Decisive Point Podcast

Decisive Point Podcast | March 12, 2024

“Are Retired Flag Officers Overparticipating in the Political Process?”

Retired United States general and flag officers participate politically as individuals and in groups. Purportedly, participation damages civil-military relations. This article argues these activities, including but not limited to endorsements of

Decisive Point Podcast | Feb. 28, 2024

“Competing for Global Influence: How Best to Assess Potential Strategic ...

To compete effectively for global influence, US Army and defense planners should focus on economic globalization in addition to security interests when assessing potential foreign military partners. The results of a quantitative analysis of US-led

Decisive Point Podcast | Feb. 15, 2024

"Introduction to the China Landpower Studies Center"

The China Landpower Studies Center will open in 2024. It is intended to be an approachable organization. It will tackle the complex and pressing questions about China’s emergence as a global power and its implications for the US military and provide

Decisive Point Podcast | Feb. 6, 2024

"Reflexive Control: Influencing Strategic Behavior"

Reflexive control aims to change the other’s perceptions about their utility sets. It contains underlying elements that could help give structure to analyses of strategic behavior by using a nonlinear approach that aims to improve the quality of

Decisive Point Podcast | Dec. 15, 2023

“Ambivalent Balancer in the Middle East and Beyond”

This podcast enters the debate on American grand strategy by questioning the logic underpinning offshore balancing. It concludes that the United States is an ambivalent balancer due to the stopping power of water. It builds on the relevant literature

Decisive Point Podcast | Dec. 7, 2023

"Deterring Russian Nonstrategic Nuclear Weapons A Revised Approach"

A change in deterrence thought and strategy is necessary to avoid nuclear escalation in armed conflict with Russia. Traditional threat-based deterrence strategies will not be successful, and a new strategy must address the conditions that might cause

Decisive Point Podcast | Nov. 30, 2023

Ukraine's Lessons for Future Combat: Unmanned Aerial Systems and Deep St...

The Russia-Ukraine War holds many lessons for the US Army and American policymakers and leaders on the nature and role of reconnaissance-strike complexes in modern combat, especially Ukraine’s development of a battle-management system that uses

Decisive Point Podcast | Nov. 22, 2023

“Was the Russian Invasion of Ukraine a Failure of Western Deterrence?"

In February 2022, many observers initially evaluated the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a failure of Western deterrence. That assessment was and is flawed inasmuch as the West never articulated a clear strategy to deter such an invasion. Engaging

Decisive Point Podcast | Nov. 17, 2023

The Impact of Antarctic Treaty Challenges on the US Military

The Antarctic Treaty of 1961 largely prevented conflicts on the continent, but growing pressure on the treaty system could affect the global community and the United States. This article utilizes historical documents and press reports to examine

Decisive Point Podcast | Nov. 16, 2023

Urban Resistance to Occupation: An Underestimated Element of Land Warfare`

Due to a global trend toward urbanization and Russian and Chinese aggression toward Ukraine and Taiwan, respectively, urban resistance to occupation merits greater study. The research here presents a much-needed and unique analysis of Dutch-language

Decisive Point Podcast | Oct. 30, 2023

The Strategic Importace of Tawian to the United States and Its Allies: P...

Taiwan has become increasingly important to the United States and its allies as the Russia-Ukraine War has united democracies against authoritarian expansionism and indeed has developed an international democracy-authoritarianism dynamic in global

Decisive Point Podcast | Oct. 16, 2023

US-Russia Foreign Policy: Confronting Russia’s Geographic Anxieties

The United States must place Russia’s focus on geographic concerns at the center of future strategy development to build a constructive relationship with Russia and achieve US regional goals. This article analyzes Russia’s geography and historical

Decisive Point Podcast | Oct. 5, 2023

The Chechen Kadyrovtsy’s Coercive Violence in Ukraine

Chechnya is a region of the Russian Federation, and its native Chechen society is Islamic and tribal, which is very different from Russia's Orthodox and non-tribal society. In the 1990s, Chechnya tried to cede from Russia in the context of the wider

Decisive Point Podcast | Sept. 29, 2023

A Call to Action: Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force

Fifty years ago, the US Army faced a strategic inflection point after a failed counterinsurgency effort in Vietnam. In response to lessons learned from the Yom Kippur War, the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command was created to reorient

Decisive Point Podcast | Sept. 28, 2023

A Historical Perspective on Today’s Recruiting Crisis

.adetail.news .article-body { max-width: 90% !important; }This podcast analyzes the US Army’s successive recruiting crises, identifying their consistent patterns and the efforts to resolve them, and makes three provocative arguments. First, there is

Decisive Point Podcast | Sept. 12, 2023

Parameters Autumn 2023 Issue Preview

This podcast offers a preview of the latest Parameters demi-issue and full issue. Read the issue here: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss3/7/

Decisive Point Podcast | Aug. 23, 2023

Change and Innovation in the Institutional Army from 1860–2020

This episode showcases the understudied institutional Army, the generating force, as a critical prerequisite for overall strategic success. Competition, crisis, and conflict require more than the manned, trained, and equipped units that deploy. This

Decisive Point Podcast | Aug. 8, 2023

"Innovation, Flexibility, and Adaptation: Keys to Patton’s Information D...

In 1944, Third US Army created a cohesive and flexible system for managing information and denying it to the enemy that aligned operational concepts with technological capabilities. The organization’s success in the European Theater highlights its

Decisive Point Podcast | July 31, 2023

"The Strategic Importance of Taiwan to the United States and Its Allies"

This podcast presents four factors to consider in evaluating Taiwan’s strategic importance to the United States and its allies and answers a question often raised at forums concerning the Indo-Pacific: “Why should the United States care” about this

Decisive Point Podcast | July 5, 2023

“Understanding the Adversary: Strategic Empathy and Perspective Taking i...

National security practitioners need to understand the motives, mindsets, and intentions of adversaries to anticipate and respond to their actions effectively. Although some authors have argued empathy helps build an understanding of the adversary,

Decisive Point Podcast | June 30, 2023

“Geniuses Dare to Ride Their Luck: Clausewitz's Card Game Analogies”

Scholars have been using the wrong card games to analyze Carl von Clausewitz’s analogies in On War, which has led to errors in understanding his ideas. This podcast identifies the games Clausewitz discusses, allowing for a more accurate

Decisive Point Podcast | June 8, 2023

“Responding to Future Pandemics: Biosecurity Implications and Defense Co...

In an evolving and expanding biothreat landscape caused by emerging biotechnologies, increases in global infectious disease outbreaks, and geopolitical instability, the Department of Defense now faces challenges that alter its traditional approach to

Decisive Point Podcast | June 2, 2023

“Taiwan’s Food Resiliency—or Not—in a Conflict with China”

The US military, intelligence, and diplomatic communities have overlooked a key vulnerability in their assessment of a potential military conflict between China and Taiwan—Taiwan’s growing reliance on agricultural imports and its food stocks (except

Decisive Point Podcast | May 16, 2023

“Daoism and Design: Mapping the Conflict in Syria”

In contemporary military operations, some problems are so complex they do not give way to linear solutions but require problem management instead. Combining the fundamentals of Dao De Jing philosophy with the US military design process offers a new

Decisive Point Podcast | April 26, 2023

Parameters Summer Preview

This podcast offers a preview of the latest Parameters demi-issue and full issue.

Decisive Point Podcast | April 12, 2023

“Minotaurs, Not Centaurs: The Future of Manned-Unmanned Teaming”

Contesting Paul Scharre’s influential vision of “centaur warfighting” and the idea that autonomous weapon systems will replace human warfighters, Sparrow and Henschke propose that the manned-unmanned teams of the future are more likely to be

Decisive Point Podcast | April 5, 2023

“The Case for an Army Stability Professional”

The US Army is unprepared to occupy and stabilize territory because it does not adequately educate active-duty officers to do so. One way to professionalize the Army’s ability to carry out military government and stability operations is to develop

Decisive Point Podcast | March 27, 2023

“Enhancing US Global Competitiveness through Women, Peace, and Security”

In this episode: Global powers, regional hegemons, and non-state actors engaged in a perennial state of competition dominate today’s security environment. In response, the Department of Defense has adopted the competition continuum model of

Decisive Point Podcast | March 13, 2023

Review and Reply: On “Why America’s Army Can’t Win America’s Wars”

Since achieving victory in World War II, the United States military has a less than enviable combat record in irregular warfare. This exchange provides differing perspectives on where past decisions and doctrines have led to defeat and where they may

Decisive Point Podcast | March 9, 2023

“Factoring Gender into Kinetic Operations”

US military practice neither considers the gendered effects of kinetic actions in the planning and executing operations nor tracks and measures them. The Department of Defense’s implementation of the Women, Peace, and Security Act of 2017 instead

Decisive Point Podcast | Feb. 19, 2023

“Afghanistan: The Logic of Failing Fast and Slow”

In the fifth installment of the SRAD Director’s Corner, “Afghanistan: The Logic of Failing, Fast and Slow,” George Shatzer focuses on the failure of the US-led war and reconstruction campaign in Afghanistan. He reviews The Forty-year War in

Decisive Point Podcast | Feb. 17, 2023

“Defeat in Afghanistan: An Autopsy”

Policy initiatives in the Trump administration and the Biden-Harris administration significantly accelerated the Taliban victory in Afghanistan. This podcast supports the conclusion that the major factors in this defeat were the historical difficulty

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