Recent Publications

Strategic Insights: Five Myths Associated With Employing Private Military Companies
April 5, 2019 — Authors: Dr Edward Mienie, Dr C. A. Pfaff In August of 2017, Blackwater founder Erik Prince offered a plan for privatizing the war in Afghanistan, where he would replace the approximately 23,000 multinational forces (of which 15,000 are U.S. troops) and 27,000 contractors with 2,000 special forces and 6,000 security contractors who would embed with... MORE

Cover for Strategic Insights: Five Myths Associated With Employing Private Military Companies

Radical Islamist English-Language Online Magazines: Research Guide, Strategic Insights, and Policy Response
August 8, 2018 — Author: Pamela L. Bunker, Dr Robert J BunkerView the Executive SummaryThis Strategic Studies Institute book provides a comprehensive research guide to radical Islamist English-language online magazines, eBooks, and assorted radical Islamist news magazines, reports, and pocketbooks published between April-May 2007 and November 2016, and generates... MORE

Cover for Radical Islamist English-Language Online Magazines: Research Guide, Strategic Insights, and Policy Response

Strategic Insights: Revolutionary Change Is Coming to Strategic Leadership
December 19, 2017 — Dr. Steven MetzClausewitz famously observed that war has an enduring nature and a changing character that evolves over time as technology, society, economics, and politics shift. This observation also applies to strategic leadership: it too has an enduring nature and a changing character.The enduring nature manifests itself as characteristics that... MORE

Strategic Insights: Proxy War Norms
December 18, 2017 — Dr. C. Anthony PfaffCurrent trends in international relations suggest the United States will place a greater reliance on international partners in securing vital national interests. Growing assertiveness by regional state actors, increasingly capable nonstate actors, and a “war-weary” American public suggest the emergence of a “polyarchic” world... MORE

Strategic Insights: Lost in Translation
August 17, 2017 — Author: Dr M Chris Mason In a change from the Vietnam War—where the U.S. military trained at least 45,000 deploying service members to speak Vietnamese and probably twice that number—for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, apart from some remotely-based intelligence specialists doing classified work, the U.S. military trained almost no deploying... MORE

Strategic Insights: U.S.-China Relations: Avoiding the Traps
July 19, 2017 — Professor John F. TroxellMuch has been written about the rise of China and the tensions that this has put on the international system. The potential for conflict between the United States and China can be compared to the Peloponnesian War, as told by the ancient historian Thucydides, and the inevitability of that war because of Sparta’s fear of a... MORE

Strategic Insights: Speed Kills—Enter an Age of Unbridled Hyperconnectivity
June 9, 2017 — Mr. Nathan P. FreierThis month, a team of U.S. Army War College (USAWC) researchers concluded a yearlong study on enterprise-level risk and risk assessment inside the Department of Defense (DoD). At Our Own Peril: DoD Risk and Risk Assessment in a Post-Primacy World argues for a new Department-level risk concept for describing, identifying,... MORE

Strategic Insights: Caribbean Security Issues
May 16, 2017 — Dr. R. Evan EllisINTRODUCTIONOutside of military, law enforcement, and some academic circles, security issues are rarely part of the discourse about the Caribbean. Yet, during the Cold War, the region’s contiguity with the United States made its largest island, Cuba, the focal point of the world’s closest publicly known approximation to nuclear... MORE

Strategic Insights: Strategic Questions Loom Large for President Trump in the Middle East
April 11, 2017 — Dr. Christopher J. Bolan“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Sun TzuThe primary shortcoming of U.S. policymakers since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, has been a consistent inability to translate tactical and operational military successes into sustainable... MORE

Strategic Insights: Getting Comfortable with Conflicting Ideas
April 4, 2017 — Prof. William G. Braun, IIIDealing with other states, whom the United States has a hard time categorizing as a threat, rival, competitor, or partner requires a new way of approaching national security decision-making. China is a partner in trade, but a rival regarding territorial rights in the South China Sea. Russian support may stabilize the... MORE

Strategic Insights: Is the European Union Really That Important to U.S. Security Interests?
March 9, 2017 — Dr. John R. DeniQuestioning long-held assumptions and challenging existing paradigms in U.S. security policy can be a useful way to ensure that American leaders are not pursuing strategies that do not actually support and promote U.S. interests. However, on the question of whether the European Union’s (EU) existence is in U.S. interests, the... MORE

Strategic Insights: Reimagining U.S. Foreign Assistance in the Middle East
February 7, 2017 — Author: Dr Christopher J BolanView the Executive Summary U.S. President Donald Trump has proved himself willing to question and challenge many of the conventional wisdoms embedded in contemporary American foreign policies. During his presidential campaign, he questioned the utility of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that has formed... MORE