Decisive Point Podcast

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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/

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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,

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | April 26, 2023

Parameters Summer Preview

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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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

SRAD | 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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