Irregular Enemies and the Essence of Strategy

Irregular Enemies and the Essence of Strategy PDF Author: Colin S. Gray
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Counterinsurgency
Languages : en
Pages : 84

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Book Description
The author offers a detailed comparison between the character of irregular warfare, insurgency in particular, and the principal enduring features of "the American way." He concludes that there is a serious mismatch between that "way" and the kind of behavior that is most effective in countering irregular foes. The author poses the question, Can the American way of war adapt to a strategic threat context dominated by irregular enemies? He suggests that the answer is "perhaps, but only with difficulty."

Irregular Enemies and the Essence of Strategy

Irregular Enemies and the Essence of Strategy PDF Author: Colin S. Gray
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Counterinsurgency
Languages : en
Pages : 84

Get Book Here

Book Description
The author offers a detailed comparison between the character of irregular warfare, insurgency in particular, and the principal enduring features of "the American way." He concludes that there is a serious mismatch between that "way" and the kind of behavior that is most effective in countering irregular foes. The author poses the question, Can the American way of war adapt to a strategic threat context dominated by irregular enemies? He suggests that the answer is "perhaps, but only with difficulty."

Irregular Enemies and the Essence of Strategy: Can the American Way of War Adapt?

Irregular Enemies and the Essence of Strategy: Can the American Way of War Adapt? PDF Author: Colin S. Gray
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 130005168X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 74

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Book Description
Strategist Colin Gray offers a detailed comparison between the character of irregular warfare, insurgency in particular, and the principal enduring features of "the American way." He concludes that there is a serious mismatch between that "way" and the kind of behavior that is most effective in countering irregular foes. The author poses the question, "Can the American way of war adapt to a strategic threat context dominated by irregular enemies?" He suggests that the answer is "perhaps, but only with difficulty."

The Direction of War

The Direction of War PDF Author: Hew Strachan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107047854
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
A major contribution to our understanding of contemporary warfare and strategy by one of the world's leading military historians.

Sustaining America's Strategic Advantage

Sustaining America's Strategic Advantage PDF Author: Joel R. Hillison
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440879931
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
Written for foreign policy practitioners, scholars, and students, this book offers critical insights into the modern landscape of international politics and warfare and explains how the United States can sustain its strategic advantages in the 21st century and beyond. From the level of grand strategy to more intricate security issues, this book explores how the United States can sustain its strategic military and political advantages around the world. Developing and implementing effective national policies; fostering strong diplomatic and geopolitical ties with allies in Europe, the Indo-Pacific, and the Middle East; and managing an effective defense enterprise are key, according to the authors, to competing on a shifting international security landscape. Advancing the literature on grand strategy and outlining emerging critical issues in security, this book offers an overarching framework for strategy; an analysis of crucial security-related topics, such as cyber warfare; and informed opinions on components of competitive success, such as irregular warfare and partner building. Written by well-respected scholars, security professionals, and foreign policy practitioners, this book goes beyond focusing on hard power to consider how the U.S. can leverage its education institutions and a worldwide network of allies and partners to sustain its strategic advantage now and in the future.

On Guerrilla Warfare

On Guerrilla Warfare PDF Author: Mao Tse-tung
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486119572
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
The first documented, systematic study of a truly revolutionary subject, this 1937 text remains the definitive guide to guerrilla warfare. It concisely explains unorthodox strategies that transform disadvantages into benefits.

Influence Warfare

Influence Warfare PDF Author: James J. F. Forest
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
This important work, edited by an expert on terrorism, focuses on the 21st-century struggle for strategic influence and ways in which states can neutralize the role of new media in spreading terrorist propaganda. In an era where anyone can have access to the Internet or other media forms that make widespread communication easy, terrorists and insurgents can spread their messages with complete freedom, creating challenges for national security. Influence Warfare: How Terrorists and Governments Fight to Shape Perceptions in a War of Ideas focuses on the core of the ongoing struggle for strategic influence and, particularly, how states can counter the role media and the Internet play in radicalizing new agents of terrorism. As the book makes clear, governments need to find ways to effectively confront non-state adversaries at all levels of the information domain and create an understanding of strategic communications within a broad range of technologies. The essays from the international group of authors who contributed to this work offer a deeper understanding of the ongoing struggle. Influence Warfare also provides a set of case studies that illustrate how the means and methods of strategic influence can impact a nation's security.

National Security Dilemmas

National Security Dilemmas PDF Author: Colin S. Gray
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1597976547
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 471

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Book Description
A contemporary primer on the leading arguments about U.S. national security, National Security Dilemmas addresses the major challenges and opportunities that are live-issue areas for American policymakers and strategists today. Colin S. Gray provides an in-depth analysis of a policy and strategy for deterrence; the long-term U.S. bid to transform its armed forces' capabilities, with particular reference to strategic surprise, in the face of many great uncertainties; the difficulty of understanding and exploiting the challenge of revolutionary change in warfare; the problems posed by enemies who fight using irregular methods; and the awesome dilemmas for U.S. policy over the options to wage preventive and preemptive warfare. With forty years' experience as a strategist, within and outside of government, Gray uses a problem-solving motif throughout the book, suggesting solutions to the challenges he identifies. The book's master narrative is that the United States must take a more considered strategic approach to its security dilemmas. Too often, the country's leaders decide on a policy and then move to take action, all the while neglecting to devise a plan that would connect its political purposes to military means. While many of Gray's judgments here are critical of current ideas and behavior, he crafted them as helpful guides should planners adopt them when revising policies and approaches. Strategy is a practical matter; truly it is the zone wherein theory meets practice. This text can be used as an expert guide to the major national security challenges of today. It both explains the structure of these challenges and provides useful answers. With a foreword by Lt. Gen. Paul K. Van Riper, USMC (Ret.), Bren Chair, Marine Corps University, Quantico, Virginia.

Routledge Handbook of Strategic Culture

Routledge Handbook of Strategic Culture PDF Author: Kerry M. Kartchner
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000956350
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 515

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Book Description
This handbook offers a collection of cutting-edge essays on all aspects of strategic culture by a mix of international scholars, consultants, military officers, and policymakers. The volume explicitly addresses the analytical conundrums faced by scholars who wish to employ or generate strategic cultural insights, with substantive commentary on defining and scoping strategic culture, analytic frameworks and approaches, levels of analysis, sources of strategic culture, and modalities of change in strategic culture. The chapters engage strategic culture at the civilizational, regional, supra-national, national, non-state actor, and organizational levels. The volume is divided into five thematic parts, which will appeal to both students who are new to the subject and scholars who wish to incorporate strategic culture into their toolbox of analytical techniques. Part I assesses the evolving theoretical strengths and weaknesses of the field. Part II lays out elements of the theoretical and methodological foundations of the field, including sources and components of strategic culture. Part III presents a number of national strategic cultural profiles, representing the state of contemporary strategic culture scholarship. Part IV addresses the utility of strategic culture for practitioners and scholars. Part V summarizes the key theoretical and practical insights offered by the volume’s contributors. This handbook will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, defense studies, security studies, and international relations in general, as well as to professional practitioners.

The Other Face of Battle

The Other Face of Battle PDF Author: Wayne E. Lee
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190920645
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Taking its title from The Face of Battle, John Keegan's canonical book on the nature of warfare, The Other Face of Battle illuminates the American experience of fighting in "irregular" and "intercultural" wars over the centuries. Sometimes known as "forgotten" wars, in part because they lackedtriumphant clarity, they are the focus of the book. David Preston, David Silbey, and Anthony Carlson focus on, respectively, the Battle of Monongahela (1755), the Battle of Manila (1898), and the Battle of Makuan, Afghanistan (2020) - conflicts in which American soldiers were forced to engage in"irregular" warfare, confronting an enemy entirely alien to them. This enemy rejected the Western conventions of warfare and defined success and failure - victory and defeat - in entirely different ways. Symmetry of any kind is lost. Here was not ennobling engagement but atrocity, unanticipatedinsurgencies, and strategic stalemate.War is always hell. These wars, however, profoundly undermined any sense of purpose or proportion. Nightmarish and existentially bewildering, they nonetheless characterize how Americans have experienced combat and what its effects have been. They are therefore worth comparing for what they hold incommon as well as what they reveal about our attitude toward war itself. The Other Face of Battle reminds us that "irregular" or "asymmetrical" warfare is now not the exception but the rule. Understanding its roots seems more crucial than ever.

American Sea Power and the Obsolescence of Capital Ship Theory

American Sea Power and the Obsolescence of Capital Ship Theory PDF Author: R.B. Watts
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 078649879X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
Since the beginning of the 20th century, the United States has sought to achieve Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan's vision of "command of the sea" using large battle fleets of capital ships. This strategy has been generally successful: no force can oppose the U.S. Navy on the open seas. Yet capital ship theory has become increasingly irrelevant. Globally, irregular warfare dominates the spectrum of conflict, especially in the aftermath of 9/11. Fleet engagements are a thing of the past and even small scale missions that rely on capital ships are challenged by irregular warfare. In a pattern evident since World War II, the U.S. Navy has attempted to adapt its capital ship theory to irregular conflicts--with mixed results--before returning to traditional operations with little or no strategic debate. This book discusses the challenges of irregular warfare in the 21st century, and the need for U.S. naval power to develop a new strategic paradigm.