Decisive Point Podcast

While propaganda and disinformation have been used to destabilize opposing forces throughout history, the US military remains unprepared for the way these methods have been adapted to the Internet era. This article explores the modern history of disinformation campaigns and the current state of US military readiness in the face of campaigns from near-peer competitors and proposes education as the best way to prepare US servicemembers to defend against such campaigns.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss1/9/

Author information:

Dr. Meghan Fitzpatrick, a strategic analyst with Defence Research and Canada (DRDC) Centre for Operational Research and Analysis (CORA), is a widely published author on trauma and resilience. Her current work looks at how militaries are navigating the increasing importance of the information environment. Since joining DRDC, she has received recognition for her research, including the CORA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Defence Analysis.

Dr. Ritu Gill has a PhD in social psychology from Carleton University and is currently a section head with DRDC. Her resea

rch examines online influence activities, specifically, how the Internet and social media influence the information environment, including the analysis of online audiences, and how deception techniques employed by adversaries, such as disinformation, impact audiences. She has been part of international defence research collaborations and was co-lead for the NATO Human Factors and Medicine Research Task Group “Digital and Social Media Assessment for Effective Communication and Cyber Diplomacy.”

Major Jennifer F. Giles, US Marine Corps, is currently a communication strategy and operations officer, a foreign area officer who advises commanders’ strategic and cultural engagement plans in the Pacific theater, and an instructor at the Marine Air-Ground Task Force Staff Training Program. She wrote Disrupting Disinformation: Force Protection through Media Literacy Training and recently spoke on media literacy and adversary disinformation for the Defense Information School “DINFOS Live.”

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.

The root cause for the defeat of the Armenian forces in the second Nagorno-Karabakh War was flawed military doctrine inherited from the Soviet Union. This article analyzes the major problems faced by Armenia, uncovers the main reasons for unsuccessful innovation, tests empirical findings against some of the most authoritative theories in the field, and outlines current research on the conflict, while substantiating the analysis with established scholarship in the field of military innovation.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss2/10/

Author information:

Colonel Zhirayr Amirkhanyan is currently a PhD candidate at the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. He was the head of defense policy planning branch of the Defense Policy Department at the Ministry of Defence of Armenia.

Current events warrant a review of US civil-military relations doctrine. This article examines eight principles of military subordination to elected civilian officials and addresses the fundamental question at the heart of civil-military relations theory and practice—what options, if any, does the military have when civilian leadership disregards military advice? Examples drawn from US history provide an important framework to understand the complex interrelational dynamics at play.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss2/3/

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

The guests in speaking order on this episode are:

(Guest 1: Patrick Paterson)

(Host)

Decisive Point welcomes Dr. Patrick Paterson, author of “Civil-Military Relations: Guidelines in Politically Charged Societies,” featured in the spring 2022 issue of Parameters. Paterson is a professor of practice of national security studies in the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. He completed his PhD in conflict resolution at Nova Southeastern University. His latest book, The Blurred Battlefield, published in 2021, addresses the need for hybrid doctrines on the use of force for Latin American militaries combating violent crime groups.

Thank you so much for joining me today, Dr. Paterson. Your article lays out eight standard practices for military officers regarding civil-military relations in a politically charged society. Please, briefly walk us through them.

(Paterson)

Sure, I’d be happy. Thanks for the opportunity to speak about it.

I’ve studied civil-military relations here at National Defense University very, very closely, both in foreign countries as well as in the United States. And what I realized is that there’s lots of material available, and you could look at Samuel Huntington or Thomas Bruno and Peter Feaver and Eliot Cohen and all the top scholars on civil-military relations.

But what we’re missing, in my opinion, is clear guidance, practical rules that military officers should follow when they’re trying to adhere to the expectations of civil-military relations. And so what I tried to do was provide a succinct description—what I believe are the eight practices that are the most important for senior military officers as they interact with their civilian counterparts.

The first key principle is perhaps the most important characteristic of a professional armed force. It’s to remain apolitical. Take, for example, the posture of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the president’s annual State of the Union address. The chairman, the vice chairman, and the chiefs of staff of each of the armed forces sit near the front row of Congress, but they don’t respond. They don’t applaud. They don’t react in any way, sitting unemotionally in their chairs, because any sort of reaction would be construed as political advocacy.

Number two is to provide candid military advice. Senior military officers are required to provide the objective truth about military policy. It should be nonpartisan, nondeliberative, and oftentimes must include advice that’s contrary to what the politicians want to hear. Or there’s something that goes against the current policy. So the rule is to advise on how to use the armed forces not to advocate for a specific course of action.

Number three, civilian authorities retain extensive control over all aspects of defense policy. This is contrary to a lot of the conventional thinking that I encounter. The belief among many students of US national security are that there’s two distinct spheres of authority between civilian and military officials. Civilian officials will oversee the larger, strategic interests of the country, including when to deploy the military, whereas the armed forces, on the other hand, make the operational and tactical decisions on how to use the military if it’s called to action.

But scholars today disagree with that conventional thinking, and most civil-military relations scholars like Dr. Richard Kohn or Dr. Peter Feaver believe that civilians have extensive control over nearly all aspects of military policy. Civilians have most of the authority and can make decisions about the employment of the military.

The fourth rule is that senior military officers must be very cautious when providing congressional testimony. The military has a dual responsibility to both the executive and the legislative branches. According to the Constitution, the military serves at the direction of the president in his role as commander-in-chief and certain designated officials, such as the secretary of defense. However, to maintain the checks and balances that are so critical to our system, Congress also provides oversight, identifies the military budget, determines the size of the armed forces, and has the authority to declare war. For these reasons, senior military officers oftentimes are called before the elected leaders of Congress to testify on military strategy and operations. This can be very tricky though, serving these two coequal branches of government: the executive branch represented by the president; the legislative branch represented by the Armed Services Committee.

So then the question is what should senior officers do when they’re required to testify before Congress on a policy that they may have disputed with the president or the secretary of defense. And the answer is follow the institutional requirement to provide candid advice and options on using the military.

The fifth rule is to never publicly criticize defense policy or civilian officials. To do so is a form of insubordination and disrespect that may undermine the authority of civilian leaders or the confidence that other servicemembers have in him or her.

The sixth principle is perhaps the most debated. Should military officers remain apolitical once they retire from active-duty service? Retired senior military officers are normally held in very high esteem, according to public opinion polls. They continue to wield a lot of political influence. And the conventional thinking is that retired officers should avoid criticizing defense policy or civilian defense officials, just as they did while they were in uniform. It’s also against the Uniform Code of Military Justice, even though these prosecutions for this kind of stuff are rare.

The seventh and eighth of the principles of civil-military relations both concern how to respond to legal and illegal orders. And these are the last two. When given a legal order, either from a civilian or military officer or from a civilian official, military servicemembers are expected to comply with the order without delay.

The last: Military personnel must not abide by orders that are illegal. That sounds very simple, very straightforward. However, what constitutes illegal is often ambiguous and confusing. Subordinates who received dubious orders may find it challenging to determine if the order is truly contrary to an established legal precedent. Most military officers do not have a lot of legal background and may not be privy to all the decisions that went into that command, and therefore they may not know that it’s actually illegal to do what they’ve been instructed to do.

So what does a senior military officer do if he or she is confronted with an illegal order? What are their options? I think they have three choices. First, comply with the illegal order. Second, agree to follow the order but move slowly; do some foot dragging or shirking of the order and hope somebody intervenes to correct the situation. And third and last, refuse to follow the order and keep a clear conscience.

So this concludes the eight practical guidelines that I’ve identified for civil-military relations in the United States. It’s really important that we teach these topics to our rising senior officials so that when they are in front of Congress or facing dubious commands from their senior civilian counterparts, they know exactly what guidelines they must follow.

(Host)

Why are these sometimes difficult to apply?

(Paterson)

Yeah, that’s a great question, Stephanie. First of all, we had . . . the constitutional loyalty of senior military officers is to the Constitution, not to the secretary of defense or to the president. And that’s why we have two coequal branches of government to provide oversight of the military.

Most people believe that the senior military officers’ allegiance should be straight to the commander-in-chief. But that’s not true. You have to respond to Congress and the congressional figures as well. In addition, it’s also difficult because the courses of action that the military may prefer—that they feel very strongly about—may be contrary to what the president or the secretary of defense prefer.

Hence, therefore, they have to abide by orders or by commands that they don’t personally agree with. But part of their military discipline and part of the subordination to civilian officials that’s so important in our system is for senior military officers to abide by those commands from the civilian leadership without question.

(Host)

Please tell us a little bit about how officers can find a balance or strike a balance in this arena.

(Paterson)

Yeah, that’s another great question. Knowing these rules and having specific examples of how to apply them based upon our history, I think, is the most useful. At National Defense University, we teach about these issues all the time. There’s lots of examples to draw from. It’s one thing to sit in our ivory towers and talk about how important it is to do this, but to actually put it into practice on the ground, under stress, under time limitations is an entirely different thing. Using those examples, many which I cited in my article, I think, are the most useful. It’s almost like a tabletop exercise of sorts for a senior military officer to be presented with this ethical or legal dilemma and then asking them and seeing how they would respond, seeing what their decision process is, and then advising them if their decision was appropriate or inappropriate.

These days, in Washington, really the motivation for me to write this article, Stephanie, was because of the very controversial civil-military relations tensions that we saw during the last couple years of the Trump administration. The June 1st, 2020, Lafayette Square incident; the civil rights protests over the murder of George Floyd; the question about the use of the military and domestic law enforcement support was another very delicate issue that was raised; and then, finally, the January 6th insurrection on the Capitol—the first time that our Capitol has been attacked by a mob since the War of 1812. All these are perhaps indicative of what senior military officers must wrestle with in the future. Our society is very, very divided at the moment over the political issues, and I don’t see that getting any better, unfortunately. So senior military officers must understand what their guidelines are, what their rules are on how they abide by these orders.

For example, if the military had been ordered to support National Guard and police during the domestic disputes, for example, if the Insurrection Act had been activated, would the military have complied with that? That’s a very dangerous situation because generally most of our military are not trained in police law enforcement tactics, escalation-of-force tactics. And as many senior military officers said after the Lafayette Square incident, they recognize that it was very, very dangerous to use the US military in that sort of role.

So these kind of questions come up. And then, at the end of the last administration, when General Milley had to decide if he was going to perhaps support a diversionary attack by the president, when he contacted his Chinese counterpart to confirm that there was no military operation underway—is really an extraordinary event in the US civil-military relations history.

It’s unlike anything we, I think we’ve ever seen since the very tumultuous days of the Vietnam War, when the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, and President Johnson were trying to use the military and means and methods, which they disagreed. And if you read the book Fourth Star, there was almost a point in 1967, I believe it was, when the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff were about to resign in protest over the policies of the secretary of defense. I don’t think we’ve reached a point as bad as that until recently. And for these reasons, it’s really important to understand and revisit not just a theory, but also the practical guidelines of civil-military relations in the United States.

(Host)

This was a real pleasure. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for your contribution to Parameters.

Listeners, if you’re interested in diving a little bit deeper into “Civil-Military Relations: Guidelines in Politically Charged Societies,” I urge you to read the article. Paterson includes quotes, insights, and examples that we did not cover in this episode. You can find it at press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters. Look for volume 52, issue 1.

Author information:

Dr. Patrick Paterson is a professor of practice of national security studies in the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. He completed his PhD in conflict resolution at Nova Southeastern University. He has a master’s degree in national security studies from the Naval Postgraduate School, a master’s equivalent from the Argentina Naval War College in Buenos Aires, and a master’s degree in political science from American University. His latest book, The Blurred Battlefield (2021), addresses the need for hybrid doctrines on the use of force for Latin American militaries combating violent crime groups.

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.

Does it matter if more countries have nuclear weapons? Will the weaponization of space make nuclear weapons less of a threat or even obsolete? In this podcast, author Henry D. Sokolski gives an overview of his monograph, Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future, and explores potential future nuclear trends.

Read the monograph: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/933/

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.

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

The guests in speaking order on this episode are:

(Guest 1: Henry D. Sokolski)

(Host)

Decisive Point welcomes Mr. Henry D. Sokolski, author of Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future, published by the US Army War College Press in 2018. Sokolski is the executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington, DC. He previously served in the Senate as a nuclear military legislative aide, in the Pentagon as deputy for nonproliferation policy, and as a full-time consultant on proliferation issues in the secretary of defense’s Office of Net Assessment.

Welcome, Henry. Let’s dive right in. In your 2018 book Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future (Second Edition), you cover a lot of ground. Please give our listeners a brief overview of the book.

(Sokolski)

The reason I wrote the book was, you know, any serious social scientific field—economics, demographics, political science—they all use what they know about the past to give you a bird’s-eye view of what they think the future will be. And I noticed that there was really no book that took the matter of nuclear weapons and projected into the future. The military science, if you will, of nuclear proliferation was a blank sheet.

I took it upon myself to try to take a look at maybe, you know, a half-century, a little more than a half-century, and asked, you know, “What trends do we see?” And based on those trends, and assuming they continue, where are we going to be, you know, in 10 or 20 years? So, I focused on, detailed, four trends. And the trends that I found that were interesting is that the difference between the largest and smallest nuclear weapons arsenals has gotten much, much smaller. It used to be that what we had, which was at one point, during the Cuban missile crisis, 25,000 nuclear weapons, was easily an order of magnitude more than what the Russians had, which was 2,500, and what they had was again another order of magnitude more than the British had—actually two orders of magnitude. So there was, like, a thousandfold difference between the largest arsenal and the smallest at the time.

Now the difference is about one order of magnitude. Russia and the United States have thousands. The smallest arsenals that we know of now are about 100 or thereabouts.

Another trend is that the amount of surplus weapons and civilian materials that could be quickly converted into bombs—that’s highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium—there used to be almost zero. Everything that we had and the Russians had went immediately into weapons. There was very little civilian activity in the way of power reactors. And so, there wasn’t a civilian stockpile or any surpluses. Everything went into weapons. Or naval reactors.

Well, that’s changed. Now there’s tens of thousands of bombs’ worth of highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium. Not only in military stockpiles on reserve in the United States, Russia, France, and Great Britain, but there is civilian stockpiles of separated plutonium in places like Japan. And you can change or convert this material into weapons reasonably quickly. And you’re talking about thousands of weapons’ worth. Well, that’s different, and that’s new.

The third trend was the ability to make this stuff. It used to be there was only two places: Russia and the United States. Well, three. And Great Britain. Well, now there’s lots of places, comparatively, that are separating plutonium or enriching uranium. The ability to make a large amount of this stuff reasonably quickly with these machines and plans is totally new compared to half-century or so ago.

And then, finally, the number of states that have long-range, nuclear-capable missiles has changed. It used to be Russia and the United States were the only ones that had them. And now 31 nations have them.

And if you take the range yards of these missiles, and you just draw them from where they’re based, it’s very disturbing where they overlap. They overlap in places where there’s a history of war or fear and loathing of wars: Eastern Europe, Middle East, Pakistan, India, and East Asia.

Well, that’s new as well. So reviewing these trends I sort of concluded that it was a mistake to celebrate how relatively fewer nuclear weapons there are, and there are a lot fewer. I mean, we got rid of, and the Russians got rid of, at least for deployed weapons, we had up to, together, something like 70,000 weapons. Well, today that number is several thousand. So there’s a big reduction.

And a lot of people celebrate that, and they should. And people say, “Well, OK, there are a few more nuclear states than there were in 1950.” There are now nine, but that’s not too bad. I think emphasizing those points may be less than a complete thought. The reason why is this could change far more quickly today than at any time previously.

You know those trends that I mentioned suggest that it only takes a few short years for the countries that have nuclear weapons to get a whole lot more, and countries that don’t have nuclear weapons to get not just, like, one or two, but, you know, maybe several score of them relatively quickly.

Let’s add to this. They have a way of delivering these things to trouble spots and getting dragged into wars in trouble spots. And then you can add, there are some trends towards launching on warning, and certainly we’ve read about this recently in the case of China, and I think it’s been our policy in the US for at least a decade or two or three to probably do that ourselves.

There certainly are doctrines for early use of nuclear weapons in places like Russia and Pakistan, possibly North Korea. Now all of this kind of makes you a little worried, I think, or it should, and I thought, “Well, this is an important message.”

Now I don’t think any of the worst nuclear use or spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable. And I made some recommendations in the book principally focused on China, which at the time was considered a little edgy.

I originally wrote this book about a decade ago. When I say, “the book,” or at least those two chapters—I wrote a version of it in an article or two.

What really stunned me is how little attention my arguments had or got. At the time, going to zero was all the rage. So I decided to do another chapter on what other people thought. And there are three categories of thinkers. There are arms controllers who oppose nuclear weapons and see their spread as destabilizing. They want these things to be eliminated. The next group are the supporters of nuclear weapons. I guess you would call these people “hawks.” And they see the weapons, at least in current hands, as somehow stabilizing because deterrence. And they oppose the spread as well, but they say, “Well, if they’re friends, maybe it’s OK.” Then, finally, there’s academics. This group sees the spread of nuclear weapons to all nations either as stabilizing or inconsequential.

The other thing that was odd was that it didn’t matter which group you looked at; none of them really said the commonsensical thing. And I think anyone would say, if they were untutored in these matters, and what would they say? Well, fewer weapons in fewer hands is better, but it’s really risky. You got to know what everyone’s doing. And if you don’t, you might not want to get rid of yours.

(Host)

What in the book has held up well?

(Sokolski)

Well, I guess the short answer is a lot. Quite an extensive discussion in the book about two trends that needed practical policy attention and were focused upon in the recommendation section. One of the trends that I highlight is this spread and the further building of facilities in support of what’s called “a fast reactor.” And these machines are designed to use fast neutrons. It is a terrific machine if you want to make weapons. I noticed that this idea was something that the Chinese were toying with, the Russians had played with a lot. We have put it aside until recently, and it has enormous military applications. You get into this, and the breakout period and the amount of material that you can convert into bombs, in the first instance, will be very short. And there’ll be a lot of material. Do you really want to go down this route unless it’s clearly economic, which it clearly is not. I then focused a little bit on China. If you get the latest copy of China Military Power from the Pentagon—they do this annually—it cites a Western think tank that did a study pointing out just how many nuclear weapons China could have in about eight years if it exploited its civil nuclear program with regard to fast reactors and the recycling of the material.

Well, the numbers were stunning, even under conservative assumptions. And they cited those numbers and took them on and made them official. And the number was at least 1,000 nuclear weapons by 2030, which is not that many years from now. That puts China roughly with the United States and Russia, as far as the number of deployed strategic warheads, possibly.

And of course, we’ve seen, recently, photographs where they’ve made 350 silos. We’re now worried about this, so that projection of that concern in the book from a decade ago turned out to be pretty good.

(Host)

What has changed since then that deserves mention?

(Sokolski)

In the second edition, I touch upon forms of diplomacy that might make sense. I’m not sure how viable those forms of diplomacy are now, given the bad relations with China and with Russia. Maybe that’s wrong. I think you’re still going to have to have diplomatic positions on the controllers. Strategic weaponry, if only to have a position that you and your allies can unify around and to identify bad behavior that even if the Russians and Chinese don’t agree to, they will know that we will take umbrage if they go over certain lines.

More important than what may or may not be found is what was missing. There was some discussion in that diplomatic section of what would constitute bad behavior in space. You know, maybe we want to start saying, “You can’t get your satellites very close to our most important military satellites.” Maybe we need safety zones, or they sometimes call them “keep-out zones” or “defense zones.” I don’t think it was a complete thought in the book though. And what wasn’t a complete thought was—let me be clear—was that space technology and missile technology has become very accurate and very plentiful and very widely available in the form of drones, if not ballistic missiles. Those developments, I think, may be really important to thinking about the future of nuclear weapons. Let me explain.

In 1915, at Passchendaele, the killer app, the strategic weapon par excellence, was chemical weapons. Seventy-five years later, it was so far into the background—we have them, but nobody thought we would use them that much . . . was not considered to be the top-dog strategic weapon anymore. During the 20s, we imagined that chemical weapons would be dropped by airplanes and decide the war overnight.

None of that ultimately was the case. Similarly, in 1915, battleships were the thing. But certainly, after the Second World War, battleships were nothing as compared to aircraft carriers. So what happens is military science changes what is militarily or strategically important as a weapon. And the question is: Could that happen with regard to nuclear weapons? I think, to some extent, it’s actually happening. In the case of space, what’s happening is the front lines of strategic deterrence are gravitating away from the surface of the Earth into space.

Our eyes, ears, voices, and our nervous system for both our civil and military systems on the ground are all based in space. If we lose access to those things or those things are disabled, it doesn’t matter what our military strength on the ground is, nuclear or nonnuclear.

And so I think the opening rounds of combat in the future may very well be in space. Now, you could say that’s kind of good news because, first, we have an advantage there that I think we can exploit. But, in addition, you’re not killing people.

The model for nuclear weapons, after all, came from the air-war series of the 1920s. And that was if you could bomb away the military capital; the industrial capital; and maybe, literally, the capital—political capital—of the country, and do that quickly with bombers, you would win.

And if you could threaten to do that credibly, you could get your way without fighting. Well, we’re moving toward new forms of warfare where you could disable a nation without doing that level of decimation. We’re seeing this a little bit in the Ukraine war, although the Russians are behaving as though it’s medieval period and they’re in siege tactics. But the Ukrainians are taking out individual generals with drones; they’re taking out tanks and armor with individual drones which are highly precise. And they’re using intelligence to maintain control of the narrative of the war. It is far less destructive a war. If we are moving in that direction, precision and space-based advanced systems and control of space become terribly important in a way that might make nuclear weapons about as relevant as the top weapon as chemical weapons became after the Second World War, which is to say a lot less. Now, that’s a pretty optimistic view, but I think it has to be articulated, and I don’t think it was before.

(Host)

You’ve written several things on new-generation warfare and precision strike. How might they alter the key points of your book?

(Sokolski)

Yes. One article was “Doctor Strangelove’s New Passion: Precision-Guided Mayhem,” which talks about the revolution in precision guidance and how original theories about it may have been a little off. And the second was something called, “Are We Ready for the Next Convulsion?” I don’t think the book did justice to any of those things because I don’t think I had those thoughts.

(Host)

It’s incredible how quickly these things evolve.

(Sokolski)

The Russians were writing about new-generation warfare for some time. What’s odd is that we thought they were masters of disinforming, spooking folks, using precision-guided munitions to take out certain nodes and that they would show this in the war against Ukraine. Well, that didn’t happen. But they had been writing about that for some time. I was not familiar with that literature, and I think, to be honest, it was a little confusing when I did read it, and so it was easy not to understand it, but I think maybe we didn’t pay enough attention to it ourselves, and now we are.

(Host)

The clock has run out on us, I’m afraid. This was a pleasure, Henry.

If you enjoyed this episode of Decisive Point and would like to hear more, look for us on Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and any other major podcast platform.

Author information:

Henry D. Sokolski is the executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, Washington, DC. He previously served in the Senate as a nuclear and military legislative aide, in the Pentagon as Deputy for Nonproliferation Policy, and as a full-time consultant on proliferation issues in the Secretary of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment. Mr. Sokolski also served as a member of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Senior Advisory Group, on two Congressional nuclear proliferation commissions, and has authored and edited numerous volumes on strategic weapons proliferation, including Best of Intentions: America’s Campaign against Strategic Weapons Proliferation.

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 episode, Parameters acting editor-in-chief offers a preview of the upcoming Parameters Spring demi-issue and touches on what the full Spring issue will include.

Read the 2023 Spring issue of Parameters: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss1/

Episode transcript: Parameters Spring 2023 Preview

Stephanie Crider (Host)

You’re listening to Decisive Point, a U.S. Army War College Press production focused on 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.

I’m here with Parameters acting editor-in-chief and Strategic Studies Institute historian and researcher, Dr. Conrad Crane. Thank you for being here today, Con.

Dr. Conrad Crane

Oh, always glad to talk to you, Stephanie.

Host

Let’s talk about the spring demi-issue of Parameters that’s due out in the next few weeks. This issue includes a substantial piece by Afghanistan expert Joseph Collins. I hope to talk with him in detail later, but I’m curious . . . from your perspective, what does Collins bring to the Afghanistan conversation?

Crane

I’ve known Joe for a lot of years. We are at West Point together, teaching in different departments. He’s a long-serving Army officer. He’s been a deputy assistant secretary of defense, he’s watched Afghanistan for decades. He’s written three books on it and about 40 articles. There are a few people I trust more to really analyze what went wrong in Afghanistan than Joe Collins.

Host

Why are you focusing this demi-issue on Afghanistan?

Crane

When I got my first assignment in the Strategic Studies Institute over 20 years ago, one of my first research projects was to look at the Army’s response to losing in Vietnam. And I ended up doing a monograph entitled Avoiding Vietnam: The US Army’s Response to Defeat in Southeast Asia, which can actually be downloaded from the SSI publications website. What I found was that, basically, the Army as an institution ran away from Vietnam. They really didn’t do any systematic institutional study of the defeat. They immediately focused on the Yom Kippur War and large-scale combat operations. And what significant discussion analysis did occur in an Army venue occurred in the pages of Parameters. That’s about the only place you could find it. Right now, it kind of looks like deja vu all over again. We have the service that is not doing any systematic studies that I know of of why we failed in Afghanistan. I feel that Parameters needs to step up again and become the forum for discussion about that. The service really needs to analyze what went wrong in Afghanistan, because we have never been able to never do this again. Again, we are focused on major combat operations, large-scale combat operations looking at Ukraine. But we can’t just forget about Afghanistan. We need to really take a hard look at what went wrong there and get what lessons and insights we can for the future.

Host

So continuing the Afghanistan theme, for SRAD Directors Corner, Colonel George Shatzer plans to review and comment on two books—The Fifth Act, America’s End in Afghanistan by Elliot Ackerman and The 40-Year War in Afghanistan: A Chronicle Foretold by Tariq Ali. These really round out the issue. Care to comment?

Crane

Let me talk about all three of the items that are going to be in this demi-issue. We’ll start with Joe. You know, Joe Collins is looking at the long-term focus on what went wrong in Afghanistan. He’s going to focus on the historical difficulties in governing there the Afghan republics two inefficient corrupt governments, ineffective American strategy, operational shortcomings by American forces, an ineffective Afghan military, Pakistan’s duplicitous policies, and the strength and determination of the Taliban. So he’s looking at it with a very broad scope but basically from an American perspective. The two books that Colonel Shatzer is going to analyze come at it from a little different direction. You’ve got one book, the Ackerman book, that really looks at the end game and focuses on the actions by particularly the Trump and Biden administrations and how those impacted on the debacle of the closeout. Tariq Ali also, like Joe Collins, he’s looking at a long-term analysis and in fact Lee goes back 40 years and he’s looking at it from a little more of an outside perspective. Not purely American. And a lot of other different dynamics involved in Afghanistan. So between Joe and then George’s analysis of these other two books, it’s going to give readers a lot to think about about what went wrong in Afghanistan.

Host

So the Demi issue usually offers a taste of what readers can look forward to in the next full issue, which is due out at the beginning of March. What are some of the topics covered in the full issue?

Crane

There’ll be more in Afghanistan. John Nagl’s piece “Why America’s Army Can’t Win America’s Wars” has got a lot of response, as we intended it to. And we are going to print two of the more eloquent ones, along with John’s replies, in the issue to continue this discussion of how America’s Army can be more effective in these kinds of conflicts. There’s some really provocative ideas on both sides in those discussions. You’re also going to get to taste of some other items as well. We’re going to look at the role of civilians and gender and influencing policy; enhancing global competitiveness through women, peace and security; mitigating civilian harm by factoring gender and kinetic operations. (It’s) a little different perspective on how gender can influence future operations. We’re also looking at some strategic issues looking at responding to climate change and also looking at the conflict in Syria. Again, some different ways to look at these strategic problems. We are going to look at some of the aspects of the future force. Should there be an army stability professional and also you know we’ve seen a lot about the use of drones and robots and combat and we’ve got a nice piece on the future of manned and unmanned teaming and how that will influence the future battlefield. So it’s going to be, yes, a heavy focus on Afghanistan, but also some other topics out there that kind of will expand the interest of the volume and hopefully appeal to our devoted set of readers out there. Also, we’ve got quite a backlog of book reviews, and so we’re also going to try to get a lot of those book reviews out. We’ve had a lot of very dedicated reviewers for us give us a lot of very useful commentary and a lot of important publications, and we could also expand our book review section a bit, too. So there’s going to be a lot in there for readers to find.

Host

Well, that’s fantastic to hear. Thank you so much for making time for this. It’s always a treat to talk with you.

Crane

Stephanie, it’s always a joy, thanks.

Host

Listeners keep an eye out for our publication announcements on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. Or check out our website at press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode of Decisive Point and would like to hear more, you can find us on any major podcast platform.

About the Authors: Dr. Conrad Crane is the acting editor-in-chief for Parameters, the US Army War College Press quarterly journal. He is a retired Army Colonel and a researcher and historian at the Strategic Studies Institute.

In this episode, the authors argue senior officers may fail in character because their rate of character development throughout their careers typically decreases as environmental stressors rise. They conceptualize character as an open system with both gains and leaks over time and integrate existing scholarship on personality and ethical development to create the Leaky Character Reservoir framework and then explain how it applies to Army officers’ careers. Military leaders will gain a new understanding of character and find specific actions officers, units, and the US Army can undertake to strengthen the character of its senior officers.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss4/15/

Episode transcript: Why Do Senior Officers Sometimes Fail in Character? The Leaky Character Reservoir

Stephanie Crider (Host)

You’re listening to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production focused on 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 Colonels Everett S.P. Spain, Katie Matthews, and Andrew L. Hagemaster, authors of “Why Do Senior Officers Sometimes Fail in Character? The Leaky Character Reservoir.” Spain is the head of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the United States Military Academy. Matthew is an Academy professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the United States Military Academy. Hagemaster is a clinical aeromedical and operational psychologist in the Army.

Thank you for joining me today. I’m really excited to talk to you. Your article argues senior officers may fail in character because their rate of character development throughout their careers typically decreases as environmental stressors rise. Give us some background and maybe an example or two of failed character.

Everett Spain

Thanks, Stephanie. This is Everett Spain. So, this started when I was helping with the Battalion Commander Assessment Program at Fort Knox a few years ago—maybe three years ago—and a friend and colleague of mine from the surge in Iraq from 2007–08 days was Major General Matt McFarland. At the time of the conversation (he) was commander of 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, and he invited me to lunch. After we caught up a little bit personally, he said, “Hey, there’s something I’ve been wondering (that) I’d like your thoughts on.”

I said, “What’s that, sir?”

He said, “Well, I’ve noticed that back in World War I and World War Two, a lot of senior officers were getting relieved due to lack of battlefield competence directly related to leadership or their tactical abilities.”

He said, “But now all the reliefs I see of senior officers is due to character. Do you know what’s going on?”

And so we talked about it back and forth a little bit. And we flowed some hypotheses. But in the end, I said, “Hey, sir. Let me look at this a little bit and see if I can engage some of my teammates and circle back to you with a more thoughtful perspective.”

So when I got back to West Point, I queried my faculty for anyone who was interested in diving into this with me. Colonel Katie Matthew raised her hand. I think her quote was “put me in coach.” And Col. Andrew Hagemaster volunteered, as he always does, as a great teammate. And so, over the last few years, we looked into this from a variety of perspectives. And what we kind of discovered is a new way to look at character, for all of us—since we’re probably considered senior officers as well—is that character is not a permanent gain. When you have character, there are losses as well. And the bottom line that we’ll talk about a little bit more throughout this podcast is that we’d better increase our rate of character inputs faster than our rate of character losses is going. And that’s the leaky character reservoir. And the theory behind it is to build up our character faster than it’s leaking.

Host

What are the four drivers of potential character?

Andrew Hagemaster

This is Andrew Hagemaster. We identified four drivers of potential character. The first is heredity and experiences growing up. The second is the Army’s deliberate character development. The third is the environmental influences of Army life, and the fourth is ethical fading or erosion.

The first driver of character is heredity and experiences growing up. Our character and personality are the results of the combination of our genetics and the experiences we have growing up, particularly across early childhood development. A lot of us have seen this in our own children—raised in the same household but often have different personalities. The interaction of heredity and experiences also help explain differences in personality traits, including extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. But when we consider character, additional personality traits come into play, including resilience, judgement, perseverance, and integrity.

The second driver of character is the Army’s deliberate character development found across Officer Education School, starting with our commissioning sources and continuing through the Officer Basic Course, Career Course, and Senior Service College. We looked at deliberate character development in terms of hours of education where character is the primary learning objective and the curriculum is testable through papers, exams, or exercises. We were really stringent in this criteria as some schools incorporate character as a secondary learning objective that is woven throughout the curriculum. The same can be said of the core psychology and leadership course that I taught at West Point. Even though our determined goal is to produce leaders of character through each lesson, not all lessons met that strict criteria as having character as primary learning objectives. And, generally, we found in our research that the trend is that officers receive less character education over time throughout an officer’s career.

The third driver of character is Army life’s environmental influences. We talked earlier about how our personality is formed during our childhood while our environment continues to influence us as adults, particularly with character-related behaviors, and that we’ve all been part of organizations that encourage us to be better each day, and some that led us to just focus on surviving. Environmental influences include the climate of the organization set by the supervisors, peers, and even subordinates.

The fourth driver of character is ethical fading or erosion. Our ethical standards may drift over time. Small deviations from our ethical azimuth can go unnoticed by officers, especially during times of stress. And so that’s why we need supervisors and peers that know our baseline and can challenge us to be our best.

Host

Everett mentioned something a few minutes ago about the leaky character reservoir. I’d like to circle back to that. What is the leaky character reservoir?

Katie Matthew

Hi Stephanie, Katie Matthew here. So the leaky character reservoir stems from our idea that if character can have gains, it can, in theory, have losses. In our paper, we actually diagram this out (on page 130). It’s a metaphorical reservoir that you build up and basically store up through your personal experiences and growth, through training, through your experience in communities both in and out of the Army. But they’re stored up for future use when needed. Hence why our officer education system is structured the way it is to build up early on. But as a reservoir, leaks are going to be present. That’s just something to accept about life. And the potential to lose some of that character exists for all of us through some of those drivers that Andrew mentioned, that ethical fading, erosion, and then the stresses can all potentially drain on those resources.

So if at any time the level in the reservoir dips below the demand signal to do the right thing, we expect that is when a failure in character and/or unethical behavior will occur due to that gap or shortage. In simple terms, it’s not having enough in the tank when you need it.

Those drivers that Andrew was talking about work both ways. Some add to our reservoirs, and others don’t. Some are deliberate character development, both personally and through organizations in our units. And much of our experiences, both with our units and communities, can bolster that reservoir or start to let some of that fade out. The leaks are present, and our argument is that the goal should be to maintain our character as we do our physical readiness. And for the Army, that’s daily, deliberate, and an investment by the individual and the organization to continue to keep that level in the reservoir up above the needs.

Host

You recommend in your article some mechanisms to increase deliberate character conditioning and mitigate character losses. What are they?

Hagemaster

One of the mechanisms to increase deliberate character conditioning and to mitigate character loss is requiring mid-grade and senior officers to engage in deliberate self-reflection. This deliberate self-reflection is designed to examine our character strengths, vulnerabilities, and risk. This is currently happening as part of the four-day selection process with the Command Assessment Program, where candidates for battalion and brigade command are encouraged to engage in deliberate self-reflection. And this is built into the Command Assessment Program assigned by the Army Talent Management Task Force. Candidates take their self-reflection notes over several days, and they meet with an operational psychologist at the end. They both discuss the candidate’s personality, self-awareness, empathy, self-regulation, and potential areas of unproductive leadership behaviors. It’s not just about the candidate as an officer, it’s also about how the candidate is gonna influence others as a leader and the next level of the organization.

And what I like about this is that specific, actionable items can come out of these discussions that encourage officers to build on their strengths and mitigate their character leaks. The outcome of this deliberate self-reflection is that we’ll have officers who are more aware of their strengths, vulnerabilities, and areas of risk. And this awareness and purposeful conversation can help senior leaders to withstand ethical stressors.

I met with many leaders during the feedback process at the Command Assessment Program. And for many, it was the first time they’d even heard of some of their vulnerabilities. Other leaders that came from organizations that engaged in this deliberate self-reflection that we’re talking about were already aware of their strengths and vulnerabilities, and they were able to discuss in-depth how they’re mitigating their character leaks as a regular process. These conversations can also happen at the brigade level. Brigade commanders can have their brigade psychologists meet with their battalion and company commanders to help them engage in deliberate self-reflection that’s designed to identify their character strengths, vulnerabilities, and strategies to become more aware and an effective leader.

Matthew

One of the other things that we recommended is these peer accountability groups. And this is going off of those same things that you learn about your strengths and weaknesses at BCAP and CCAP. As a battalion commander, I was in a stand-alone assignment and was fortunate enough to unofficially have a peer accountability partner—a fellow logistician in another unit where we could just sit and relax, have meals together, and watch each other’s backs, keep those checks and balances and be able to have that honest conversation that isn’t related to the fact that we’re in the same unit. Taking that experience and what we’re seeing happening already through those assessment programs that Andrew was discussing, we’d like to see that made more official, where those partners and those groups are built during those assessment programs so that you have long-term accountability partners throughout your career and command as a senior officer. Someone who can tell when you’re starting to fade, when things are not quite right with you, and can call you out on it. We also suggest that those groups not only have those regular forced conversations, but that there’s a coach, an actual Army coach, associated with those groups so that they can continue to build each other up, but also catch each other when there’s a potential for failure on that one, rather than waiting for that tank to dip below the need.

Spain

I’ve got one to add from the perspective of the character driver Army life and the environment that officers kind of live and operate in. When battalion commanders are selected for command and they complete their command, they go into a series of years of what a couple of my friends call “the five years of pain.” And I said, “what do you mean? Say more.”

They said, “Well, Everett, the problem is, you could have three or four one-year PCS (permanent change of station) moves following battalion command. And, also, you’re restricted to a series of jobs that are usually pretty intense called ‘former battalion commander jobs,’ so you have a little less say in where you’re going as well.”

One of those years might be a war college, but you don’t know which one, and you don’t find out until three or four months before you get assigned there. And this is all happening at the same time you have high school-age children that it’s a little more sensitive to have some stability for and spouses that oftentimes have non-transferable certifications for their profession. So, it’s really just a challenging time in an Army officer’s life, and in their family’s lives, specifically. And they have the most unpredictability then. So, one way to reduce environmental stressors would be for principal selects at battalion command after the Battalion Command Assessment Program. For all of them, let them lock in at least three of their next four or five years. Let them pick their war college date and location. Let them pick their follow-on assignment. Maybe we line up all the ROTC battalions as possibilities. Of course, some of them enjoy the dynamic process of a different assignment every year or two, but most leaders I know would like to lock that stuff in early, thereby reducing the stress on their families. So, that’s one way to reduce the environmental stressors on these officers and make some of those leaks of character a little less during this time.

Host

Any final thoughts?

Hagemaster

President Truman said, “To be able to lead others, a man must be willing to go forward alone.” And while we know that leadership can be lonely, it doesn’t have to be. I regularly talk with senior leaders about mentorship, and I’ve had several senior officers tell me that while they engage in mentoring others, they themselves don’t have a mentor anymore as a senior leader. It was surprising at first because we always can benefit from having a mentor and being a mentor to others. So, I encourage everyone to seek mentorship, regardless of how senior you are as an officer, and develop peer relationships that help fill your character reservoir, and minimize our character leaks.

Thank you.

Matthew

Just off of that is not only just the not going it alone but actually investing in each other in our units at the get-go. But more importantly, as senior leaders, we tend to really focus down. We want to set them up for success and recognize that it’s looking to our left and right and continuing to set each other up for success. Because we didn’t get to that position without the help of each other. And sometimes that help is calling each other out. Sometimes that help is just saying, “hey, what a great job you’re doing.”

Spain

One last perspective to kind of summarize all of this is a friend of mine; when I shared this on social media (the article), one of them wrote, “I know why senior officers are occasionally failing in character. It’s because they’re human.”

And Katie and Andrew and I couldn’t agree more. The concept of being human is reflected in the open system of the character reservoir. Our argument is “hey, let’s make sure we’re putting in more deliberately than is leaking out, because if we don’t tend to that then we might not have what we need when we need it.”

My son Josiah, is a Second Lieutenant. He was commissioned recently, and when he read a draft of the article, he said, “Hey, Dad, that’s simple. Your whole paper should be about one page.”

I was like, “Why is that?”

He said, “Well, inputs have to be greater than outputs or leaks. That’s it. That’s it with character. It’s simple.

I said, “Thanks, son. Couldn’t agree more.”

Host

I love it.

Spain

I’d add just, Stephanie, thank you for interviewing us today. Thank you to listeners for caring about character development—for caring about our Army. And let’s work on this together. Myself and Katie and Andrew would all argue none of us have perfect character, and we all have situations where we need each other’s help. So, let’s organizationally and interpersonally work on this together. And thank you all for investing in my character as well.

Host

Thank you all so much. This is such a treat to talk with you, especially on such an interesting topic.

To learn more about why officers fail and the leaky character reservoir, read the article at press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters. Look for volume 52 issue 4. The authors are interested in your feedback.

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

About the Authors: Colonel Everett S. P. Spain, US Army, is the head of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the United States Military Academy. He has served with the 82nd Airborne Division, US Army Europe, and US Army Special Operations Command. He holds a bachelor of science degree from the United States Military Academy and a DBA from Harvard University.

Colonel Katie E. Matthew, US Army, is an academy professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the United States Military Academy. She has served as a logistician at home and on deployment with the 1st Theater Sustainment Command, 1st Infantry Division, 82nd Airborne Division, and Joint Special Operations Command, and most recently commanded the Brigade Special Troops Battalion and Camp Buehring, US Army Central. She holds a bachelor of science degree from the United States Military Academy, a master of business administration degree from Kansas State University, and a PhD in sociology from George Mason University.

Colonel Andrew L. Hagemaster, US Army, is a clinical, aeromedical, and operational psychologist in the Army. He is a consultant for senior military leaders on behavioral health and leader development. At the United States Military Academy, he served as the director of the General Psychology for Leaders Course in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership, installation director of psychological health, and residency director of training. He has served with the 25th Infantry Division, the 1st Infantry Division, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and multinational force and observers. He holds a master of arts degree from Reformed Theological Seminary and a PhD from Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences.

Leaders who have personally experienced the aftermath of a suicide-related event can provide important lessons and recommendations for military leadership and policymakers. This podcast executes a thematic analysis of interviews with leaders, chaplains, and behavioral health providers who responded to garrison suicide-related events and explores leader decision-making related to memorials, investigations, and readiness

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss4/14/

Episode Transcript: Leader Perspectives on Managing Suicide-related Events in Garrison

Stephanie Crider (Host)

You’re listening to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production focused on 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 Major Thomas H. Nassif and Captain George a Mesias, co-authors of “Leader Perspectives on Managing Suicide-related Events in Garrison” with Dr. Amy Adler. This article was featured in the Parameters Winter 2022–23 edition.

Nassif, a research psychologist at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), serves as the Institute’s lead on mindfulness training research efforts with the US Army War College and the US Army Training and Doctrine Command. He’s also the principal investigator on a military suicide research grant funded by the congressionally directed medical research programs.

Mesias is a licensed clinical social worker and researcher at WRAIR. He’s advised commands and planned behavioral health operations across the Korean theater of operation and served as behavioral health officer for a Stryker Brigade. He is an Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training master trainer and a graduate of the Army Social Work Child and Family Fellowship Program.

Dr. Amy B. Adler is a clinical research psychologist and senior scientist at the Center for Military Psychiatry and Neuroscience at WRAIR. She’s had numerous randomized trials with Army units, published more than 180 journal articles and chapters, and served as lead editor of Deployment Psychology and Anger at Work, both published by the American Psychological Association.

Your article opens with, “In the last decade, suicide has become a leading cause of death for service members, claiming more lives than combat and transportation accidents.” This is a hard topic to ease into. What else do we need to know about service members and suicide for this article?

MAJ Thomas H. Nassif

Suicide is a difficult topic for a number of reasons. And many, if not all of us have been touched by it in some way, and the ripple effects across the unit and community when there’s a suicide-related event. It’s a really important topic, and there are many initiatives that the Army is engaged in that address risk factors and prevention.

Our paper tackles a different part of the problem. you probably heard of prevention. What we’re going to talk about today is postvention, in other words, what leaders do in the aftermath of a suicide-related event.

First some terminology. So we define a suicide-related event as death by suicide, suicide attempt, or suicide intent. And by leader, we’re referring to chaplains, behavior health providers, and unit leaders. And the leaders that we focused on in the article were chaplains, behavior health providers, and unit leaders.

Although postvention has been studied in a deployed setting, we focused on garrison settings, which run the risk of being overlooked.

CPT George A. Mesias

This is Captain Mesias. I’m a licensed clinical social worker. As a social worker, I’ve served as a therapist for soldiers, and I’ve served as a behavioral health officer for a Brigade combat team. Suicide is an often-discussed topic due to ACE training requirements that everybody has every year, but I’ve seen how different it is to be exposed to suicide directly. Experiences with suicide leave a lasting impression, and I’ve spoken to many people who’ve shared as much. And I’ve felt that way, as well. So, I was happy to be part of this manuscript because I feel like those experiences often aren’t shared enough.

Host

Your piece reports some results from a thematic analysis of interviews with leaders, chaplains, and behavioral health providers, and you touched on several points. I’d like to walk through them briefly, please.

Nassif

We interviewed more than a dozen chaplains, behavioral health providers, and unit leaders. And each of them had dealt with a suicide-related event in the previous five years. These were individual, semi-structured interviews. And we wanted to hear from these leaders what the experience was like for them—where they struggled, and what advice they had for others. We were not only interested in what leaders did in the aftermath of a suicide-related event, but also how it affected them. Our article also sought to illustrate real-world experiences that might be useful for leaders who may have to manage a suicide-related event in their unit.

Host

Let’s just start with one of the first things listed in the article. Confronting personal emotions about suicide—what do we need to know?

Nassif

Well, by recognizing rather than avoiding personal emotions in response to a suicide-related event, leaders appear better able to respond effectively. And additionally, leaders in our study reported that engaging in productive coping strategies, such as connecting with family for support or partaking in enjoyable activities outside of work, were useful.

Host

What do we need to know about managing stress around blame?

Mesias

Well, a lot of leaders discussed this. Whether it’s being blamed by family members for the death of a loved one or experiencing the strain of required investigations, and important ones as well. I mean, investigations are administratively just part of the process. But leaders often find themselves juggling blame attribution as an additional source of stress during a difficult time. Furthermore, while those affected by suicide may seek answers as to why it occurred, it’s not always possible to identify a root cause. Very often not. It’s a lot of factors and just . . . there’s no easy answers.

Host

One of your other themes was caring for individual soldiers and sustaining unit readiness.

Nassif

Well, the health of an organization’s climate and culture begins with the leader’s commitment to being visible to, open with, and compassionate toward soldiers. So, by striking a balance between empathy and discipline, leaders can both support the needs of individual soldiers and maintain unit morale. Striking this balance was difficult for leaders, as they remarked in the interviews, but many felt this was an essential aspect of successful leadership.

Host

You also addressed leveraging communication channels.

Mesias

Well, this is important because the leader can’t be everywhere at once. Chaplains and behavioral health providers can support leaders’ efforts in fostering open communication channels before, and definitely following, a suicide. In addition, empowering subordinate leaders to monitor their soldiers and keep an eye on them for potential behavioral health concerns or just life problems that can pose a challenge. This can help leaders identify unit members in need of additional support both before and, definitely after, a suicide-related event. There’s also risk reduction tools to help identify and support soldiers, but keeping dialogue open and relationships is key.

Host

You also talked about planning the postvention response. Would you address that for us?

Nassif

So, through the interviews, leaders reflected on their past experiences with postvention. And they offered a number of actionable strategies that could be provided during the postvention process, such as normalizing help-seeking behavior, offering a variety of behavioral health services, coordinating suicide awareness, and prevention training events. And collectively, these actions were aimed at reducing the risk of additional suicide-related events and also establishing a culture that proactively supports the behavioral health of unit members.

Host

You also addressed building a supportive climate to reintegrate at-risk soldiers.

Nassif

Determining what actions to take to support our soldiers can be very difficult, and leaders may find certain tools helpful to assess risk factors in their unit. One example that we talked about in the article was the Leader’s Suicide Risk Assessment Tool. By assessing risk factors, leaders can monitor their units viable health, foster a sense of unit connection, strengthen camaraderie, and take proactive actions to build a safe and supportive climate. And in some (cases), these actions can help leaders successfully reintegrate the soldiers in their unit.

Host

Honoring the life of the soldier, not the suicidal act.

Mesias

So, leaders talked about wanting to be careful in planning memorial ceremonies to recognize the life and the service of the soldier rather than focus on the suicidal act. And this is so that memorial services can support unit members, family, and friends in the coping process . . . provide a sense of closure for those affected by the suicide, but also discourage future suicide-related events.

Host

How can leaders put this information to good use?

Nassif

Leaders, chaplains, and behavioral health providers should build strong relationships and frequently interact with each other. They should also prepare for worst-case scenarios by discussing how would they respond to a suicide-related event and work as a team. Also leader training on suicide postvention could incorporate frank discussions on personal feelings and biases regarding suicide, including how much time is needed to mourn, when should military training resume, how do we handle memorial services, and how can we best manage attitudes about blame and ways to engage in self-care? And this includes subordinate leaders and just up and down the chain of command. Another recommendation would be to prepare leaders to be adaptive, tuned, and responsive to unit members and foster a nonjudgmental culture in the aftermath of a suicide. Related event.

Mesias

We also discussed how leaders may benefit from having mentorship support from senior leaders who’ve been through this themselves. Mentors can help validate the challenges of postvention and provide practical guidance to leaders following a suicide in their unit. They can also provide a level of understanding and emotional support. So many gray areas exist in the suicide postvention decision-making process, and leaders can choose from a number of strategies to mitigate potentially negative impact on themselves, their unit, and the wider community. Not every suicide is the same. So we’re trying to explore some of those gray areas and the challenges that leaders may face that they hadn’t expected.

Host

Give us your your. Final thoughts on the topic please.

Nassif

Our goal is to provide leaders, useful perspectives and support so that they can respond appropriately and work through the psychological challenges (that come with suicide-related events). And, you know, there are toolkits available to further support leaders through the postvention process. One of them is the Defense Suicide Prevention Office toolkit, the Postvention Toolkit. It’s really valuable. This resource provides additional perspective on postvention with guidance and recommendations.

One thing that struck us from the interviews was the way in which leaders were able to take tactical pause to assess the situation and adapt with novel responses to help guide their unit through postvention.

I’ll share a few examples from our article.

One leader realized that timing was critical in the aftermath of a suicide, but moving from a period of mourning to refocusing on training had to be carefully timed. So this particular leader decided to shift training a week later to build an additional time for mourning, which ended up helping unit morale. And by reengaging unit tasks, he was still able to maintain unit discipline.

Other leaders came up with creative ways to work within the constraints of chaplain confidentiality to keep communication channels open. One leader asked their chaplain to provide weekly anonymous stats to the command on the overall health of the unit, such as marital problems, suicidal ideations. By reporting the number of suicidal ideations each month, this provided the leader a useful way of highlighting the overall risk facing the unit while also maintaining confidentiality.

And in one last example, another leader responded to a suicide in his unit by generating positive messaging up and down the chain of command to normalize help-seeking behavior as an act of strength and courage rather than a sign of weakness. And it was a way to not only emphasize the physical health but also mental wellness to soldiers in the unit.

And I just wanted to close by saying that we’re really grateful for those who participated in the interviews and spoke so candidly with us. This is still an evolving topic, and we’re learning more about it all the time. Suicide-related events have ripple effects. We hope that our paper offers some support to leaders moving forward. We’d like to thank the Military Operational Medicine Research Program for funding this study, Dr. Amy Adler, our senior science consultant and author on the manuscript, for conceptualizing this qualitative study on postvention, and CPT Mesias for his expertise as a licensed care social worker for providing that expertise. We’d like to think WRAIR. We want to also thank the Army War College for taking an interest in our article and also giving us the opportunity to speak on this podcast.

Host

What a pleasure to have you and to have you included in Parameters. We’re glad to provide a platform for this conversation. Thank you so much, both of you for sharing your insight on this important topic today.

Mesias

Thank you.

Host

Thank you if you’re interested in learning more about this topic, read the article at press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters. Look for volume 52, issue 4. If you enjoyed this episode of Decisive Point and would like to hear more, you can find us on any major podcast platform.

Author information: Major Thomas H. Nassif, a research psychologist at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), serves as the WRAIR lead on mindfulness training research efforts with the US Army War College and the US Army Training and Doctrine Command. He is also principal investigator on a military suicide research grant funded by the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs.

Captain George A. Mesias is a licensed clinical social worker and researcher at WRAIR. He has advised commands and planned behavioral health operations across the Korean theater of operation and served as a behavioral health officer for a Stryker brigade. He is an Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training master trainer and a graduate of the Army Social Work Child and Family Fellowship Program.

Dr. Amy B. Adler is a clinical research psychologist and senior scientist at the Center for Military Psychiatry and Neuroscience at WRAIR. She has led numerous randomized trials with Army units, published more than 180 journal articles and chapters, and served as lead editor of Deployment Psychology and Anger at Work, both published by the American Psychological Association.

Security force assistance brigades can enable multi-domain convergence in competition in the US Indo-Pacific Command. Rather than focusing on conventional Joint force capabilities, this podcast analyzes recent US Army operational experience in security force assistance and security cooperation in US Indo-Pacific Command and identifies capability gaps and opportunities for competition. Finally, military leadership and policymakers will find recommendations on how US Army security force assistance and security cooperation can shape environments and deter conflict in the US Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss4/11/

Episode transcript: Security Force Assistance Brigades and US Indo-Pacific Command Multi-domain Competition

Stephanie Crider (Host)

You’re listening to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production focused on 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 Major John T Pelham IV, author of “Security Force Assistance Brigades and US Indo-Pacific Command Multi-domain Competition,” which was featured in the winter 2022–23 issue of Parameters.

Pelham is an armor officer currently serving as Deputy Chief 5 for the First Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. His Master of Military Arts and Science thesis, “Examining the Security Force Assistance Brigade’s Role in Future Army Strategic Deterrence,” was published by the Institute of Land Warfare in September 2021. His article “Examining Capability Gaps in the SFAB Cavalry Squadron” was published in the July 2021 issue of the Cavalry and Armor Journal.

Welcome to Decisive Point. I’m really glad you’re here.

Major John T. Pelham IV

Well, thank you for having me.

Host

You take a step back in your article from Joint force capabilities and focus instead on analyzing recent US Army operational experience and security force assistance and security cooperation in US Indo-Pacific commands. What problem in the Indo-Pacific does your article address?

Pelham

I think it’s a couple of problems ma’am. First of all, I think it’s how do we compete with the pacing threat as outlined in the interim National Security Strategy and the recently published National Security Strategy in terms of how do we compete with China and other adversaries in Indo-Pacific Theater—preferably below the level of armed conflict? Moreover, how do we as an army contribute to the Joint force in a theater that is roundly dominated by the air and maritime domains?

This project actually came about from a conversation with Brigadier General Lombardo of Army G 3 5 7 Training. When I was writing my SAMS monograph, I had written my Master of Military Arts and Science thesis on the role of the SFAB and future Army strategic deterrence. And from that conversation, he said, “You know what I would be interested to know is what is the Army’s contribution to multi-domain competition, particularly in the Pacific theater?”

And that stems also from a conversation I had with the Chief of Armor, in a Q&A session with him. I said, “You know, hey, sir, what do you feel is the armor branch’s role in the Indo-Pacific given the physical constraints of that domain for land force, particularly heavy mechanized forces?”

And he said something to the effect of, well, most of our allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific Theater, they have armies, and most of those armies have a competent mechanized component. That is where the armor branch can make its contribution because even if it’s not our armor that is serving as a flexible deterrent or enabling competition in the theater below the level of armed conflict, we can leverage our expertise and our ability to work by, with, and through those allies and partners. And that’s what got me thinking as an SFAB advisor, then what contribution might the SFAB offer in helping the Army do that beyond mechanized forces or land forces—but really, for the entire Joint force across all domains?

Host

You suggest the US Army reexamine its role in the region. What would that look like?

Pelham

I think this is a question that the Army has really been analyzing, especially in-depth ever since the “Pacific pivot” between 2012 and 2014 under the Obama administration with Secretary of State Clinton, in which the strategic focus of United States was beginning to shift from the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan and CENTCOM, in which the Army was the supported force, to a completely different theater with a completely different threat, in which the Army, (under most circumstances) would act as the supporting force as opposed to the supported force.

And now, obviously, the Army has some enduring and very clear contributions and responsibilities in terms of sustainment via Army support to other services via its executive agent responsibilities. Obviously, the Army fires enterprise figures prominently into the Joint Fires capabilities that the INDOPACOM commander can bring to bear in the theater and also contributions with theater, air, and missile defense—and then also the conventional, regionally aligned forces that we provide to the Korean Peninsula and elsewhere. But what these advisor forces allow us to do is really bring to bear the full multi-domain capabilities that already exist there in the region that are inherent in the allies and partners. Which, again,it optimizes what the Army can do for the Joint force in that theater, in which more often than not, they are going to be the supporting arm as opposed to the supported service.

Host

Pull it all together for us. How can the Army make full use of Security Force Assistance Brigade capabilities?

Pelham

I think, ma’am, they need to expand the paradigm beyond just simply using the SFABs as a tactical-level advising force to allied and partnered land components. I know that the images are popular of SFAB advisers conducting live-fire training with allies and partners with enabling joint multinational exercises. And these things are all vitally important, both in terms of demonstrating our commitment to allies and partners but also in demonstrating our resolve to our adversaries. But I think that they have so much more potential to offer in terms of operational-level and even strategic-level outcomes, as well, because they’ve got the ability to embed with allies and partners in a way that creates an enduring presence within enemy A2/AD networks that negates the need to penetrate those networks in a conventional fashion oftentimes. But they serve, again, as the hub that connects those multinational partners to the overall joint force to allow command and control beyond just the formal command-and-control hierarchy, whether that be a lead nation. Whether it be a parallel coalition structure, what have you, but also to integrate the multi-domain capabilities that those allies and partners have as well. Because they don’t just have to be embedded with the land component. They could be augmented and embedded with allied partners’ cyber capabilities. They could be embedded with air component, maritime component. Because they don’t necessarily have to be subject matter experts in that, as long as they’re properly augmented, but either way, due to the fact that they are natural and doctrinally trained LNOs, they still serve as the connective tissue, or that hub, that can tie those capabilities and those organizations back to the Joint force commander.

Host

Give us your final thoughts on it.

Pelham

I am not offering up this thesis as a cure all or a one-size fits all solution. I’m just merely offering these thoughts as a suggestion to the Army at the institutional level, and really, the Joint force overall as a way to really maximize the Army’s contribution to multi domain competition. And in the Indo Pacific theater, ma’am.

Host

Thank you.

Pelham

Thank you ma’am.

Host

If you enjoyed this topic and would like to learn more, read the article at press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters. Look for volume 52, issue 4.

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

About the author: Major John T. Pelham IV is an Armor officer currently serving as deputy G5 for the 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. His master of military arts and science thesis, “Examining the Security Force Assistance Brigade’s Role in Future Army Strategic Deterrence,” was published by the Institute of Land Warfare in September 2021. His article “Examining Capability Gaps in the SFAB Cavalry Squadron” was published in the July 2021 edition of the Cavalry and Armor Journal.

A concept of positive strategic shock would benefit the US Department of Defense’s planning processes. Some US doctrine demonstrates awareness of the need to plan for negative strategic shocks but lacks consideration of positive strategic shock—any shock with a non-zero-sum outcome—which could create a situation where the Department of Defense misses opportunities. This podcast clarifies the term “positive strategic shock,” provides a brief review of where and how planning for any sort of strategic shock currently occurs, and makes recommendations based on three methods for thinking about strategic shock.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss4/12/

Episode transcript: Planning for Positive Strategic Shock in the Department of Defense

Stephanie Crider (Host)

You’re listening to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production focused on 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 Benjamin W Buchholz, author of “Planning for Positive Strategic Shock in the Department of Defense,” which was featured in the winter 2022–23 issue of Parameters. Buchholz is a foreign area officer and recent Army War College distinguished graduate. He’s published four books—The Tightening Dark, Sirens of Manhattan, One Hundred and One Knights, and Private Soldiers, as well as numerous articles and shorter works.

Thanks for joining me today, Colonel Buchholz. I’m glad you’re here.

Col. Benjamin W. Buchholz

Thank you, I appreciate it.

Host

You talked about positive strategic shock in your article. Please expand on that concept.

Buchholz

Positive strategic shock is not a new term, but it is a term that I’m using in a different way than has been used previously. In the planning literature that’s out there right now, there is a thing called positive strategic shock, but it’s used to identify the delta between when a negative shock occurs and then an organization catches back up to status quo or to a median level of performance. And that delta is called, sometimes, positive strategic shock. In my opinion, that’s not actually positive, that’s just making up for a negative. So I wanted to look at the case where something truly positive happens in an environment, and so I define that as an incident that is non-zero-sum—something that’s good for all parties—a win win situation.

Host

Can you give me some examples of negative and positive strategic shock?

Buchholz

I think it’s important to mention, you know, that this paper is about strategic shocks. So, we can all think of a lot of tactical- and operational-level shocks which are more on the weapons systems and that sort of thing, but for something to be really strategic it needs to change doctrine, change the way cultures think about things, change the world order in a way. So, we’re talking about real igh-level stuff. The paper goes into a lot of detail on that. Maybe an unfortunate amount of detail.

Probably the more interesting portion of this is what’s the difference between negative and positive, and that can be kind of a subjective answer. So, in order to make it an objective answer, the way I define it is that negative is zero-sum thinking, whereas positive is a non-zero-sum. And that’s a complex way to say a win-win situation. Where all parties benefit. Where rising water, you know, floats all boats. There are lots of ways to say that sort of thing.

I think in DoD we overly fixate, and for good reason, on negative shocks. So, the adversary has developed some new system, some new methodology, some new culture, even, that we saw in the Cold War with communism. Whereas, what I’m really trying to say in this paper is that there’s an opposite end of this spectrum that sometimes things happen in the culture that are positive in a non-zero-sum way. Examples of that would be things like, even though it’s sort of a political football right now . . . vaccines, I think you can really say across the board, have had a positive strategic shock. Another good example is refrigeration. I think that’s a really good one. You know, who has not benefited from having the ability to have food be refrigerated? You know there’s really no a lot of losers in that. The last one would probably be the Internet. That’s been pretty much a positive across the board. And where this really goes is if the DoD is not postured to gain from positive strategic shocks, it could be to the detriment of the organization and America, as a whole if, we’re really not thinking about that and how to ride those wave tops.

Host

Give us a brief overview, please, of where and how planning for any sort of shock currently occurs.

Buchholz

Well, strangely enough, as I dug into this topic, it turns out the DoD doesn’t do a lot of planning against strategic shock. We plan against all kinds of different scenarios. The planning apparatus in DoD is very strong—branches and sequels everywhere and all kinds of plans on the shelf and contingency planning. However, we’re most comfortable planning against what Donald Rumsfeld and strategic planners before him called the “known unknown,” which is basically this safe middle area of things that we can plan against because it’s not too speculative.

However, those things are not actually where most of the growth and change in the world comes from, at least according to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who wrote The Black Swan (and who I rely on pretty heavily in some of the arguments in this paper). Most of the growth happens on the speculative ends of shock. Either negative shock that no one sees coming or positive shock, and he talks about both of those. And that is really more of an unknown unknown. And generally, planners look at the unknown unknown as too wildly speculative to want to plan against it. And I totally agree with that. I think you can’t expend limited planning resources and budget and stuff against speculation. However, Taleb and other scholars have techniques for planning against both of those ends—the negative end and the positive end. And I think we do OK against the negative end because those techniques are to have a organization that’s robust against shock, and that means that it has redundant systems and that those systems are survivable. And because the Army and the DoD, as a whole, has dealt with negative strategic shock throughout its history, it’s become good at those things. However, on the positive side, redundancy and survivability and having a conservative mindset, an organizationally conservative mindset doesn’t actually do any good because if everybody leaps ahead and the organization is designed to pull back towards a status quo, we actually lose a little bit of the benefit of the positivity.

So, what Nassim Taleb argues for is that we really need to be exposed to positive shock. We need to have lots of little feelers and sensors out there and then let those feelers and sensors matriculate upwards some of the benefits that they’re experiencing when something happens in the environment.

Host

What are your recommendations for thinking about strategic shock?

Buchholz

One organization that we do have within the military is the Center for Army lessons learned. They do something like this where elements out in the field can trickle up good ideas, and then as those ideas take root they can be propagated across the domains in DoD. One particular recommendation is to replicate that structure more broadly. Another thing that is an easy win-win is to just include both in the planning processes and in any DoD-chartered analysis (like out through Rand Corporation or others who do thought work) a requirement to consider positive and negative strategic shock in planning rather than just plan against known trend lines against that known unknown space. So, looking at the far ends where the growth in the change occurs would be a good thing to mandate.

And then the third recommendation that comes out of the paper is really to incorporate a concept of strategic shock in various levels of education in JPME-type courses. There is an interesting way, as well, to identify when an environment is ripe for disruption, for shock, and, you know, several different things identified by researchers that can point you in a direction to look in that direction for or that environment for strategic shock to emerge. And those characteristics are trust within scientific communities, the emergence of scientific anomolies, the development of new instrumentation, increases in ineffective communication, and the presence of a political and economic culture that values science research. So those criteria, I think, could be woven into an approach that is taught, that is mandated into planning processes, and that is mandated into contracts for organizations who are doing planning on behalf of the DoD.

Host

Have any final thoughts before we go?

Buchholz

One thing that was really interesting to me in this work was just trying to define what positive is and look at positivity through a DoD lens because we’re not necessarily an organization that’s geared to do that. We’re geared to look at worst-case scenarios. To be prepared for contingencies. Emergencies. For war. But I think that there is a benefit to looking at the positive and cases where a non-zero-sum event like vaccines, refrigeration, the Internet lifts everybody up around us and make sure that DoD as an organization doesn’t miss important benefits when something like that happens.

Host

I do have one more question, if you’ll entertain it. I’m curious what inspired this article. Why did you decide to write it?

Buchholz

Well, that’s a good question. I think I was really interested in looking at DoD culturally. This question of DoD as a conservative organization, which it should be because it’s designed to protect and be robust and survivable. But how does that interface in an environment where society could take, you know, a very positive leap forward, as an inherently conservative organization well-poised to enjoy the benefits of something like that? Or does it become a drag on that situation? And this was one way to get into that overall larger theoretical idea.

Host

Well, thank you so much. There’s definitely a lot to think about here, and I really appreciate you sharing your insights on the topic.

Buchholz

Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate you having me on the podcast.

Host

If you’d like to dig deeper into the topic of planning for positive strategic shock in the DoD, visit press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters, look for volume 52, issue 4.

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

To buttress stability in the Indo-Pacific, the United States must understand how India sees the region and the world. The theories and ideas of Kautilya, a leading but little-studied Indian philosopher, provide significant insight into Indian perspectives on strategic partnerships and silent war. India has lived out Kautilyan perspectives in its recent foreign policy; therefore, a US understanding of the Indian perspective could advance the national security interests of both countries, clarify recent Indian security responses around the world, and provide a basis for a mutually beneficial pursuit of a free and open Indo-Pacific.

Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol52/iss4/10/

Episode transcript: Indian Perspectives: Insights for the Indo-American Partnership

Host

You’re listening to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production focused on 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 Tyrell O. Mayfield, author of “Indian Perspectives: Insights for the Indo-American Partnership,” which was published in the Winter 2022–23 issue of Parameters. Mayfield is the deputy foreign policy advisor to the chief of staff of the US Air Force. He holds a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Oklahoma and master’s degrees from the Naval Postgraduate School and the US Army War College. He’s the co-editor of Redefining the Modern Military: The Intersection of Profession and Ethics, published in 2018.

Your article discusses Indian philosopher Kautilya. I look forward to hearing about this. But first, thanks for being here, Ty.

COL Tyrell Mayfield

Thank you, Stephanie. It’s my pleasure, and I’m glad to join you. I just want to open by making sure, it’s clear that our conversation here today reflects my own thoughts and not the policy or position of the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the government. But I’m very happy to be here, and I look forward to talking with you.

Host

We’re glad to have you. Let’s just jump right in and get started. Please briefly explain Kautilya’s perspectives.

Mayfield

Sure, so the writings of Kautilya . . . first of all, he’s a leading Indian philosopher, and I find them a useful lens for understanding India’s pursuit of national interests. Kautilya was an Indian statesman and a political advisor who emerged around 300 BCE and provided a realist outlook on geopolitics through his foundational work. Importantly, Kautilyan theory provides a culturally and historically informed construct for thinking about Indian behavior and Indian interests and Indian foreign policy. And his logic continues to influence strategic thought today. And I think it’s manifest in some of India’s national security interests in its assessment of its geography and its international relations, which I hope we get to talk a little about.

Host

You assert in your article that the United States needs to understand how India sees the region and the world. And you suggest that the theories and ideas of Kautilya might lend some insight here. Give us some context. What’s the situation in the Indo-Pacific right now as it applies to this topic.

Mayfield

Sure, well, the United States is clearly identified the PRC, China, as its pacing challenge. And the US has been trying desperately for a number of years, maybe a decade now, to pivot away from Southwest Asia, pivot away from Europe, and to focus on the Pacific with an eye on controlling, or at least shaping and influencing the rise of the PRC. India is central to advancing American interests in that region. It’s an enormous state and a huge player in the area. But it’s been a difficult partner for the United States to approach. This concept of kind of strategic autonomy and independence—it’s deeply embedded in Indian culture—has made it a difficult partner to approach.

But I think it’s worth noting that India has like three core national security interests that I’ve identified in this article, and that they align with US interests in the Pacific. So, I think the first one there important to note is that Indians are interested in sustaining the international system, which has helped give rise to their power and influence. And sustaining this international system—something that the West and the United States is very interested in—allows India to continue to develop economically and address its societal development and economic development. And those are the things have given rise to Indian power. And the second interest is deterring Pakistan, clearly, and trying to avoid that conflict from reigniting. But this links Pakistan and China, these are two state actors whose futures and interests in the area have become deeply intertwined, which also leads us to a third national interest for India, which is maintaining hegemony and its traditional sphere of influence. Chinese encroachment into the Indian Ocean region is a complex issue. It’s something a lot of states are dealing with, and it’s something that the United States is trying to help those states address and control. And so I think these are the three areas where US interests are definitely aligned with Indian interests.

Host

Let’s talk about the mandala theory. You use this to address strategic partnerships and silent war. Will you expand on that for us?

Mayfield

So, the mandala theory is just really how Kautilya envisions the geography around him and neighboring kingdoms and how he saw it and how he thought about it. And so just trying to maintain their influence in that region, Kautylia described this kind of as emanating from the subcontinent, which we think of as India today west through what was then Persia (today, modern-day Iran), north to what is modern-day Afghanistan, and then east to kind of the Bay of Bengal. That region. Thdose basically comprise the eight member nations of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. That geography really hasn’t changed for India, though I think now they’re looking much further South right into the Indian Ocean, where maritime competition has certainly become a more modern aspect of the situation.

And the mandala theory, basically, it’s adjoining states become kingdoms or states which need to be addressed or controlled. And Kautilya was a little bit of a realist, or actually very much a realist, and so those adjoining states either have to . . . He is a classical realist in his assertion that states have to, you know, either seek or suffer conquest. So India sees itself in realist terms relative to Pakistan and China and then those states which are adjacent to them—kind of if you think of it as like a checkerboard or concentric circles would be another way to think of it—are states which India can find alignment with and support to pursue its national interests. So that’s where these ideas of strategic partnerships come in, which are really just a Cold War relic. Something of the Soviet Union began, and it allowed the Soviet Union to work bilaterally, kind of outside of the international system—the construct to bilateral agreements. And I think the example that I used in the paper here is India’s strategic partnership agreements with Afghanistan, which they’ve had two of them. But because they’re an alignment tool, they are nonbinding, and they don’t force India to act militarily in any way. And when they no longer served the purpose or weren’t useful, India was able to abandon them.

Host

Did you want to talk about silent war?

Mayfield

Yeah, so I think this concept of silent war is really just a way for states to . . . perhaps competition is the best word for this, right? For states to compete short of conflict. When Kautilya, would think of an adjoining Kingdom that was a strong kingdom or a dominant kingdom, a dominant power adjacent, when direct confrontation isn’t the tool then it’s just a long-term campaign of kind of in Kautilyan parlance to be harassment and weakening. But I think today we talked about that in terms of competition. And I think that alignment, again, plays a huge role here versus alliances, and so I think the Quad is an interesting kind of a lens to view Indian alignment through. And so the Quad has kind of been revitalized here in the last few years. It had two in-person meetings and has fielded this new maritime Domain Awareness Initiative, which is a great construct and really shows Indian interest in aligning with other powers in the region to help balance against China, which is obviously what a lot of the states in the Indo Pacific are trying to do right now.

Host

I’m glad you brought up China. What are your recommendations for how the US can gain Indian partnership and address US National Security interests of managing a rising China?

Mayfield

Persuading India into a full security partnership with the United States is probably unlikely. It certainly wouldn’t be easy. I also don’t believe that it is necessary. India’s use of these bilateral strategic partnership agreements is consistent with Kautilyan foreign policy and the logic, and so I think if you think of it that way, then it’s not necessarily surprising that the Quad rests, kind of at the center of India’s foreign policy under Prime Minister Modi. Kautilyan logic drives India to avoid alliances and seek alignment, and so I think the United States, we have to exercise a certain amount of strategic empathy here and just understand India and how India sees the world. And if alignment is the tool which they display a preference for, then I think addressing that with them and finding places where we can seek alignment and our interests are aligned.

So one of those is at the National Security Council. I’m sorry the United Nations Security Council. Obviously, there’s a lot in play right now. There has been some talk for reform at the United Nations Security Council. And India is one of the states which is very much interested in seeking a permanent seat at the UN on the Security Council there. And so an interesting kind of aspect in their strategic partnership agreements that they sign is that when they sign these with other states, one of the bylines in there is that they will support India’s pursuit of a permanent seat at the Security Council. So Security Council change or change to the UN Charter would take a very long time. But I think it’s something that the United States could put forward or at least begin to have the conversation. And even if it didn’t go anywhere, it would highlight India and kind of give a nod to their power and influence and their importance on the international stage.

And then lastly, I think I’ll come back to the Quad, and I think it’s important to understand the Quad is a diplomatic tool and alignment of diplomatic and information and, in some instances, an economic instrument of national power. And I think it’s really important that the United States be very deliberate in not militarizing the Quad because I think once that does that, then the Quad would take on an aspect or kind of a tone or tenor, which the Indians would be very much disinclined to participate in because what they don’t want to do is antagonize China militarily. And so I think we, as the United States have to be disciplined in letting the Quad be what it is; it’s a very powerful diplomatic and information tool, and it shows a great deal of alignment.

So I just think as it pertains to the Indo-Pacific, South Asia, and American foreign policy, the United States, we have to be patient here. And we have to break our reactive approach to foreign policy there and just be purposeful about our engagement with India and work hard on securing a partnership that demonstrates alignment and is beneficial to both states.

Host

Do you have any final thoughts?

Mayfield

You know this is an interesting area, obviously . . . an area of foreign policy that’s of interest to the United States, and I think that it’s important and useful to look at it through the lens of another state that we want alignment with that we want to partner with. And a lot of times, I think India is misunderstood, and that is in some ways understandable. And they can be a difficult partner to approach, but this idea of strategic autonomy and independence that India has always maintained doesn’t mean that they can’t be partnered with. And it doesn’t mean that we can’t find areas of alignment, and I think the first step to that is understanding India. Understanding how India sees the world and then just rethinking our approach to that.

Host

Thanks so much for sharing your insights on this topic. Very interesting.

Mayfield

Yeah no, I appreciate it, and I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you very much.

Host

Learn more about Kautilya, his perspectives, and what they might mean for the Indo American partnership at press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters. Look for volume 52, issue 4.

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