Decisive Point Podcast

To compete effectively for global influence, US Army and defense planners should focus on economic globalization in addition to security interests when assessing potential foreign military partners. The results of a quantitative analysis of US-led exercise participants between 1990 and 2016 demonstrate the variety of interests, including economic, that underly a partner’s decision to train or not with US forces. Since the US Army bills itself as the “partner of choice,” this piece will interest military and policy practitioners involved in strategically assessing potential international military partners.

Read the article here: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss4/13/ Email [email protected] to give feedback on this podcast or the genesis article.

Keywords: economic interests, globalization, strategic competition, multinational exercises, bilateral exercises

The China Landpower Studies Center will open in 2024. It is intended to be an approachable organization. It will tackle the complex and pressing questions about China’s emergence as a global power and its implications for the US military and provide senior leaders and practitioners with a better understanding of the strategies, capabilities, and the integration of the PLA into the CCP’s campaign to turn the rules-based international order to its advantage. Further, the Center will share insights and recommendations for developing better deterrence strategies and campaigns for the United States and our allies

Read the article here: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss4/16/

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Keywords: China, Taiwan, Philippines, South China Sea, China Landpower Studies Center

Reflexive control aims to change the other’s perceptions about their utility sets. It contains underlying elements that could help give structure to analyses of strategic behavior by using a nonlinear approach that aims to improve the quality of assessments. This podcast explores the interpretations of the concept of reflexive control, how elements of ref lexive control link to the more widely accepted body of knowledge, and how these elements could be valuable additions to the current work on the analysis of strategic behavior.

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Keywords: reflexive control, strategic behavior, strategic analysis, nonlinearity, complex adaptive system

This podcast enters the debate on American grand strategy by questioning the logic underpinning offshore balancing. It concludes that the United States is an ambivalent balancer due to the stopping power of water. It builds on the relevant literature in international relations, producing a novel set of theoretical propositions that are applied to the contemporary Middle East. There and elsewhere, the United States could fail to maintain the balance of power when it is most threatened.

A change in deterrence thought and strategy is necessary to avoid nuclear escalation in armed conflict with Russia. Traditional threat-based deterrence strategies will not be successful, and a new strategy must address the conditions that might cause Russian leadership to employ nuclear weapons. An examination of the Able Archer 83 exercise using an original framework highlights the ways Russian interests and US actions interact to generate misperception and inhibited deterrence. The US military must execute extremely restrained, deliberate, and empathetic operations that pursue minimalist military objectives to achieve the political goal.

Read the article here: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss4/10/

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Keywords: deterrence, nuclear, misperception, Russia, multidomain operations

The Russia-Ukraine War holds many lessons for the US Army and American policymakers and leaders on the nature and role of reconnaissance-strike complexes in modern combat, especially Ukraine’s development of a battle-management system that uses unmanned aerial systems and satellite reconnaissance to enable the fire coordination for deep strikes into the enemy rear. In the research presented here, open-source analysis and interviews in Ukraine focus on the development and employment of reconnaissance-strike complexes with respect to deep strike and the likelihood of mutual territorial attack.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss4/9/

Keywords: unmanned aerial systems, deep strike, reconnaissance-strike complex, electronic warfare, Russia-Ukraine War

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In February 2022, many observers initially evaluated the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a failure of Western deterrence.That assessment was and is f lawed inasmuch as the West never articulated a clear strategy to deter such an invasion. Engaging with relevant conceptual debates about how deterrence works and relating this information to what the West did and did not do in the run-up to the invasion, this article shows that deterrence efforts were based on problematic assumptions about the Kremlin’s motivations. The study concludes with lessons for Western military and policy practitioners with the intention to enable better future thinking about how to deter Russia.

Keywords: deterrence, Ukraine, Russia, Putin, NATO

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss4/8

Due to a global trend toward urbanization and Russian and Chinese aggression toward Ukraine and Taiwan, respectively, urban resistance to occupation merits greater study. The research here presents a much-needed and unique analysis of Dutch-language primary sources on the Netherlands’ World War II urban resistance to occupation. It provides deeper insights into the occupation experiences of a highly urbanized, densely populated country in which clandestine underground and auxiliary elements played paramount roles in resistance efforts for most of the occupation period. It also illustrates the feasibility of overt, guerrilla-based activity in urban environments during the final phase of a conflict and offers insights into an understudied Landpower activity that modern at-risk countries should develop and hone.

Read the article here: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss3/14/

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Keywords: resistance to occupation, Resistance Operating Concept, underground, special operations forces, megacity

The Antarctic Treaty of 1961 largely prevented conflicts on the continent, but growing pressure on the treaty system could affect the global community and the United States. This article utilizes historical documents and press reports to examine these challenges, which include ice deterioration, unreported and unregulated fishing, resource extraction preparation, and hostilities between treaty members. Given that these challenges involve China and Russia, it is in the United States’ interest to understand them and the potential request for US military intervention to maintain global security and treaty interests.

Read the article here: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss3/12/

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Keywords: Antarctica, Antarctic Treaty, sea levels, unreported and unregulated fishing, global power competition

Taiwan has become increasingly important to the United States and its allies as the Russia-Ukraine War has united democracies against authoritarian expansionism and indeed has developed an international democracy-authoritarianism dynamic in global affairs. Part one of this article clearly outlined the geopolitical, economic, and soft-power reasons why Taiwan is strategically important. Part two reviews the development of US and allied policy statements on Taiwan—from the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 to the present—and provides policymakers and military strategists with incremental but realistic recommendations for understanding the current dynamic of the region and fashioning responses to deter further authoritarian aggression.

Read the article here: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss3/11/

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Keywords: Taiwan, China, Russia, Ukraine, National Security Strategy, Biden