DEFENSE PLANNING FOR NATIONAL SECURITY: NAVIGATION AIDS FOR THE MYSTERY TOUR.
Author: Colin S. Gray
Publisher:
Published: 2022
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13:
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Defense Planning for National Security
Author: Strategic Studies Strategic Studies Institute
Publisher: CreateSpace
Published: 2014-12-29
Total Pages: 70
ISBN-13: 9781505819137
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe purpose of this book is to explore and examine the challenge to America's defense planners of needing to make purposeful and prudent choices in military preparation for the future. The problem for defense planning that is beyond resolution is the scientifically certain fact that we have no data from the future about the future. Moreover, this will always be a fact. No matter the scholarly discipline and tradition to which a defense planner owes or feels most allegiance, he or she needs to recognize and attempt to understand fully a personal and institutional condition of awesome ignorance of detail about the future. Further study, more cunning analytical methodology, even more powerful computers-none of these can reveal with any certainty what the future will bring. Fortunately, this does not mean that we are ignorant about the future; but it does mean that defense planning is guesswork and can only be such. Understandably, both senior policymakers and soldiers tend to be reluctant, even to the point of appearing to be evasive, when legislators question the plausibility of the answers given in congressional hearings. After all, it can be troubling to the conscience of honest and competent people to be obliged to affirm the integrity of choices made in defense preparation for national security in years to come, when there is and can be no certain way to know that one is sufficiently correct.
Defense Planning for National Security
Author: Colin S. Gray
Publisher:
Published: 2014
Total Pages: 59
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe challenge that is defense planning includes: "educated futurology" and the humanities as methodological approaches; futurists and scenarios, trend spotting and defense analysis; the impossibility of science in studying the future; the impossibility of verification by empirical testing of hypotheses; the value of the humanities which are politics, strategy, and history for defense planning; the use and misuse of analogy; learning from history; why and how strategic history works; and recommendations for the Army. What can be learned from history and what cannot are discussed in this analysis.
Advancing Strategic Thought Series
Author: Progressive Management
Publisher:
Published: 2014
Total Pages:
ISBN-13: 9781311353290
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDefense planning unavoidably must be in the nature of a mystery tour. The inability to know the future is a permanent condition for defense planning, but it is one with which we must cope. This monograph by Dr. Colin S. Gray explores and examines the implications of our irreducible ignorance about the future. His purpose is to identify an approach to this critically important subject of security that leans heavily upon what we can and should know about the past and present, in order to anticipate future conditions.The monograph finds that, although the past does not repeat itself in detail, there are profound persisting reasons why it is repeated approximately in the challenges and dangers that security communities must face. Dr. Gray concludes that notwithstanding the facts of contextual change in strategic history, the "great stream of time" from the past, through the present, into the future commands critically significant continuities in history that yield an approach to the future in which some confidence can be placed.The purpose of this monograph is to explore and examine the challenge to America's defense planners of needing to make purposeful and prudent choices in military preparation for the future. The problem for defense planning that is beyond resolution is the scientifically certain fact that we have no data from the future about the future. Moreover, this will always be a fact. No matter the scholarly discipline and tradition to which a defense planner owes or feels most allegiance, he or she needs to recognize and attempt to understand fully a personal and institutional condition of awesome ignorance of detail about the future.Further study, more cunning analytical methodology, even more powerful computers -- none of these can reveal with any certainty what the future will bring. Fortunately, this does not mean that we are ignorant about the future; but it does mean that defense planning is guesswork and can only be such. Understandably, both senior policymakers and soldiers tend to be reluctant, even to the point of appearing to be evasive, when legislators question the plausibility of the answers given in congressional hearings. After all, it can be troubling to the conscience of honest and competent people to be obliged to affirm the integrity of choices made in defense preparation for national security in years to come, when there is and can be no certain way to know that one is sufficiently correct.Although the future is always a tabula rasa concerning the detail, including vital detail, of what will happen, the human security condition is anything but unknown, let alone unknowable. A key to making progress here is to pose only answerable questions. For a leading example of a foolish question, one should never ask "What will happen?" Reliable answers cannot be given with the certainty required of science.
Defence Planning as Strategic Fact
Author: Henrik Breitenbauch
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-06-04
Total Pages: 202
ISBN-13: 1000732177
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDefence Planning as Strategic Fact provides and elaborates on an "upstream" focus on the variegated organizational, political and conceptual practices of military, civilian administrative and political leaderships involved in defence planning, offering an important security and strategic studies supplement to the traditional "downstream" focus on the use of force. The book enables the reader to engage with the role of ideas in defence planning, of organizational processes and biases, path dependencies and administrative dynamics under the pressures of continuously changing domestic and international constraints. The chapters show how defence planning must be seen as a constitutive element of defence and strategic studies – that it is a strategic fact of its own which merits particular practical and scholarly attention. As defence planning creates the conditions behind every peace upheld or broken and every war won or lost, Defence Planning as Strategic Fact will be of great use to scholars of defence studies, strategic studies, and military studies. This book was originally published as a special issue of Defence Studies.
Into the Void
Author: James D. Kiras
Publisher: Hurst Publishers
Published: 2024-06-06
Total Pages: 278
ISBN-13: 1805262319
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe moment in the sun for special operations sometimes appears to have passed, seemingly eclipsed by preparations for potential conflict under the guise of ‘great power’ competition, combined with failure in Afghanistan. Yet the war in Ukraine serves as a reminder that special operations play an even greater role today―before, during and presumably after conflict. The challenge remains dealing with current irregular and hybrid threats, at the same time as preparing for an uncertain future, as threats and technologies evolve at a dizzying pace. Focusing too much on the future of conventional warfare creates a void in national security discussions related to special operations. This book seeks to fill that gap, drawing on the expertise of scholars and practitioners in the field, from the Indo-Pacific, Europe and the United States, to answer what, if anything, special operations can or should seek to do, and how. The contributors explore such topics as proxies, non-state special forces, capabilities, innovation and transformation, artificial intelligence, and special operations in space and cyberspace. These chapters are united by their analysis that special operations will have future strategic and operational value, for allies and adversaries alike, provided that difficult choices are made in the present.
Charting a Course: Strategic Choices for a New Administration
Author: Richard D. Hooker (Jr.)
Publisher: Government Printing Office
Published: 2016
Total Pages: 400
ISBN-13: 9780160937446
DOWNLOAD EBOOKExcerpt from Charting a Course: Strategic Choices for a New Administration: The new administration takes office in a time of great complexity. Our new President faces a national security environment shaped by strong currents: globalization; the proliferation of new, poor, and weak states, as well as nonstate actors; an enduring landscape of violent extremist organizations; slow economic growth; the rise of China and a revanchist Russia; a collapsing Middle East; and a domestic politics wracked by division and mistrust. While in absolute terms the Nation and the world are safer than in the last century, today the United States finds itself almost on a permanent war footing, engaged in military operations around the world. [...] No formal document describes a grand strategy for the United States, and indeed, many academics deny that one exists. Yet a close look at our history as a world power suggests that core interests and how we secure them have remained generally consistent over time. If grand strategy "rises above particular strategies intended to secure particular objectives," many decades of focusing on nuclear deterrence, power projection, alliances and partnerships, and military and economic strength probably constitute the underpinnings of a coherent grand strategy. How we employ and leverage these instruments of national power to protect, defend, and advance the national interest is, after all, the essence of grand strategy. In a dangerous world, these pillars have provided a strong foundation for national security. If our domestic politics can achieve consensus on future threats and solutions, America is well positioned to lead and prosper in a world that will remain both dangerous and uncertain. R.D. Hooker, Jr. Director, Institute for National Strategic Studies National Defense University Washington, D.C. Related items: Policy Analysis in National Security Affairs: New Methods for a New Era can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-020-01561-0 Operationalizing Counter Threat Finance Strategies can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-000-01131-1
The Future of Strategy
Author: Colin S. Gray
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2016-02-01
Total Pages: 164
ISBN-13: 1509510567
DOWNLOAD EBOOKStrategy is not a modern invention. It is an essential and enduring feature of human history that is here to stay. In this original essay, Colin S. Gray, world-renowned scholar of strategic thought, discusses the meaning of strategy and its importance for politicians and the military as a means of achieving desired outcomes in complex, uncertain conditions. Drawing on a wide range of examples from the Great Peloponnesian War to the Second World War, Vietnam, and the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Gray ably shows how great military thinkers of the past and present have acted strategically in their various ideological, political, geographical and cultural contexts. Looking to the future, he argues that strategy will continue to provide a vital tool-kit for survival and security, but that the global threat posed by nuclear weapons remains an on-going challenge without obvious practical solutions. As Gray boldy asserts, there is no promised land ahead, only hard and dangerous times that will require us to master the theory and practice of strategy to secure our own future.
Communitarian Foreign Policy
Author: Nikolas K. Gvosdev
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-07-05
Total Pages: 341
ISBN-13: 1351527444
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume establishes Amitai Etzioni's communitarian approach to international relations as a distinct school of American foreign policy thought. Nikolas K. Gvosdev systematically evaluates Etzioni's ideas, tracing their origins during the Cold War and their relevance to current challenges in Asia and the Middle East, and considering their strengths and weaknesses.Etzioni agrees with liberal internationalists who believe that traditional notions of state sovereignty are eroding and that a new set of global norms is required. However, he argues against the imposition of Western policies on the rest of the world, which he sees as a recipe for conflict which the United States cannot afford. He warns against the post-Cold War triumphalism, arguing that it undercuts efforts to find necessary common ground with both Russia and China. An enduring and stable global architecture cannot be maintained unless it appeals to the interests of a broad community of nations. The trust that is needed for forming closer associations between nations and to have a productive dialogue on human rights can only come about through the voluntary coordination of states forced to combat an increasing array of transnational threats.
The New Nuclear Disorder
Author: Stephen J. Cimbala
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-02-17
Total Pages: 250
ISBN-13: 1317022718
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn the twenty-first century, the United States confronts an international system of great complexity and shifting security challenges. Among these challenges are those posed by nuclear weapons. Instead of becoming obsolete or being marginalized by the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union, nuclear weapons have become more important to present and future international stability and peace but the relationship is paradoxical. On one hand, the spread of nuclear weapons to additional states with unsettled grievances or hegemonic ambitions threatens to destabilize local balances of power and set off regional arms races. In addition, the possible acquisition by terrorists of nuclear weapons or fissile materials creates a threat that may be ’beyond deterrence’ according to hitherto accepted concepts. On the other hand, nuclear weapons in the hands of other states can contribute to stable deterrence and help to prevent nuclear proliferation to international miscreants. Certain cases loom large in the short run that highlight this book’s relevance, including the possible acquisition and deployment of nuclear weapons by Iran and the continuing tensions created by North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. The Obama ’pivot’ of national security and defense emphasis to Asia reflects not only the growing economic importance of that region, but also the growing number of security dilemmas in a region that is already awash in nuclear forces. The management of nuclear crises and even the possible need to terminate nuclear wars before they expand beyond a single region are among the possible challenges facing future U.S. and allied policy makers and military leaders.
