ve seen—and, specifically, the Russian experience and the failures that they’ve seen as a result of the changes in the character of warfare, not necessarily the failures that we’re attributing to organizational or technological problems.

In other words, we have to learn the right lessons from this. And I think there’s a few key ideas related to the air littoral that are worth fleshing out.

First, the dominant narrative is that Russia’s early ground failures grew out of Russia’s failure to control the blue skies and take out Ukraine’s IADS, their integrated air defense system. And it’s true they didn’t follow the Western model and achieve traditional air superiority. But we don’t think that their problems would have been solved by doing so.

Even if they had essentially unfettered access to the blue skies, they’d still have to address Ukrainian doctrinal innovations in the air littoral. Russian forces would still be coming under attack from . . . specifically, drones, but other things within the air littoral.

The technologies allowing access to and persistence in the air littoral and the increasing spread of these technologies have changed the character of war by uncoupling littoral supremacy from the technologies that allow access to and persistence in the air littoral. And the increasing spread of those technologies has changed the character of war by uncoupling territorial superiority from the status of the airspace above, whether or not there’s air superiority above the air littoral.

(Grieco)

To echo what Max is saying, I think this war is really showing a smart actor, the Ukrainians, who are really innovative and smart about how they’re using the air littoral. And one of the things that I would just emphasize is a lot of the Western media coverage of the air war over Ukraine is very much focused on the blue skies and Russia’s failure to achieve air superiority in the blue skies.

But if we imagine Russia had gained blue-skies air superiority, as Max was just saying a moment ago, there would still be a tremendous amount of competition in this air littoral which would be posing a threat to Russian Ground Forces. And so that’s really important because they still would not be able to deliver effective close-air support to protect their forces on the ground.

There’s really, I think, two ways that we’re seeing the Ukrainians, in particular, maximize their competitive advantage in the air littoral. And the first is that they’re using their long-range, surface-to-air missile systems to essentially pose a constant threat in the blue skies. And so, it’s forcing Russian aircraft to fly lower into the air littoral to avoid that threat. But as soon as they fly into the air littoral, then they’re presented with a multitude of threats from the air littoral—particularly, these (man-portable air defense systems or) MANPADS, these shoulder-fired missiles. And they’re actually luring the Russians into that air littoral so they can take out aircraft.

I think the second way that we’re also seeing it is it’s not just that they’re denying airspace, right? You know, Russians are flying a very small number, but about 200, sorties per day in open source. And most of those sorties are being flown, as a result, outside of Ukrainian territory, which is quite interesting. It’s not just that they’re denying airspace to the Russians; the Ukrainians are actively exploiting that littoral as well.

They’ve been using these Turkish-made (Bayraktar) TB2 drones to really wreak havoc on Russian forces, using them to attack the Russian convoys and Russian ground troops. And we’ve seen, as we predicted a bit in the article, that detecting that drone threat is really hard; the Russians are really struggling with it. They can’t seem to detect these drones. And, as a result—this is something that I find particularly interesting—because they’re having so much trouble finding these, it’s another reason Russian aircraft are sometimes flying low. Those TB2 drones are almost luring them in.

(Bremer)

I completely agree. It’s fascinating that they’re sort of forcing Russian high-end fighters—the very expensive, exquisite capability that’s not easy to replace—down into a range where they can be addressed with relatively cheap weapons.

And they’re doing it, as you point out, in two ways. First, they’re forcing them down to avoid the threat, the S-300s that are still kicking around out there. But they’re also luring them down there to find the TB2s and other things that they can’t see either from the ground or from the blue skies. So they have to go down there in order to support the ground forces.

(Grieco)

And I would just also note that these air littoral threats, they’re having so much trouble finding these mobile S-300s. Imagine the challenge of trying to find these MANPADS, these stingers that the United States and other countries are sending. These air littoral threats are even harder to sort of detect and be able to destroy in terms of trying to gain air superiority at those lower altitudes.

(Host)

It’s so interesting to me to hear the excitement in your voices at being able to apply all your theories and research to a real-world, although definitely tragic, event. Any final thoughts before we go?

(Bremer)

I think it’s important that we understand that just because the air littoral and the blue skies are becoming somewhat decoupled does not mean that they’re not interdependent. Air littoral control and blue-skies control must be addressed in different ways, and one doesn’t necessarily lead to the other. But they’re both of critical importance. We’re not arguing that we should drop the idea of air superiority in the blue skies—but rather, think about how that will interact with the air littoral.

(Grieco)

I think Max said that really well. And the only thing I would add is, just echoing you, Stephanie: This is a really tragic war.

I think one caution, though, I would offer is that it’s easy right now, just given how badly the Russians have performed, to think that everything is about Russian failure and that there aren’t necessarily any lessons here.

And I think it’s going to be challenging moving ahead because their performance has been so bad, but we want to really look at it and discern what are things that may be attributable to Russian organization problems, and what actually might be about a more fundamental change in the character of war. This is what Max and I are really trying to argue about the air littoral.

(Host)

Great point. Thank you both. It’s always a pleasure to chat with you.

(Grieco)

Thank you.

(Bremer)

Thanks, Stephanie.

(Host)

If you enjoyed this episode of Conversations on Strategy and would like to hear more, you can find us on any major podcast platform.

As women assume more combat roles in the US military and continue to operate in austere environments with varied mission sets, the Department of Defense must rethink its approach to equipment and uniform development to accommodate female anatomical differences. This podcast analyzes the results of a study conducted during the Sandhurst Military Skills Competition at the United States Military Academy to determine the effectiveness of commercial off-the-shelf products the Army has adopted to aid female urination—products used by competition participants that may not be the best or healthiest options for women.

Read the original article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss1/5/

Episode 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.

(Guest 1 Andrea M. Peters)

(Guest 2 Michael A. Washington)

(Guest 3 Lolita Burrell)

(Guest 4 James Ness)

(Host)

Decisive Point welcomes Lieutenant Colonels Andrea M. Peters, Michael A. Washington, and Lolita Burrell, and Colonel James Ness—authors of “Rethinking Female Urinary Devices for the US Army,” featured in Parameters Spring 2022 issue.

Peters serves in the United States Military Academy Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership. She holds a PhD in industrial engineering FOS human factors engineering from University of Miami. Washington serves in the United States Military Academy Department of Chemistry and Life Science. He holds a PhD in emerging infectious disease from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Burrell serves in the United States Military Academy Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership. She holds a PhD in medical psychology from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Ness serves in the United States Military Academy Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership and holds PhD in developmental psychology from Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.

I’m glad you’re here. Our topic today is female urinary diversion devices, also known as FUDDs. Help us understand the issue

(Peters)

Absolutely, thanks Stephanie. The background of this study first came about when I was an (second-in-command officer or) XO for a engineer battalion with a infantry brigade. And so, during that time, when we were on convoys or we were jumping to a different site and we stopped within those locations, it was always a fight to find a place to urinate. And I had not felt that feeling of—not necessarily in that training environment—the lack of safety. But if I would have been deployed forward and how to do that, it would definitely be a sense of uncomfortableness, lack of safety, and then just concerned with what I was doing within that space of urinating in a host nation.

And it kind of goes back to some of the pilot studies that I ended up doing later on in life for my PhD, which started around 2018. And some of my colleagues were actually talking about how when they were in Iraq, they were exposing themselves in the middle of a busy street—how there weren’t facilities around. And, so, putting together from 2015 up into that 2018–2019 timeframe, where I was doing some of my pilot studies, I really didn’t know if it was just a “me” problem and . . . and very specific to the units that I was in, or did this problem span across the Army for women, whether they were in combat zones or whether they were in training-type sites.

And because of the feedback that we received, it was not just an exclusive, “me” problem. And, so, I desired to make it a little bit better for the women coming behind me. And so, with that, I’d like to pass it over to Colonel Ness if he’d like to jump in and hit the background as well.

(Ness)

Yes, I had the pleasure of being on Dr. Peters’s dissertation committee. She came and spoke with me, and she had numerous ideas.

And then she came on and said, “Well, you know, the Army has the FUDD.”

And I said, “Did they do field sanitation on this, or they just pull it off the shelf and give it to you?”

And she said, “Oh. I don’t believe they did.” And then she just took it from there and did a phenomenal job.

(Host)

So, in your article, the study team leveraged the United States Military Academy fall squad competition (autumn squad lane competition), Sandhurst, to address the lack of systematically focused field tests regarding female urination tools and practices.

The annual competition consists of 36 teams who face challenges that closely mimic real combat situations, and there’s usually one female cadet per team. What were your findings from this?

(Washington)

Yes, Colonel Peters approached me. I’m a microbiologist from the Department of Chemistry and Life Science at West Point. And she asked me if we can develop a study to look at whether or not pathogenic bacteria grow on these devices during military exercises.

As you mentioned, the Sandhurst is a two-day event. So, it encompasses a wide variety of military skills, including ruck marching, marksmanship, obstacle courses—so, it’s very physically intensive.

We took a group of female cadets. We issued them the FUDD devices. We swabbed them prior to use to determine what type of bacteria are normally present on the devices, and then we swabbed them after use to determine what type of bacteria grow on them in this intense physical environment.

And what we found was that, initially, there was very few bacteria on the surface of the devices. There was, mainly, normal skin bacteria that you would expect on something that’s being handled by people. And then, after usage, we found a lot more bacteria, and some of those bacteria were potentially urogenital.

(Peters)

That was the microbial side, but I’d love for Colonel Burrell to hit on the survey that we also use.

(Host)

Absolutely.

(Burrell)

Thank you. So, after they complete it—Sandhurst—they fill out a survey regarding their thoughts about the devices—specifically, factors that may encourage or discourage use and that ultimately play a role in health readiness and performance.

So, did they find them to be easy to use and clean? What about storing them? Were they durable? Was the design compatible with the unisex or alternate trouser? So, all of these things matter ’cause if the device exists, and they don’t feel comfortable using them for whatever reason, then they will sit on the shelf. And, thus, the health, the readiness, and the performance issues will continue to persist. And so, Colonel Peters, I think you were going to talk a little bit more too about the survey findings.

(Peters)

Yeah, absolutely. One . . . one of our major takeaways from the survey—obviously, the qualitative side of understanding some of the experiences of the women. I know my (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics or) STEM folks out there, they are wrapped around numbers, right, always want to hear numbers. But I think we’re—we really start understanding the problem is when we start listening to people. That ties into what we do here at the academy and engineering psychology. And it’s not just about engineering a device, but it’s about knowing what the person is going to actually use and how that’s going to accommodate them and relieve whatever issue it is that we’re trying to address.

And so, within the survey, we had a seven-point Likert scale, and it went from extremely satisfied to extremely dissatisfied. And this talked about KPI—so, “key performance indicators”—related to the device. So, it could have been the ease of use, it could have been the carrying case—you know, multiple different things as it concerns the device.

And what we found was overarching. Women wanted the device versus not having that device. But they were dissatisfied with the device based off of the basin size being too small because there was overflow when they attempted to use it. Also, the carrying cases with the two devices that are in the (General Services Administration or) GSA inventory leave a bit to be desired, based off of them being places to grow bacteria more than not so.

Again, the size. Anything that deals with something below the belt—and, especially, in this realm, people want something that is smaller and compact, but it’s also easy to get to. And there was no place really to carry these devices, which also turned into somewhat of an issue.

And the last thing that I’ll hit on is as we looked at the trousers—so, we have the unisex trouser and we had the alternate trouser. Well, prior to actually doing this study, the fly on the unisex trouser was actually shortened. Which makes it a whole lot harder to use a device like this that is now in the inventory. If we are further being limited—if you would, like, if you could hit on—one is a most concerning bacteria that we actually found on this device that would be great.

(Washington)

Yeah. So, one of the most concerning pathogens we found was this pathogen known as a Pseudomonas aeruginosa. That can cause urogenital infections, so it can ascend in the urogenital tract, and it can actually cause bladder infections. Uh, we also found an organism known as Proteus that’s concerning because Proteus has flagella, so it could actually swim. So, there’s a potential that if the device comes into contact with the skin, that it can migrate into the urogenital tract. Those are the two of the most concerning pathogens we found. But we also found the variety of normal skin flora and bacteria that are present in the soil.

(Host)

What recommendations did you come up with for the Army and its leaders?

(Peters)

We kind of took this a few different ways. You know, if the Army wanted to continue to move forward with the devices, there’s definitely certain things that we can do because we don’t believe that the devices need to be pulled off the shelf or anything like that. We’re definitely not saying that. What we do want people to understand is that there’s an increased risk as you use these devices if you’re not cleaning them correctly.

So, some of the recommendation is that, yes, these devices be issued to women. And it might be—the best place that this may be appropriate for is basic training. And then, also the women who are currently in the military right now, that becomes an issued item where they can go to (the Central Issue Facility or) CIF and pick it up. But with those issued items, they also need to have appropriate cleaning protocol for the devices.

There’s another piece that we talk about in the article and that’s really wrapping our heads around urination needs and really normalizing that this is a normal occurrence in a male or a female. And Colonel Ness is going to hit on this a little bit more, but there has to be a change in the attitude towards, I would say, hygiene, in regards to field sanitation as it relates to urination.

It happens. We do it. But how do we make it a little bit easier for women to be able to do so and not feel as though people are judging them because they’re using this device? And I will surrender my time to Dr. Ness.

(Ness)

We have to embrace diversity. That’s really what the overall point is, because it provides us a tactical advantage of adapting to emerging, tactical environments. And the reason why I say that is because Mother Nature can’t predict the future. She does it with diversity. With species and within species. You just can’t have a, sort of, poster child,

whatever, right? That’s not how it works. And so, if we expect to meet the challenges of the future, which we can’t predict, we need diversity ‘cause it is our necessary and sufficient cause for winning future things. So, diversity of soldiers means that groups of soldiers will have unique experiences. And those experiences have to be put to words, and, sometimes, they’re hard.

We have to attend as leaders to the health and well-being of the soldiers. That’s foundational for our readiness. It’s also foundational for us to be able to then meet those environmental types of things ’cause they all have special types of accommodations, physiologically.

Like, in particular, women generally aren’t as prone to high-altitude pulmonary edemas as men are. And, so, let’s say you have to do a quick recon in the Hindu Kush. I’ll send the women—until we get the men to work the acclimation.

But that helps us with being agile. And we can’t make it a woman problem or whatever, you know, the . . . the group of individuals are. We need to listen, we need to get them involved. And this is an Army problem because the Army needs diversity to win.

(Peters)

I’ll finish up with—in the article, we have a lot of recommendations. And those recommendations were very thought out. And it is to help the Army not to beat up the Army, but to help us move forward and to help women be force multipliers versus reducing that force that, you know, that we always talk about. And it’s also to build that cohesion. And so, I’ll echo as well with what Colonel Ness is saying that this is an Army problem. This is not a female problem, and we have to embrace this along with many other things that we need to begin to look at that, in the past, has been taboo. And it needs to be addressed. And the education needs to be there, and people need to become more comfortable with this topic. Let’s normalize it, and let’s make sure that we take care of all of our soldiers.

(Host)

I’m afraid we have to end it here. Thank you so much, though, for joining me today and for your contribution to Parameters.

(Peters)

Thank you so much, Stephanie.

(Host)

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.