Decisive Point – the USAWC Press Podcast Companion Series

Released 13 April 2022.

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

Click here to read the article.

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

 Stephanie Crider (Host)

Welcome to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production featuring distinguished authors and contributors who get to the heart of the matter in national security affairs.

The guests in speaking order on this episode are:

(Guest 1 Anthony Pfaff)

(Host)

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

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

(Pfaff)

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

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

(Host)

Released 8 April 2022.

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

Click here to read the article.

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

 Stephanie Crider (Host)

Welcome to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production featuring distinguished authors and contributors who get to the heart of the matter in national security affairs.

The guests in speaking order on this episode are:

(Guest 1 David Katz)

(Host)

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

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

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

(Katz)

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

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

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

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

Multidimensionality is really just a strategic framework where we, as US strategists, consider every available dimension of power project...

Released 4 April 2022.

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

Click here to read the article.

Episode Transcript:

Stephanie Crider (Host)

Welcome to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production featuring distinguished authors and contributors who get to the heart of the matter in national security affairs.

The guests in speaking order on this episode are:

(Guest 1 Gustavo Ferreira)

(Guest 2 Jamie Critelli)

(Host)

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

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

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

 (Ferreira)

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

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

In terms of uses, it's important to highlight they’re desired because they have unique characteristics, such as magnetic strength, and, consequently, they’re used in a wide range of ubiquitous consumer goods, such as flat-screen TVs and cell phones. Other important industrial applications include wind turbines and electrical vehicles. And one that's typically a very visible application of this resource is in the military space.

Released 4 April 2022.

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

Click here to read the article.

Episode Transcript:

 

Stephanie Crider (Host)

(Prerecorded Decisive Point intro) Welcome to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production featuring distinguished authors and contributors who get to the heart of the matter in national security affairs.

(Guest 1 Danielle Holt)

(Guest 2 Susan Davis)

(Host)

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

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

 

(Davis)

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

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

And the other one was the Command Assessment Program. And this was a new initiative to do a very thorough assessment of the candidates who are potentially going to be commanders at the O-5 and O-6 level. And instead of just reviewing their written record and evaluations and where they had been, they brought them in for four or five days of a battery of assessments and interviews and gathered much more information and data on them. So, we talk about these specifically, one, because they're very impactful—they represented really big changes—but also be...

Released 30 March 2022.

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

Click here to read the article.

Episode Transcript:

 

Stephanie Crider (Host)

Welcome to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production featuring distinguished authors and contributors who get to the heart of the matter in national security affairs.

The guests in speaking order on this episode are:

(Guest 1 Dr. Shannon Reid)

 

(Host)

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

 

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

 

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

 

(Reid)

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

 

(Host)

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

 

(Reid)

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

Released 8 February 2022.

Assessing threats to the air littoral, the airspace between ground forces and high-end fighters and bombers, requires a paradigm change in American military thinking about verticality. This article explores the consequences of domain convergence, specifically for the Army and Air Force’s different concepts of control. It will assist US military and policy practitioners in conceptualizing the air littoral and in thinking more vertically about the air and land domains and the challenges of domain convergence. Click here to read the article.

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.

Decisive Point welcomes Colonel Maximillian K. Bremer and Dr. Kelly A. Grieco, authors of “Air Littoral: Another Look.” Colonel Bremer is the director of the Special Programs Division at Air Mobility Command. He is a 1997 distinguished graduate of the US Air Force Academy, he has an MPP from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and an MAAS from the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies.

Dr. Grieco is an assistant professor of military and security studies in the Department of International Security at the Air Command and Staff College. She received her PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Max. Kelly. Thanks for joining me today. I'm really glad you're here. Your research looks at air littoral, which is the space between ground forces and high-end fighters and bombers, and how the US military thinks about its verticality. What has changed in recent decades that makes this a priority?

Colonel Maximilian K. Bremer

Well, Stephanie, first, thanks for having us on. And thanks to Parameters for publishing this paper. It's really a privilege. So you're asking what's changed? Well, in a nutshell, democratization and technological advancement have led to increased access and persistence in the space that we're calling the air littoral. Basically, more users with more technology are driving innovation both in the military and civilian realms. Changing the way that we access and persist in any domain will alter the way we contest that domain--the way we seek dominance. The air littoral, until recently, was mostly a realm of transit to and from the blue skies. Persistent access within the air littoral was just not tenable. But it is now, and that drives a change in how we utilize the domain. Before, we could think about airspace as layered flat maps, and now we have to understand the interaction vertically and persistently from the ground all the way to the edge of space.

Dr. Kelly A. Grieco

As Colonel Bremer suggests, what has changed is increased access and persistence to the air littoral. Russia in eastern Ukraine, for example, has been able to access the airspace and deny it to the Ukrainian Air Force mainly using not manned aircraft but a combination of air defense and electronic warfare systems. And they have then been able to exploit this airspace using multiple drones flying simultaneously at different altitudes over target areas to spot for artillery rockets.

This example illustrates two important changes in my mind. First, manned aircraft are no longer essential for accessing or exploiting the airspace, or at least parts of the airspace. And second, increasingly, both nonstate actors and strategic competitors will use small unarmed systems--things like drones, low flying missiles, and loitering munitions to gain persistent access to the air littoral and then exploit it.

Host

What is the working definition of air superiority?

Released 24 January, 2022.

Critics of the Afghan war have claimed it was always unwinnable. This article argues the war was unwinnable the way it was fought and posits an alternative based on the Afghan way of war and the US approach to counterinsurgency in El Salvador during the final decade of the Cold War. Respecting the political and military dictates of strategy could have made America’s longest foreign war unnecessary and is a warning for the wars we will fight in the future. Click here to read the article.

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.

Decisive Point welcomes Dr. Todd Greentree, a former US Foreign Service officer who served as a political military officer in five conflicts, including El Salvador and Afghanistan. He's a member of the Changing Character of War Center at Oxford University and teaches in the Global and National Security Policy Institute at the University of New Mexico. Greentree is the author of "What Went Wrong in Afghanistan," featured in Parameters winter 2021-2022 issue.

Welcome, Todd. I'm so glad you're here. Let's talk about your article. Some people would argue the Afghan war was unwinnable. You assert it was unwinnable the way it was fought. What do you mean by that?

Dr. Todd Greentree

Thank you, Stephanie. Great to be here. The idea that it was unwinnable the way it was fought is really tied to the purpose, sort of the reason why I was writing it, which is not just about what went wrong in Afghanistan, what lessons can be derived about counterinsurgency. This is really an article about US strategic behavior. Afghanistan was my fifth war. And I like to write what I know. So really, the origin of the article is from my own story.

I   got the idea that we were maybe not doing this right, sort of when I stepped off the helicopter at Bagram in 2008. My first war had been El Salvador in the early 1980s. And so everything I learned were all from guys who had been in Vietnam. There's more about that in the article. For the next four years, though, I served with people who were…most of the people were from the 9/11 generation, and I was a political adviser to combat units out in the field and was super impressed with the astuteness that everybody was showing. So first, I was in Regional Command East, where General Mark Milley was the deputy commander for operations. But there was a problem with the entire effort in Afghanistan. We were on economy of force. But that economy of force was not being exercised for a strategic purpose, just to minimize the cost, because Iraq had sucked up all the attention and the bulk of the resources.

Then I moved to Regional Command South into Taliban home country, and they had been raging there since 2006. It took three years for the US to adapt. I came back to Kandahar in 2010, at the height of the surge, with the 10th Mountain Division. They were in command of Regional Command South. And this was the main effort at the height of the surge. It was a strong coalition team. They knew what to do, how to partner with the Afghan army. They took it seriously. They were serious about aligning political and military strategies, which was my part of this. The overall strategy of the US, by 2009, was coming into focus, we'd had Stan McChrystal’s math, the idea, here's our most experienced Special Operations commander who had come to the realization, as had many of the SOF guys, that attrition generates more insurgents. This led to a shift in the understanding of focus on the population rather than exercising firepower.

General Petraeus,

Released 10 January, 2022.

A titan of modern strategic studies, Colin S. Gray distinguished himself from other scholars in the field with his belief that grand strategy is indispensable, complex, and inherently agential. This article identifies key themes, continuities, conceptual relationships, and potential discontinuities from his decades of grand strategic thought. Gray’s statement that “all strategy is grand strategy” remains highly relevant today, emphasizing the importance of agential context in military environments—a point often neglected in strategic practice. Click here to read the article.

Episode Transcript:

Stephanie Crider (Host)

Decisive Point welcomes Dr. Lukas Milevski, an assistant professor at the Institute of History at Leiden University. He's published The West’s East: Contemporary Baltic Defense in Strategic Perspective (2018) and The Evolution of Modern Grand Strategic Thought (2016). He is the author of “The Grand Strategic Thought of Colin S. Gray,” featured in Parameters Winter 2021-22 issue.

I’m glad you’re here, Lukas. Thanks for joining me today. Let's talk about your article. “The Grand Strategic Thought of Colin S Gray.”

Colin Gray, a Titan of modern Strategic Studies, often referred to grand strategy as equivalent to statecraft. War is more than a simple military contest, it inherently involves nonmilitary forms of power. Gray’s, conception of grand strategy contradicts the mainstream interpretation, particularly favored in the United States, in which grand strategy is identified as the Master of Policy. Walk us through Gray's basic views on grand strategy.

Dr. Lukas Milevski

OK, well first of all, thank you for inviting me. Now there are four key features of Colin’s basic understanding of grand strategy which are worth emphasizing.

First grand strategy was in some ways a compromise, particularly between strategic studies characterized by the study of strategy, understood fairly strictly as military strategy, and security studies, which encompass security beyond military security— economic, environmental, human, etc.

So grand strategy therefore was a compromise between the necessity to focus on war in strategic studies and the recognition that war, and indeed security, is more than just warfare as waged by militaries.

Second, his personal definition of grand strategy is, and I'll quote here. “The direction and use made of any or all among the total assets of a security community and support of its policy goals as decided by politics.”

Which he followed up by asserting that the theory and practice of grand strategy is the theory and practice of statecraft itself.

So, for Colin, grand strategy was clearly rather enormous concept in both theory and in practice, and one which did actually go beyond war itself. Given that he stated that grand strategy and statecraft are essentially synonymous.

Third,  grand strategy will  still strategy despite its enormity, means that it could be, had to be, and was understandable via the general theory of strategy, which he, throughout his career, sought to clarify ever further.

This means, among other things, that as much as military strategy needs to be conducted, performed, or whatever word you prefer. So too does grand strategy. So there's performance and economic or financial sanctions. For example, just as much as , if quite different from, that found in military strategy.

That said, Colin didn't really ever actually delve into how and nonmilitary power performed in application.

Fourth, and finally, grand strategy is indispensable. Any military strategic judgment is inherently a grand strategic judgment. And often judgments needs to be made which are grand s...

Released 27 December, 2021.

This article explores the current debate about service and Joint operating concepts, starting with the Army’s multi-domain operations concept. It argues for adaptations to an old operational design technique—defeat mechanisms; updates to Joint and service planning doctrine; and discipline regarding emerging concepts. Rather than debate over attrition versus maneuver, combinations of a suite of defeat mechanisms should be applied to gain victory in the future.  Click here to read the article.

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.

Decisive Point welcomes Dr. Frank Hoffman, author of “Defeat Mechanisms in Modern Warfare,” featured in Parameters 2021 – 22 Winter issue. Dr. Hoffman is a distinguished research fellow at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. His latest book, Mars Adapting: Military Change under Fire, was published this year.

Frank, I'm glad you're here. Thank you for joining me. We're here to talk about your article that was published in Parameters Winter 2021 – 22, “Defeat Mechanisms in Modern Warfare.” Your article assesses several conceptual efforts to better posture US military for success and future wars. Specifically, you explore the debate between service and joint operating concepts and the opportunities and vulnerabilities of cyber-enabled systems to produce decisive effects at the operational level of war. Please set the stage for our listeners and explain the current debate.

Dr. Frank Hoffman

Sure, thank you. Great to be here today.

It's just interesting that, you know, in the literature right now, we're going back to fundamentals about how we in the military conceive of, plan for, and conceptualize obtaining victory. And there seems to be quite a fervent debate going on both in the military literature and in the academic literature. In the current issue of “Survival,” published by double I double S in London, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Franz-Stefan Gady challenges American concepts and thinking about maneuver versus attrition, which is an age-old debate that goes back in the Army and the Marine Corps back to the 1980s. And Gady suggests that we need to reemphasize attrition, since maneuver, both in the sense of movement and mobility across the battlespace, is going to be much harder because of persistent surveillance, attacks from drones, drones as a source of ISR. His reading of future technology suggests that maneuver is going to be very hard and that we need to focus on buying capabilities to attrit the adversary.

And this is also taken up by Michael Kofman from the Center for Naval Analysis, who argues that the Army and the joint world need to let loose their embrace of strategic or operational paralysis, you know, attempting to confuse commanders. And we need to reembrace attrition and firepower to destroy enemy capabilities, not by combinations and not by the way we currently think about it.

And this is also then taken up by Dr. Heather Venable, who's a professor at the Air University. And she also argues that most of our thinking in the Army and the Marine Corps is based upon some rather thin historical cases drawn largely from either 1916’s infiltration tactics or the theories of John Boyd and the OODA loop and this notion of cognitive paralysis and outmaneuvering the enemy in the broader sense through combinations of forces in modern combine arms.

Those are the critics. In the service literature, in the joint world, and in the United States, we do seem to have this emphasis now on what in the Army is...

Released 16 December, 2021.

Deterring a Chinese invasion of Taiwan without recklessly threatening a great-power war is both possible and necessary through a tailored deterrence package that goes beyond either fighting over Taiwan or abandoning it. This article joins cutting-edge understandings of deterrence with empirical evidence of Chinese strategic thinking and culture to build such a strategy.  Click here to read the article.

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.

Decisive Point welcomes Dr. Jared M. McKinney, co-author of “Broken Nest: Deterring China from Invading Taiwan,” written with Dr. Peter Harris and featured in Parameters’ 2021 – 22 Winter issue.

Dr. McKinney is the chair of the Department of Strategy and Security Studies at the eSchool of Graduate Professional Military Education, Air University, and reviews editor of the Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs.

Dr. Peter Harris is associate professor of political science at Colorado State University and Indo-Pacific Perspectives editor of the Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs.

Jared, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for joining me today. Let's talk about your article, “The Broken Nest.”  Would the People's Republic of China invade Taiwan even if it meant risking war with the United States and its allies? Your article says there's no doubt that the United States has a strong interest in deterring a Chinese takeover of Taiwan but relying on the latent threat of a great power war is the wrong approach.

Please elaborate on this.

Dr. Jared M. McKinney

Yeah, it would be my pleasure to walk you through the argument. Just as I get going, I’ll note that my opinions, conclusions, and recommendations are solely my own and that of Peter Harris, my coauthor, and we don't represent the views of the Air Force or the Department of Defense.

The Taiwan issue is really hot right now not just because of provocations or perceived provocation, but also because the strategic environment has changed.

The historical position of the United States has been that the Navy could deter a Chinese invasion by denying it the possibility to succeed.

This is how the 7th Fleet responded in the 1950s to various Taiwan Straits crises. And as recently as 1996, the US Navy again was deployed to the region around Taiwan in an act of deterrence against perceived Chinese aggression at the time.

In 2021, the question really is, is this possible anymore? And pretty much everyone agrees that the status quo is inadequate.

One camp says that we need to double down on deterrence by denial, and we need to do more much more quickly.

This is in a response to the recognition that China's capabilities have developed very quickly. The PRC of this decade is radically more powerful than (the) PRC of previous eras.

And so, in this environment a posture of deterrence by denial seems much less credible because it's quite possible that the United States would not have the ability to effectively deny a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The question therefore becomes, does this create an opportunity for a Chinese invasion, and what would the United States do?

In our article, we argue that simply doubling down on deterrence by denial is foolish and not sufficient in the long run. Because even if deterrence by denial could be reinvigorated for this year or next year, it's not going to be possible to do so in the long run due to imbalances in valuing Taiwan, and in geography.