Whatever roles military strategic leaders play… they do so as experts in the fighting and winning of wars. Welcome to the inaugural edition of WAR ROOM’s Whiteboard, which invites...
We invite you, our WAR ROOM readers, to join in the conversation and add to the Whiteboard. If you were faced with a vexing complex problem, how would you...
One point is unequivocal: U.S. engagement had not adequately facilitated Mali’s security abilities During a visit to Mali in early 2011, a senior official from United States Africa Command...
How do we take an institution … that is designed to collect sensitive material and incorporate everything else that is out there [– Journalism, social media, academic literature, etc.]?...
Instead of what the Melian dialogue tells us, which is that ‘Might Makes Right,’ … when it comes to Supreme Command, ‘Right Makes Might.’ Whoever has the superior decisions...
30 years ago, we still talked about deterrence a lot in this country. We still talked about nuclear weapons in this country. Today, the broader population does not, and...
The U.S. can do worse than emulate the strategy of an empire that survived for a thousand years. The Roman Empire was the longest-lasting empire in world history, enduring...
It’s silly to expect that intelligence will always get it right. WAR ROOM welcomes Dr. Richard Betts from Columbia University to discuss what success and failure really mean in...
DoD will continue to struggle to develop and employ effective cyber capabilities if it continues putting old wine in new bottles – applying a bad personnel model to the...
What a President or any other senior leader brings with him or her to office in inevitably a simplified view of how the world works. Is it critical that...
to use intelligence properly, commanders must exercise the operational art to integrate ends, ways, and means, while considering risk. There is no substitute for reflective judgment. It would seem...
If they come out with an after-action review or lessons learned from Iraq and all it talks about is how officers executed the war, then you know the Army...
Failure is not just the result of one part of the equation. [Sometimes] you can give the right piece of intelligence and they won’t act on it. What does...
Reduced to its raw essence, foreign policy is still about the calculation of power. No more euphemisms. Blunt words backed by blunt power have to be the order of...
People say, “Well, people break the rules of warfare all the time, so why should we have rules?” Is there an absolute moral and ethical framework that guides forces...
Traditional deterrence is transparent, certain, and rational. … The new approach to deterrence … embraces the chaos. The world is in chaos. Many ignore it; others seek to tame...
For national security officials who are wading through floods of information, how do they find that nugget, … that piece of information that fits with all the other pieces?...
The National Defense Strategy is explicit in its recognition that U.S. strategic advantage is eroding. Competition does not always mean hostility…an America that successfully competes is the best way...
In an organization in which … ‘manageR’ is an insult, it is not easy to convince people that defense management is valuable. We are pleased to announce the publication...
A story … breaks down more complicated theoretical concepts into something that is relatable. Among the challenges of educating senior national security professionals is that the dynamics and complexity...