Transformation and Strategic Surprise
Transformation and Strategic Surprise

Author:

Publisher: DIANE Publishing

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 46

ISBN-13: 1428910166

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Though discounted by Clausewitz in the circumstances of his era, strategic surprise has enjoyed considerable popularity over the past century. The possibility of achieving decisive results from attacks launched on short, or zero, warning has appeared to improve greatly with advances in technology. It follows that surprise has been recognized as offering what seem to be both golden opportunities and lethal dangers. Since surprise is an ironbound necessity for the tactical success of terrorism, it is understandable that it attracts a major degree of attention today. There is no real novelty about this. After all, for 40 years the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies perpetually worried about surprise attack on the Central Front in Europe, as well as about a surprise first strike designed to disarm the United States of its ability to retaliate with its strategic nuclear forces.

Transformation and Strategic Surprise
Transformation and Strategic Surprise

Author: Colin S. Gray

Publisher: Strategic Studies Institute

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 56

ISBN-13:

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The current process of military transformation will enable the Armed Forces to do better what they already do superbly well. It is important to excel at decisive maneuver and in the application of precise, yet overwhelming firepower. But those attributes, though key in warfare against regular enemies, tend to be less valuable in conflict with irregulars. In war after war, the United States has been surprised by the poor political reward it has earned for its military effort. The IT-led transformation will do nothing to help correct the persisting American difficulty in functioning strategically and politically in its conduct of war. The author develops a cumulative seven-point argument.

Managing Strategic Surprise
Managing Strategic Surprise

Author: Paul Bracken

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2008-08-07

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9780521709606

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The scope and applicability of risk management have expanded greatly over the past decade. Banks, corporations, and public agencies employ its new technologies both in their daily operations and long-term investments. It would be unimaginable today for a global bank to operate without such systems in place. Similarly, many areas of public management, from NASA to the Centers for Disease Control, have recast their programs using risk management strategies. It is particularly striking, therefore, that such thinking has failed to penetrate the field of national security policy. Venturing into uncharted waters, Managing Strategic Surprise brings together risk management experts and practitioners from different fields with internationally-recognized national security scholars to produce the first systematic inquiry into risk and its applications in national security. The contributors examine whether advance risk assessment and management techniques can be successfully applied to address contemporary national security challenges.

Intelligence and Surprise Attack
Intelligence and Surprise Attack

Author: Erik J. Dahl

Publisher: Georgetown University Press

Published: 2013-07-19

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1589019989

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How can the United States avoid a future surprise attack on the scale of 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, in an era when such devastating attacks can come not only from nation states, but also from terrorist groups or cyber enemies? Intelligence and Surprise Attack examines why surprise attacks often succeed even though, in most cases, warnings had been available beforehand. Erik J. Dahl challenges the conventional wisdom about intelligence failure, which holds that attacks succeed because important warnings get lost amid noise or because intelligence officials lack the imagination and collaboration to “connect the dots” of available information. Comparing cases of intelligence failure with intelligence success, Dahl finds that the key to success is not more imagination or better analysis, but better acquisition of precise, tactical-level intelligence combined with the presence of decision makers who are willing to listen to and act on the warnings they receive from their intelligence staff. The book offers a new understanding of classic cases of conventional and terrorist attacks such as Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Midway, and the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The book also presents a comprehensive analysis of the intelligence picture before the 9/11 attacks, making use of new information available since the publication of the 9/11 Commission Report and challenging some of that report’s findings.

Japan’s Decision For War In 1941: Some Enduring Lessons
Japan’s Decision For War In 1941: Some Enduring Lessons

Author: Dr. Jeffrey Record

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2015-11-06

Total Pages: 105

ISBN-13: 1786252961

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Japan’s decision to attack the United States in 1941 is widely regarded as irrational to the point of suicidal. How could Japan hope to survive a war with, much less defeat, an enemy possessing an invulnerable homeland and an industrial base 10 times that of Japan? The Pacific War was one that Japan was always going to lose, so how does one explain Tokyo’s decision? Did the Japanese recognize the odds against them? Did they have a concept of victory, or at least of avoiding defeat? Or did the Japanese prefer a lost war to an unacceptable peace? Dr. Jeffrey Record takes a fresh look at Japan’s decision for war, and concludes that it was dictated by Japanese pride and the threatened economic destruction of Japan by the United States. He believes that Japanese aggression in East Asia was the root cause of the Pacific War, but argues that the road to war in 1941 was built on American as well as Japanese miscalculations and that both sides suffered from cultural ignorance and racial arrogance. Record finds that the Americans underestimated the role of fear and honor in Japanese calculations and overestimated the effectiveness of economic sanctions as a deterrent to war, whereas the Japanese underestimated the cohesion and resolve of an aroused American society and overestimated their own martial prowess as a means of defeating U.S. material superiority. He believes that the failure of deterrence was mutual, and that the descent of the United States and Japan into war contains lessons of great and continuing relevance to American foreign policy and defense decision-makers.

Street Gangs
Street Gangs

Author: Max G. Manwaring

Publisher:

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 68

ISBN-13:

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The primary thrust of the monograph is to explain the linkage of contemporary criminal street gangs (that is, the gang phenomenon or third generation gangs) to insurgency in terms f the instability it wreaks upon government and the concomitant challenge to state sovereignty. Although there are differences between gangs and insurgents regarding motives and modes of operations, this linkage infers that gang phenomena are mutated forms of urban insurgency. In these terms, these "new" nonstate actors must eventually seize political power in order to guarantee the freedom of action and the commercial environment they want. The common denominator that clearly links the gang phenomenon to insurgency is that the third generation gangs' and insurgents' ultimate objective is to depose or control the governments of targeted countries. As a consequence, the "Duck Analogy" applies. Third generation gangs look like ducks, walk like ducks, and act like ducks - a peculiar breed, but ducks nevertheless! This monograph concludes with recommendations for the United States and other countries to focus security and assistance responses at the strategic level. The intent is to help leaders achieve strategic clarity and operate more effectively in the complex politically dominated, contemporary global security arena.

Surprise Attack
Surprise Attack

Author: Ephraim KAM

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 0674039297

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Ephraim Kam observes surprise attack through the eyes of its victim in order to understand the causes of the victim's failure to anticipate the coming of war. Emphasing the psychological aspect of warfare, Kam traces the behavior of the victim at various functional levels and from several points of view in order to examine the difficulties and mistakes that permit a nation to be taken by surprise. He argues that anticipation and prediction of a coming war are more complicated than any other issue of strategic estimation, involving such interdependent factors as analytical contradictions, judgemental biases, organizational obstacles, and political as well as military constraints. Surprise Attack: The Victim's Perspective offers implications based on the intelligence perspective, providing both historical background and scientific analysis that draws from the author's vast experience. The book is of utmost value to all those engaged in intelligence work, and to those whose operational or political responsibility brings them in touch with intelligence assessments and the need to authenticate and then adopt them or discount them. Similarly, the book will interest any reader intrigued by decision-making processes that influence individuals and nations at war, and sometimes even shape national destiny. --Ehud Barak, Former Prime Minister of Israel

One Mission
One Mission

Author: Chris Fussell

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2017-06-13

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0735211361

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From the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Team of Teams, a practical guide for leaders looking to make their organizations more interconnected and unified in the midst of sudden change. Too often, companies end up with teams stuck in their own silos, pursuing goals and metrics in isolation. Their traditional autocratic structures create stability, scalability, and predictability -- but in a world that demands rapid adaptation to a new reality, this traditional model simply doesn’t work. In Team of Teams, retired four-star General Stanley McChrystal and former Navy SEAL Chris Fussell made the case for a new organizational model combining the agility, adaptability, and cohesion of a small team with the power and resources of a giant organization. Now, in One Mission, Fussell channels all his experiences, both military and corporate, into powerful strategies for unifying isolated and distrustful teams. This practical guide will help leaders in any field implement the Team of Teams approach to tear down their silos improve collaboration, and avoid turf wars. By committing to one higher mission, organizations develop an overall capability that far exceeds the sum of their parts. From Silicon Valley software giant Intuit to a government agency on the plains of Oklahoma, organizations have used Fussell’s methods to unite their people around a single compelling vision, resulting in superior performance. One Mission will help you follow their example to a more agile and resilient future.

Coping with Surprise in Great Power Conflicts
Coping with Surprise in Great Power Conflicts

Author: Mark F. Cancian

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-03-23

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 1442280727

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Surprise has always been an element of warfare, but the return of great power competition—and the high-level threat that it poses—gives urgency to thinking about surprise now. Because the future is highly uncertain, and great powers have not fought each other for over 70 years, surprise is highly likely in a future great power conflict. This study, therefore, examines potential surprises in a great power conflict, particularly in a conflict’s initial stages when the interaction of adversaries’ technologies, prewar plans, and military doctrines first becomes manifest. It is not an attempt to project the future. Rather, it seeks to do the opposite: explore the range of possible future conflicts to see where surprises might lurk.