Recent Publications

The Return of the Latin American Left
March 1, 2006 — Author: Dr Alex Crowther Each month a member of the SSI faculty writes an editorial for our monthly newsletter. This is the Op-Ed for the March 2006 newsletter.Read Now MORE

Planning For and Applying Military Force: An Examination of Terms
March 1, 2006 — Author: LTG Paul K Van Riper The author briefly examines current and in some cases still evolving definitions in joint doctrine--especially as regards strategy, center of gravity, decisive point, and commander's intent. He discusses the heritage of those concepts and terms, most of which derived from the writings of Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, and... MORE

The Challenge of Governance and Security
March 1, 2006 — Author: Dr Max G Manwaring The Latin American and Caribbean Center of Florida International University, the U.S. Southern Command, and the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College held the ninth in a series of major annual conferences dealing with security and defense matters in the Western Hemisphere on February 1-3, 2006, in... MORE

Kim Jong Il and North Korea: The Leader and the System
March 1, 2006 — Author: Dr Andrew Scobell In the first decade of the 21st century, few national security challenges facing the United States is as vexing as that posed by North Korea. It is a paradox because it appears to be a very powerful state—possessing the world's fourth largest armed forces, a sizeable arsenal of ballistic missiles, and a worrying nuclear... MORE

CU @ The FOB: How the Forward Operating Base is Changing the Life of Combat Soldiers
March 1, 2006 — Authors: Dr Stephen J Gerras, Dr Leonard Wong The situation in post-war Iraq is producing combat veterans accustomed to a perspective of combat that differs greatly from past wars. The Forward Operating Base (FOB) has become the mainstay of the U.S. presence in Iraq. The authors explore the facets of fighting from the FOB. Their research shows that... MORE

Multilateral Constraints on the Use of Force: A Reassessment
March 1, 2006 — Author: Dr Seyom Brown The difficulty of achieving a multilateral consensus in the NATO Alliance can create more of a crisis than does the difficulty of generating an effective UN response to threats to international peace and security. NATO was supposed to be America's prime multilateral institution for obtaining legitimation and support of... MORE

Training Indigenous Forces in Counterinsurgency: A Tale of Two Insurgencies
March 1, 2006 — Author: Dr James S Corum The author examines the British experience in building and training indigenous police and military forces during the Malaya and Cyprus insurgencies. These two insurgencies provide a dramatic contrast to the issue of training local security forces. In Malaya, the British developed a very successful strategy for training the... MORE

Irregular Enemies and the Essence of Strategy: Can the American Way of War Adapt?
March 1, 2006 — Author: Dr Colin S Gray The author offers a detailed comparison between the character of irregular warfare, insurgency in particular, and the principal enduring features of "the American way." He concludes that there is a serious mismatch between that "way" and the kind of behavior that is most effective in countering irregular foes. The author... MORE

Is there a Positive Side to Al Jazeera?
February 1, 2006 — Author: Dr W Andrew Terrill Each month a member of the SSI faculty writes an editorial for our monthly newsletter. This is the Op-Ed for the February 2006 newsletter.Read Now MORE

Recognizing and Understanding Revolutionary Change in Warfare: The Sovereignty of Context
February 1, 2006 — Author: Dr Colin S Gray The author provides a critical audit of the great RMA debate and of some actual RMA behavior and warns against a transformation that is highly potent only in a narrow range of strategic cases. He warns that the military effectiveness of a process of revolutionary change in a "way of war" can only be judged by the test of... MORE

Strategic Theory for the 21st Century: The Little Book on Big Strategy
February 1, 2006 — Author: Dr Harry R Yarger The word "strategy" pervades American conversation and our news media and is most often used as a general term for a plan, a concept, a course of action, or a "vision" of the direction in which to proceed at the personal, organizational, and governmental—local, state, or federal—levels. Such casual use of the term to... MORE

U.S.-UK Relations at the Start of the 21st Century
January 1, 2006 — Authors: Dr Jeffrey D McCausland, Dr Douglas Stuart Although there is widespread agreement that the United States is the world's most powerful country in military, economic, and diplomatic terms, and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, there is little agreement as to how the rest of the world will react to America's lead. Theory has... MORE