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Sorting Through the Noise: The Evolving Nature of the Fog of War

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Earlier this year, The Strategy Bridge asked civilian and military students around the world to participate in our sixth annual student writing contest on the subject of strategy.

Now, we are pleased to present an essay selected for Honorable Mention from Dennis Murphy, a student at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs.

In June 2021, an automated identification system tracked two NATO ships close to Russian-occupied territory. Such a system is designed to track and monitor the location of ships while at sea. The usefulness of such a tool is intuitively obvious to anyone who wishes to engage in platform-heavy domains of conflict, or to intuit the strategic and operational inclinations of adversaries. There was only one problem: their location was falsified.[1] This was not the first time, and it will certainly not be the last. In July, Mark Harris warned that phantom ships are rapidly becoming the “latest weapons in the global information war.”[2]

Misinformation in naval warfare, or military statecraft more broadly, is far from new. Leading one’s adversaries into thinking you possess a greater number of vessels, or that the bulk of your forces are deployed to a different location, was standard practice in pre-modern naval campaigns. Though satellite tracking has largely made transparent the location of surface vessels, submarines continue the tradition of stealth. Under the sea, the fog of war remains as prevalent today as it ever was.

Unfortunately, there exists a troubling mindset, all too common among modern practitioners of strategy and operations. This pedagogy is increasingly incompatible with the fog of war. In this mindset, the idealization of the future of warfare is one where command and control is increasingly centralized, local commanders have near total battlespace awareness, and all-knowing algorithms will enable the near erasure of the fog of war. All decisions, from the grand strategic down to the tactical, will be informed by near-total domain awareness.

Such a mindset is understandable. Increased coordination, battlespace awareness, and reliance on algorithms has been central to the modern American way of war. Recent efforts surrounding Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) are merely the latest in a long line of innovations comprising this trend.[3]

White Noise (Jorge Stolfi/Wikimedia)

There’s just one major flaw: noise.

The Infinite Nature of Facts

We often forget that the potential points of information one can state about a particular thing are nearly infinite. While this may seem strange at first, it is a problem known in other disciplines as well. There is a well-known paradox about the mapping of coastlines and rivers. With every level of granularity, the length of the coastline increases. At a certain point, our measurements rise almost to infinity. As such, there is a point at which we must throw our hands up in the air and say that we have understood what is an acceptable amount of information about a particular environment. The coastline of Tonga is not nearly infinite, and not at all comparable to the United States. We know this to be true, but we do not seem to be aware that this same paradox emerges when discussing nearly any aspect of data.

As our tools become capable of picking up more information, we will see exponential growth in the number of derivable facts from those tools. For satellite imagery, this could be a combinatorially explosive number of pixels in a given area. For other sensors, this could mean picking up increasing variation in radio telemetry. Regardless of the instrument employed, this pattern will hold true. At a certain point, increasing our awareness of precise fluctuations in the surface of the world’s oceans or of the grains of sand on a beach will become useless, even if we could reliably know and understand everything we are seeing. More than that, algorithms trained on possessing monstrously large quantities of data will be flawed when employed in low-information conditions. Given that understanding everything that we see is impossible, we are increasingly forced to rely on algorithms to sort information into usable forms. This is a disaster waiting to happen.

In our quest to preempt strategic surprise, we are fostering the development of a system that will need to sort through truly unwieldy quantities of information. At a large level, human beings can verify most information that comes in, but as the amount of information grows, so too will the manpower required to understand it. Given limitations on the number of strategic thinkers and analysts that can be employed, tools enabled by artificial intelligence will be required. With every additional level of granularity acquired, so too will there be a greater reliance upon the tools we use to create order out of this chaos of our own making. This creates two vulnerabilities from within the system, and fosters another major vulnerability from outside of it.

Calculators Are Not Wise

The first vulnerability lies within the algorithms themselves. Too often, there is a romantic techno-fetishism permeating those who work with technology. That is, they believe the algorithm can do whatever they want, and it will work as intended. This is, of course, rubbish. Most algorithms are only as good as the programmer who creates them. At the heart of all artificial intelligence tools is a calculator. The calculator has no awareness of its action. It can only do what it is asked to do, and it will do so correctly. A major issue arises if there are no error signals when the algorithm is superficially correct, but catastrophically wrong at a systematic level. When dealing with simple units of analysis, or when the algorithms are constantly checked against the real world, catastrophic errors are potentially easily detectable. This is not true when algorithms deal with increasingly complex data.

When there is too much information to sort through, the programmers lose the ability to understand their machines. As we increase the power of our tools, we necessarily forfeit some fraction of our ability to double check our machines. This is not a new problem; we have known about it for years.[4] Given the amount of information some practitioners want our systems to be able to go through and understand, we will likely not be able to understand that something has gone wrong until we fail to engage with the adversary effectively, or some error emerges after months have gone by.

It is an irony for the ages that as our confidence in our ability to obtain a greater understanding of the strategic landscape of the twenty-first century grows, our real understanding will necessarily decrease. The armies of the future will make life and death decisions based on algorithms we do not, and cannot, fully understand. As we are increasingly pressured to reduce the presence of humans in conflict, from unmanned aircraft and vessels to an increased reliance on special forces, we will continually lose our ability to check in real time the validity of the artificial construction of reality our algorithms generate. If we ever fully make such a transition, we will be like the blind men who thought themselves to be all-seeing in ancient times.

Your Discriminators Can (and Will) Be Tricked

There is a never-ending war being waged among the algorithms involved in machine learning. This conflict is fought between generators and discriminators. The goal of the generator is to create something that can fool the discriminator. The goal of the discriminator is to detect the generator. This is a process that is integral to machine learning, and it is what makes spoofing possible at a higher level. As the generator gets better at faking results, the discriminator must get better at detecting them. This is how it is possible for artificial intelligence to generate realistic images of fake persons.[5] It is simple and easy to think of ways this can be used to foster wide-spread disinformation campaigns, and I wrote some sketches about the possibility in 2019. This has practical implications for the battlefield as well.

Machine learning requires the ability to recognize novel information. When you teach an algorithm to detect an object and correctly classify that object, you are training a discriminator. When one wants to be able to tell that an F-35 is, indeed, an F-35, you need to provide your algorithm with an enormous amount of training data on the F-35. You then test your algorithm by exposing it to new variations of data containing an F-35. As your discriminator improves, it is able to increase its accuracy on picking up instances of an F-35. In a world where everything is what it appears to be, this is where one might be tempted to stop. If something is an F-35, your discriminator should eventually get good enough to detect that it is, indeed, an F-35.

F-35 (Liz Kaszynski/Lockheed Martin)

When you want to see if you can generate fake data that will trick your discriminator into thinking an F-35 is present where it is not, you will employ a generator. The generator, when trained against a discriminator, will be able to detect patterns your discriminator is using in order to understand how to trick it. And just as one can trick the algorithm into seeing something that is not there, an adversary can camouflage itself. Since the amount of information these algorithms receive is mind-blowingly large, some hideously simple patterns may emerge to break the discriminator.  Such a thing would never pass visual inspection, but visual inspection is rendered impossible because of the amount of data one would need to sort through. You will not know that such an exploit exists until you are either incredibly lucky, or something blows up.

False positives for ships at sea can be the result of either your algorithms screwing up naturally on their own, or of adversarial intent. Unless you are in a competitive environment, you will have no reason to know for sure whether your algorithms were tricked or if they were merely stupid. As command-and-control systems become increasingly centralized, either error will be magnified. If a command thinks there is an adversarial fleet just off the shore of Alaska, it may devote air and sea resources to oppose it. Such an ability would naturally compromise our strategic and operational effectiveness elsewhere. Given events in the Black and North Seas, this is a vulnerability we should be especially on guard against. Strategic plans predicated on flawed or manipulated intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities will be doomed to fail.

Every time we react to something we think we see, we are providing information to the adversary about the vulnerabilities within our systems. Unless our systems are compromised and the adversary can infiltrate our communications and our artificial intelligence tools, an opposing state should have limited abilities to determine the efficacy of their spoofing attempts. If we ever start seeing complex spoofing efforts that lead us to believe platforms are present where they are not, we should not overreact. Rather, we should quietly analyze what caused the error, and correct for that error while making sure we maintain heightened levels of secrecy at every step.

If our systems ever do become compromised, however, it would be utterly disastrous. Should we ever succeed in completing our centralization of command and control, then if that were to be compromised, even for a moment, an adversary would know the location, capabilities, mission, and personnel of our forces to the same degree that our command and control did. This, coupled with hypersonic weapons, could be the short-term precursor to an imminent military defeat. This is a topic for another day, however.

Abundant Information is Habit Forming

When one’s decision-making paradigm is centered around possessing large amounts of information, its ability to function in low-information environments will become compromised. A JADC2 model of warfare is incompatible with information black-out conditions. If our commanding officers are trained to act as if they always possess information about the location of both adversarial and allied forces, it is worth questioning whether that training will serve them well in an environment where both friend and foe are uncertain. This is a necessary drawback of employing a system that seeks to banish the fog of war from war: what do you do when that system fails?

So much of our modern world is connected to the internet of things that it is often difficult to imagine an environment where the internet of things falls apart. Complicated relay information through satellite communications could be rendered impossible shortly after the onset of hostilities with a near-peer adversary. While a more localized form of command and control could be established around a particular fleet, this too can be disrupted through sophisticated and novel jamming technologies. Small drones that are difficult to target may be employed to damage the fidelity of communications and on-ship sensory capabilities, for instance.

So much of our modern world is connected to the internet of things that it is often difficult to imagine an environment where the internet of things falls apart.

Warfighting abilities would necessarily revert to older, slower, and less reliable means of communication and coordination to function in such an environment. Leaders would need to be comfortable with making high stakes decisions with low amounts of reliable information. The cloud is not permanent. Systems are vulnerable,[6] and often the technology that underpins them can be unreliable.[7] The type of omniscience that some practitioners desire is only possible in the most idealized conditions when facing a non-peer adversary. With that in mind, we can start to understand this mindset as a product of the Gulf War and the Global War on Terror. If we do not find a way to discard this liability, then our first conflict with a near-peer adversary will be yet another casualty of the twenty years of war we fought in Afghanistan.

Problems at the operational level will become magnified at the strategic level as policy planners continue to develop long-term plans based upon flawed or compromised models. How many disasters in human history have come about because leadership implemented strategies based upon groundless certainties? As we move to pursue all-of-government efforts to develop grand strategic plans, our efforts will be doomed to fail if we predicate our long-term plans on always knowing nearly everything about the balance of power across all DIME-FIL (Diplomatic, Information, Military, Economic, Financial, Intelligence, and Law enforcement) domains.

Sorting Through the Noise

It will be necessary for the modern strategist and military commander, regardless of which domain in which they operate, to be comfortable with the inherent fallibility of their tools. While sophisticated algorithms can generate convincingly granular models of reality, commanders should always maintain a healthy degree of skepticism regarding the information they receive. There is a natural trade-off between the volume of data and the ability of one’s staff to verify what they are reporting. Information sorted by artificial intelligence at high scales largely operates outside of programmer’s awareness, and is thus well beyond the capabilities of any individual commander to completely understand. 

This imperfect awareness necessarily means the models used will generate false positives. Tricking the system is a natural way an adversary will attempt to influence the battlespace of the future, either through spoofing or by camouflaging one’s own forces. Even if such threats could be mitigated, there is no system that is invulnerable. Disruptive technologies could very well be employed to dramatically reduce the efficacy of our tools, perhaps to the point where they become inoperable. Therefore, the modern military commander should also be comfortable operating in low information environments.

Contemporary strategists are at risk of losing sight of the real world when they uncritically embrace the fruits of the information revolution without understanding the fragility and vulnerabilities of the infrastructure of artificial intelligence that underpins it.

It is unfortunate that this is necessary not because of a lack of technology that we could make up for, but rather that it is an inherent problem of the very systems and paradigms we are employing to navigate the future of warfare. This does not mean we should abandon our approach. Instead, we must ensure that we are resilient in our approach to modern warfare.

We are at our most vulnerable when we believe unquestioningly both in the efficacy of our tools, and in the permanence of their presence.

Dennis Murphy is a PhD student at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs. He previously attended Johns Hopkins SAIS’ Strategic Studies and Tsinghua University’s Chinese Politics and Foreign Policy graduate programs. He is researching the implications of emerging technology on international security and strategy. 

The Strategy Bridge is read, respected, and referenced across the worldwide national security community—in conversation, education, and professional and academic discourse.

Thank you for being a part of the The Strategy Bridge community. Together, we can #BuildTheBridge.

Header Image: Tree in field during extreme cold with frozen fog. (Ian Furst/Wikimedia)

Notes:

[1] Sutton, HI. Positions of Two NATO Ships Were Falsified Near Russian Black Sea Naval BaseUSNI News, June 21, 2021 https://news.usni.org/2021/06/21/positions-of-two-nato-ships-were-falsified-near-russian-black-sea-naval-base

[2] Harris, Mark. “Phantom Warships Are Courting Chaos in Conflict Zones” WIRED, July 29, 2021 https://www.wired.com/story/fake-warships-ais-signals-russia-crimea/

[3] Tucker, Patrick. “The Future the US Military is Constructing: a Giant, Armed Nervous System” Defense One, September 17, 2017 https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2017/09/future-us-military-constructing-giant-armed-nervous-system/141303/

[4] Knight, Will. “The Dark Secret at the Heart of AI” MIT Technology Review, April 11, 2017 https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/04/11/5113/the-dark-secret-at-the-heart-of-ai/

[5] “This Person Does Not Exist” https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/

[6] Schneier, Bruce. “Vulnerabilities in Weapons Systems” Scheier on Security, June 8, 2021 https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/06/vulnerabilities-in-weapons-systems.html

[7] Tucker, Patrick. “Pentagon’s Accelerating ‘Connect-Everything’ Effort Hinges on Uncertain Cloud Program” Defense One, June 7, 2021 https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/06/pentagons-accelerating-connect-everything-effort-hinges-uncertain-cloud-program/174528/

National Styles, Strategic Empathy, and Cold War Nuclear Strategy

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Notes:

[1] James R. Schlesinger (Director of Central Intelligence, 1973, and Secretary of Defense, 1973-1975), Andrew W. Marshall (Director of the Office of Net Assessment, 1973-2015), and Fritz W. Ermarth (CIA and NSC strategic analyst) offered the sharpest critiques of early Cold War strategic analysis. See Schlesinger, “Address by Former DCI,” in Watching the Bear: Essays on CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union, eds. Gerald K. Haines and Robert E. Leggett (Central Intelligence Agency, 2003), 253-260; Marshall, “Arms Competitions: The Status of Analysis,” in Soviet Power and Western Negotiating Policies, Vol. II: The Western Panacea, Constraining Soviet Power Through Negotiation (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1983), 3-11; and Ermarth, “Contrasts in American and Soviet Strategic Thought,” International Security, vol. 3, no. 2 (Fall 1978): 138-155.

[2] Lawrence Freedman, U.S. Intelligence and the Soviet Strategic Threat, rev. ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 66-67 and John Prados, The Soviet Estimate: U.S. Intelligence Analysis and Soviet Military Strength (New York: The Dial Press, 1982), 38-50.

[3] For the missile gaps, see Freedman, U.S. Intelligence and the Soviet Strategic Threat, rev. ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), chapter 4 and John Prados, The Soviet Estimate: U.S. Intelligence Analysis and Soviet Military Strength (New York: The Dial Press, 1982), chapters 4 and 8.

[4] Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974 (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1992), 111-112 and National Reconnaissance Office, The Corona Story (Chantilly, VA: Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance, 2013), 59-61, 126.

[5] Freedman, U.S. Intelligence and the Soviet Strategic Threat, 78

[6] Steven J. Zaloga, The Kremlin’s Nuclear Sword: The Rise and Fall of Russia’s Strategic Nuclear Forces, 1945-2000 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2002), 60-61.

[7] Colin S. Gray, Nuclear Strategy and National Style (Lanham, MD: Hamilton Press, 1986), 33.

[8] Reina Pennington, “Military Culture, Military Efficiency, and the Red Army, 1917-1945,” in The Culture of Military Organizations, eds. Peter R. Mansoor and Williamson Murray (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 226-246 and Tsypkin, “Soviet Military Culture and the Legacy of the Second World War,” in Histories of the Aftermath: The Legacies of the Second World War in Europe, eds. Frank Bless and Robert G. Moeller (New York: Bergahn Books, 2010), 269-286.

[9] Jeremi Suri, “America’s Search for a Technological Solution to the Arms Race: The Surprise Attack Conference of 1958 and a Challenge for ‘Eisenhower Revisionists,’” Diplomatic History, vol. 21, no. 3, 439-443.

[10] For the influence of geography and historical experience on strategic culture, see Colin S. Gray, Modern Strategy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), ch. 5.

[11] Colin S. Gray, Nuclear Strategy and National Style (Lanham, MD: Hamilton Press, 1986).

[12] For the Soviets’ comparatively weaker power-projection capabilities, see Norman Polmar, Thomas A. Brooks, and George E. Federoff, Admiral Gorshkov: The Man Who Challenged the U.S. Navy (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2019). For the expectations of American naval analysts, see Christopher A. Ford and David A. Rosenherg, “The Naval Intelligence Underpinnings of Reagan’s Maritime Strategy,” The Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 28, no. 2 (April 2005): 381-382 and John B. Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy (Newport, RI: Naval War College), 23-24.

[13] Marc Tratchenberg, David Rosenberg, and Stephen Van Evera, An Interview with Carl Kaysen, MIT Security Studies Program, 8-11.

[14] Zaloga, The Kremlin’s Nuclear Sword, 18.

[15] I have drawn the concept of “strategic narcissism” from H. R. McMaster, who was influenced by political scientist Hans Morgenthau and historian Zachary Shore. See McMaster, Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World (New York: Harper, 2020), 9-17; Hans Morgenthau and Ethel Person, “The Roots of Narcissism,” Partisan Review 45, no. 3 (Summer 1978): 337-347; and Zachary Shore, Zachary Shore, A Sense of the Adversary: The High-Stakes History of Reading Your Rival’s Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014),

[16] Robert S. McNamara, “The Dynamics of Nuclear Strategy,” speech delivered 18 September 1967, reprinted in The Department of State Bulletin, LVII, no. 1475 (9 October 1967): 443-451.

[17] James Cameron, The Double Game: The Demise of America’s First Missile Defense System and the Rise of Strategic Arms Limitation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 62-66, 97-98.

[18] Gen.-Col. Andrian A. Danilevich interview, Soviet Intentions, 1965-1985; Vol. II: Soviet Post-Cold War Testimonial Evidence, eds. John G. Hines, Ellis M. Mishulovich, and John F. Shull (McLean, VA: The BDM Corporation, 1995), 33.

[19] Danilevich interview, Soviet Intentions, 1965-1985; Vol. II, 30.

[20] At the RAND Corporation, Schlesinger’s coterie included perceptive analysts like Fritz Ermarth who acknowledged the distinctive national style of the Soviet Union. For Ermarth’s seminal work on the subject, see “Contrasts in American and Soviet Strategic Thought,” International Security, 3, no. 2 (Fall 1978): 138-155.

[21] James R. Schlesinger, “Arms Interaction and Arms Control,” Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, P-3881, 1967, 1-2. As of 25 October 2022: https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P3881.html.  

[22] Graham Allison, “Remembering Andy,” in Remembering Andy Marshall: Essays by His Friends, (USA: Andrew Marshall Memorial Foundation, 2021), 99-100.

[23] Andrew W. Marshall, “The Origins of Net Assessment,” in Net Assessment and Military Strategy: Retrospective and Prospective Essays, ed. Thomas G. Mahnken (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2020), 7.

[24] A. W. Marshall, Long-Term Competition with the Soviets: A Framework for Strategic Analysis, April 1972, R-862-PR, RAND Corporation, ix.

[25] For the establishment and maturation of the Office of Net Assessment, see Andrew Krepinevich and Barry Watts, The Last Warrior: Andrew Marshall and the Shaping of Modern American Defense Strategy (New York: Basic Books, 2015).

[26] Westwick, Stealth, 4-5, 194, 234. For the PVO-Strany in the early Cold War, see Dmitry Adamsky, “The Art of Net Assessment and Uncovering Foreign Military Innovations: Learning from Andrew W. Marshall’s Legacy,” Journal of Strategic Studies, 43, no. 5 (2020): 611-644.

[27] For the Maritime Strategy, see Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, chs. 3-5; John E. Lehman, Command of the Seas (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2001); Steven T. Wills, Strategy Shelved: The Collapse of Cold War Naval Strategic Planning (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2021) chs. 2-3. .

[28] Aaron L. Friedberg, Getting China Wrong (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2022).

[29] Donald H. Rumsfeld, testimony, U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, The National Security Implications of the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, hearings, 107th Cong., 2d sess., July-August 2002, 11.

[30] For the Chinese strategic nuclear posture, see James M. Smith and Paul J. Bolt, Chinas Strategic Arsenal: Worldview, Doctrine, and Systems (Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, 2021).

[31] Zachary Shore, A Sense of the Adversary: The High-Stakes History of Reading Your Rival’s Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 258.

[32] “The Dragon’s New Teeth: China’s Military,” The Economist, 403, no. 8779 (7 April 2012) 27-32.

Defense Acquisition Realignment & Modernization

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Notes:

[1] Anthony J. Principi et al., “2005 Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission Report,” September 8, 2005.

[2] “Hypersonic Weapons Development in China, Russia and the United States: Implications for American Security Policy,” AUSA, March 23, 2022, https://www.ausa.org/publications/hypersonic-weapons-development-china-russia-and-united-states-implications-american.

[3] David E Lockwood and George Siehl, “Military Base Closures:  A Historical Review from 1988 to 1995,” Congressional Research Service, October 18, 2004, 20.

[4] A“Earmark Database,” Citizens Against Government Waste, accessed April 14, 2022, https://www.cagw.org/reporting/earmarks from 2012-2021.

[5] Matthew Cox, “Pentagon Tells Congress to Stop Buying Equipment It Doesn’t Need,” Military.com, October 31, 2017, https://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/01/28/pentagon-tells-congress-to-stop-buying-equipment-it-doesnt-need.html.

[6] “Army Fiscal Year 2013 Budget | C-SPAN.Org,” § Committee on Armed Services (2002), https://www.c-span.org/video/?304483-1/army-fiscal-year-2013-budget; Army Fiscal Year 2013 Budget | C-SPAN.org.

[7] Cox, “Stop.”

[8] Cox.

[9] “Congressman Ryan Secures $65 Million for Abrams Tank Modernization,” Representative Tim Ryan, accessed April 13, 2022, http://timryan.house.gov/media/press-releases/congressman-ryan-secures-65-million-abrams-tank-modernization.

[10] Jeremy M Zollin, “MASTER OF MILITARY ART AND SCIENCE Joint Planning Studies,” n.d., 157.

[11] Jen Judson, “Creeping Weight of Abrams Tank Concerns Pentagon’s Chief Weapons Tester,” Defense News, January 26, 2021, https://www.defensenews.com/land/2021/01/26/creeping-weight-of-abrams-tank-concerns-pentagons-chief-weapons-tester/; Dave Majumdar, “Inside the US Army’s Lethal New M1A2 SEP v3 Abrams Main Battle Tank,” Text, The National Interest (The Center for the National Interest, June 2, 2016), https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/inside-the-us-armys-lethal-new-m1a2-sep-v3-abrams-main-16445; “Abrams Main Battle Tank,” Military, March 29, 2022, https://asc.army.mil/web/portfolio-item/abrams-main-battle-tank/.

[12] Zollin, “MASTER OF MILITARY ART AND SCIENCE Joint Planning Studies.”

[13] “Justification Book,” n.d., 261.

[14] Joint Publication 3-09.3; Zach Beauchamp, “This Airplane Is Hammering ISIS. So Why Is the Air Force Trying to Kill It? – Vox,” Vox, January 26, 2015, https://www.vox.com/2015/1/26/7871943/a-10-warthog; It is worth noting that the Air Force was more interested in the long range bomber and air-to-air combat missions, and only developed the A-10 to prevent the Army from developing the Cobra, the predecessor to the Apache, and taking over the CAS mission. Arden B. Dahl, “The Warthog. The Best Deal the Air Force Never Wanted:” (Fort Belvoir, VA: Defense Technical Information Center, January 1, 2003), https://doi.org/10.21236/ADA442118.

[15] “A-10C Thunderbolt II,” Air Force, accessed April 19, 2022, https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104490/a-10c-thunderbolt-ii/.

[16] Beauchamp, “Beauchamp, ‘Hammering ISIS’”; Sebastien Roblin, “Can the A-10 Warthog Defeat Its Toughest Enemy?,” Text, The National Interest (The Center for the National Interest, August 19, 2016), https://nationalinterest.org/feature/can-the-10-warthog-defeat-its-toughest-enemy-17413.

[17] David Roza, “Senate to Air Force: You’re Gonna Keep Your A-10 Warthogs and You’re Gonna like It,” Task & Purpose (blog), July 29, 2021, https://taskandpurpose.com/news/air-force-a-10-warthog-funding/.

[18] “Soldiers Fight to Save the A-10 Warthog,” Bloomberg.Com, May 16, 2014, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-15/soldiers-fight-to-save-a-10-warthog-jet.

[19] Roza, “Senate to Air Force.”

[20] Oriana Pawlyk, “Congress Rebuffs Air Force’s Plan to Retire Older Aircraft, Putting A-10 Move on Hold,” Military.com, July 28, 2021, https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/07/28/congress-rebuffs-air-forces-plan-retire-older-aircraft-putting-10-move-hold.html; “50 A-10 Facts: Interesting Features of the Warthog,” Military Machine, August 12, 2020, https://militarymachine.com/a-10-warthog/.

[21] Richard Armey, “Politics of the Pork Barrel” (House Floor Statement, Washington, D.C., April 13, 1988), 134 Cong Rec H 1615.

[22] “Military Construction Authorization Act of 1978,” Pub. L. No. 95–82, § 612, 10 USC §2687 (1977). Sec. 612; Christopher T Mann, “Base Closure and Realignment (BRAC): Background and Issues for Congress,” n.d., 45.; Armey, “Pork Barrel.”

[23] Closing Military Bases | Interview with Rep. Richard Armey (R-Texas) (C-SPAN, 1988), https://www.c-span.org/video/?2488-1/closing-military-bases; Lockwood and Siehl, “97-305 F.”

[24] “Economic Policy 1987: Bases: A History of Protection by the System,” in CQ Almanac 1987, vol. 43, CQ Almanac Online Edition (Washington, D.C., United States: Congressional Quarterly, 1988), 441, http://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/cqal87-1144056. Prior to 1977, the management of which bases to close or add was largely an executive branch decision. After the imposition of the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act requirements to military bases through the O’Neill-Cohen amendment, Defense Secretary Frank C Carlucci noted that the new requirements would tie a base closing up in “knots forever by endless procedures and litigation and political pressure to the point where the Defense Department finally throws up its hands and says ‘We just cannot do this.’” (as quoted in the above document)

[25] P.L. 100-526. The Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1990 (Title XXIV of PL 101-510) created three additional commissions to operate in 1991, 1993 and 1995; Mann, “Base Closure and Realignment (BRAC): Background and Issues for Congress,” 4; Armey, “Pork Barrel.” Remarks made by Rep. Upton. In April 2022, the amount would be between $6.075 billion and $12.2 billion. Calculated at OfficialData.Org on April 13, 2022.

[26] Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-510, Title XXIX of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1991, enacted November 5, 1990), and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002, (P.L. 107-107; amended the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-510) .

[27] “Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC),” April 30, 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20190430171317/https://www.brac.gov/.

[28] Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1990 (As amended through FY 05 Authorization Act) §2903(a), accessed at https://web.archive.org/web/20190524115712/https://www.brac.gov/docs/BRAC05Legislation.pdf on April 14, 2022; “Ronald W. Reagan National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005,” Pub. L. No. 108–375 (2004) §2913.

[29] The military value criteria included four distinct components (FY2005 NDAA, §2913):

  1. The current and future mission capabilities and the impact on operational readiness of the total force of the Department of Defense, including the impact on joint warfighting, training, and readiness.

  2. The availability and condition of land, facilities, and associated airspace (including training areas suitable for maneuver by ground, naval, or air forces throughout a diversity of climate and terrain areas and staging areas for the use of the Armed Forces in homeland defense missions) at both existing and potential receiving locations.

  3. The ability to accommodate contingency, mobilization, surge, and future total force requirements at both existing and potential receiving locations to support operations and training.

  4. The cost of operations and the manpower implications.

[30] “Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1990 (PL 101-510 Section 2901 et Seq.) as Amended by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002, (PL 107-107 Section 3001 et Seq.) and the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005, (PL 108-375 Section 2913 et Seq.),” United States § (2019). §2912(b).

[31] Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1990 (PL 101-510 section 2901 et seq.) as amended by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002, (PL 107-107 section 3001 et seq.) and the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005, (PL 108-375 section 2913 et seq.). §2914

[32] Mann, “Base Closure and Realignment (BRAC): Background and Issues for Congress.”

[33] Mann, 2.

[34] “Senate Confirmation Process Slows to a Crawl” (Partnership for Public Service: Center for Presidential Transition, January 20, 2020), https://presidentialtransition.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2020/01/Senate-Confirmations-Issue-Brief.pdf.

[35] See e.g., “Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020: Export-Import Bank Extension,” Pub. L. No. 116–94, § 409, 12 US § 635a(c)(6)(B) (2019); Agencies that should be consider include the Departments of Defense, Commerce, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Small Business Administration. Each of those agencies would have valuable perspectives to add to the process.

[36] “Budget Functions,” House Budget Committee Democrats, March 31, 2016, https://budget.house.gov/budgets/budget-functions.

[37] “Law | U.S. Department of Labor,” accessed May 25, 2022, https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/tradeact/laws.

[38] “Officials Should Resign Over Base Closing, House Leader Says,” accessed April 12, 2022, https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/1998/05/05/officials-should-resign-over-base-closing-house-leader-says/62282581007/.

[39] Mann, “Base Closure and Realignment (BRAC): Background and Issues for Congress,” 10.

[40] Tadlock Cowan, “Military Base Closures: Socioeconomic Impacts,” RS22147, n.d., 9.

[41] “U.S. Defense Spending Compared to Other Countries,” accessed April 20, 2022, https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison.

#Reviewing The Inheritance

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The book’s thematic organization is complex. Karlin first draws on Karl von Clausewitz’s “social trinity”—the military, the people and the government[3]—to frame three crises that she sees as the military’s most consequential and lasting inheritance from the last two decades of war.[4]  First, the military, both as an institution and as an assembly of individuals, faces a crisis of confidence. The best trained, best equipped armed force in the world seemingly could not win a decisive victory. The resultant cognitive dissonance has left personnel at every level scrambling for explanations that often take the form of seeking someone else to blame.  Second, the American public faces a crisis of caring, as a multigenerational war has barely registered in most people’s lives. Americans have largely abdicated their civic responsibility to act as a check on military and civilian leaders. Instead, many have uncritically venerated military institutions as intrinsically blameless. Such civic abdication of responsibility has been compounded by the fact that, third, the government faces a crisis of meaningful civilian control. According to Karlin, civilian leaders have either inappropriately deferred to military leaders or asked of them the impossible.

Although each of these three crises receives its own chapter, they are interrelated and they exacerbate each other. On this subject, it is worth quoting Karlin at length: 

The crisis of confidence and the crisis of caring both interact with and shape the crisis of meaningful civilian control. The first has meant that civilian leaders have repeatedly sent the military to deal with problems it could not reasonably solve on its own. The second, in which the public elevated an increasingly alien military over other forms of public service while largely abdicating its own civil duty, has made the military feel increasingly isolated but means it hasn’t had to face the costs of strategy failures abroad. Aggravating each of these legacies of war—harming the military’s inability to understand its purpose and inhibiting the public’s ability to shape what is being done in its name—impedes civilian control of the military.[5]

In other words, a legacy of the post-9/11 wars is a jumbled system in which the public trusts the military too much, the military does not trust the public or the civilian government enough, and the civilian government has been too dysfunctional—under Republican and Democratic administrations, alike—to exert proper control.

After framing the problem, Karlin devotes five chapters to the growth and effects of these crises on the U.S. military. To do this, she looks through five lenses: how the military goes to war, how it wages war, who serves, who leads, and the military’s preparedness for future conflicts.[6] Taken together, these five chapters bring the ad hoc nature of the post-9/11 wars into focus. Information was not shared freely between senior civilian and military officials during the planning phases. Congress initially wrote a blank check, allowing leaders to buy “prime rib on the credit card,” and then opened and closed the funding spigot seemingly randomly throughout the conflicts.[7]

On a more individual level, Karlin is full of praise for servicemembers of all ranks and at all echelons, but she points out the weaknesses in the systems of who serves and how accountability in leadership is assessed.

Each of the military service branches struggled to balance the practical needs of the conflicts at hand, maintain force readiness for future conflicts, and navigate the reality of a detached public. Tactical responsibility was shifted disproportionately to U.S. special operations forces and drone strikes without properly accounting for the strategic (or personal) consequences of relying on these types of warfare. Army and Marine leadership surrendered to a “growing aversion…to taking operational risks” for fear of incurring unacceptable casualty rates.[8] The Air Force, thanks to delayed modernization and “in lieu of” assignments that put airmen into joint forces ground positions, “came out of this war hollow” while the Navy faced an identity crisis sparked by conflicts fought primarily on land and in the air.[9] None of the branches, argues Karlin, emerged from two decades of war in a better position than where it started.

On a more individual level, Karlin is full of praise for servicemembers of all ranks and at all echelons, but she points out the weaknesses in the systems of who serves and how accountability in leadership is assessed. Military service, as scholars have pointed out for years, is not evenly distributed and has only become more stratified over the decades.[10] Because military service has become a “family business,” where service runs in families, there are three points of danger—the well could run dry, a homogenous force is a less adaptable force, and uneven distribution of service only deepens the crisis of caring.[11] Meanwhile, military leaders are part of the U.S.’s sprawling, increasingly politicized, civil-military bureaucracies. They are therefore enmeshed in a culture of “micromanagement, politicization, and ethics,” that has further left them mired in “accountability soup,” whereby collective responsibility barely exists.[12] In the words of one of Karlin’s interview subjects:

Everyone can look at [the failures of the post-9/11 wars] and it’s a Rorschach test. The Army can say we won the operational piece, but we were let down by policymakers…the Marines, too. The Air Force can say we delivered precision airpower and tore apart our force. Civilians can say we tried. The Administrations can say we’ve been eating different types of shit sandwiches and every time we try to pull out, the military says no. It’s like a weird and bad Thanksgiving dinner happens in a family and everyone in that family has a different perspective about what was the original sin…Everyone’s got their own different opinion about where it started and who is to blame.[13]

 The picture is not pretty.

One of the book’s major strengths is its source base. Karlin integrates a wealth of recent scholarship and makes excellent use of other available sources, including the satirical website Duffle Blog. But most importantly, she conducted almost 100 interviews with current or recently retired generals, flag officers, and civilian officials from the Department of Defense. Although they have been anonymized in the text, their candid observations and recollections provide the meat of the book. Interview subjects very clearly said the quiet parts out loud.

Clear-eyed assessment at every level of every phase of the post-9/11 conflicts is necessary to truly move forward into the future.

The book’s argument is dense. I am not sure its organizational structure does it any favors. There is some repetition, and some of the “lenses” are more clearly developed than others. Nevertheless, this book needed to be written, especially by someone with as much experience as Karlin. Recent history shows that the military has a habit of forgetting conflicts that were less than successful or at least of only remembering the lessons it chooses to.[14] But such an approach does no one any good. Clear-eyed assessment at every level of every phase of the post-9/11 conflicts is necessary to truly move forward into the future. And, as Karlin points out, this includes acknowledgement on the part of the military half of the civ-mil equation that it made mistakes too.

Overall, this book is a plea for better communication between and among multiple parties—individual service branches, the Joint Chiefs, the offices of the Department of Defense, Congress, executive offices, and the American public. Dialogue, Karlin writes, can help those who waged the post-9/11 wars process their experiences; reestablish civilian authority to “baseline” the interactions between diplomacy, domestic politics, and military force; and give the military an opportunity to honestly debrief how the wars shaped “its conception of warfare.”[15] The purposes of foreign policy and of national security are too important to do anything less.

#Reviewing Hemispheric Alliances

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Hemispheric Alliances: Liberal Democrats and Cold War Latin America. Andrew J. Kirkendall. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2022.

In Hemispheric Alliances: Liberal Democrats and Cold War Latin America, Andrew J. Kirkendall provides a thoughtful analysis of the Latin America policy devised by liberal Democrats in the period running from the 1960s to 1980s. The book’s core argument is that liberals in the Democratic Party attempted to design and implement a foreign policy for Latin America that moved beyond the Cold War strategy of containment. Instead of containment, these policymakers sought to leverage U.S. power to foster economic development, democracy, and human rights in the region.



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The highwater mark of this political project was John F. Kennedy’s famous Alliance for Progress initiative. The Alliance was devised in the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution, with the ostensible goal of transforming Latin American societies into stable democracies with broadly shared prosperity through economic development aid. The principal idea animating the initiative was that societies with less social inequality and greater political participation by a broader share of the population would be less susceptible to communist insurgency. Kirkendall’s book essentially provides a narrative history of both the Alliance itself during the presidency of John F. Kennedy, as well as the policy initiative’s half-life among liberal policymakers in the quarter-century following Kennedy’s 1963 assassination, with ample discussion of the foreign policy positions pursued by liberals inside and outside of the White House under each American president from Kennedy to Reagan. Beginning in the 1970s, the focus on social development policies and reduction of economic inequality gave way to the politics of human rights, until, with the Cold War over, a consensus formed in American politics that emphasized trade not aid.

There is much to commend in this book. The archival research is comprehensive and effectively presented for the non-specialist in each chapter. The mid-level analysis of this book is also quite good. If the book lacks a provocative or surprising central thesis, it is more than made up for by detailed description and analysis of various policymakers’ disagreements with one another, their evolving interpretations of events as they unfolded, and inevitable frustrations with external circumstances beyond the control of U.S. actors. Kirkendall’s careful reconstruction of internal policy disputes among the liberals clearly illustrates that some policymakers took more seriously than others the lofty rhetoric and outsized ambition of key liberal policies like the Kennedy administration’s Alliance for Progress or the Carter administration’s human rights initiatives.

If the book lacks a provocative or surprising central thesis, it is more than made up for by detailed description and analysis of various policymakers’ disagreements with one another, their evolving interpretations of events as they unfolded, and inevitable frustrations with external circumstances beyond the control of U.S. actors.

There are fascinating treatments in the book of a range of political actors. Familiar names—including the Kennedy brothers, Jimmy Carter, Frank Church, Tom Harkin, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.—all receive extended analysis from Kirkendall. I found Kirkendall’s discussion of Schlesinger’s long-standing fascination and engagement with Latin American politics and social problems particularly insightful. Readers may find themselves more drawn, however, to Kirkendall’s analysis of the careers of somewhat less well-known political actors like Frances Grant, of the Inter-American Association for Democracy and Freedom, or Oregon’s gadfly senator Wayne Morse. Both Grant and Morse are the subject of thoughtful treatments, and deserve greater attention from scholars of inter-American relations.

A great strength of the book is its engagement with the congressional politics of foreign policy, a topic unfortunately neglected by too many diplomatic historians. It is clear from Kirkendall’s research that congressional actors were key in shaping foreign policy positions staked out by a succession of presidents, secretaries of state, national security advisors, and other, less high-powered, executive branch functionaries. I left the book wishing for more scholarship from historians of U.S. foreign policy that takes Congress as seriously as Kirkendall.

Historians tend to neglect Latin America’s anti-communist left, in part owing to their awkward position in an overarching narrative of the Cold War as a time of extreme polarization, violence, and authoritarianism in Latin America.

Kirkendall’s careful analysis of Congressional politics dovetails closely with a particularly fascinating component of the book’s narrative: the formation of a transnational network of anti-communist center-left politicians in the Americas. Historians tend to neglect Latin America’s anti-communist left, in part owing to their awkward position in an overarching narrative of the Cold War as a time of extreme polarization, violence, and authoritarianism in Latin America. Yet, in this book, key figures like Venezuela’s Rómulo Betancourt and Costa Rica’s José Figueres, among others, appear as shrewd geopolitical actors, capable of carefully cultivating the trust of high-powered American liberals and influencing their approach to US policy in Latin America at key moments. On this point, Kirkendall’s book would have benefited from research in Latin American archives, though given the central focus of the study on liberal policymakers, the emphasis on U.S. archives is somewhat understandable.

Former President Harry S. Truman and Jose Figueres Ferrer, former President of Costa Rica, shaking hands while at the Harry S. Truman Library in 1959. (Harry S. Truman Presidential Library)

President John F. Kennedy, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and others arrive at the Entrance Hall of the White House for a dinner in honor of President of Venezuela, Rómulo Betancourt, and First Lady of Venezuela, Carmen Valverde de Betancourt in 19


Still, the book does frustrate at times. Kirkendall’s work would have benefited from deeper engagement with the classic observation that “politics stops at the water’s edge” and considered areas of continuity and agreement between Republican and Democratic political elites when it came to Latin America during the Cold War period.[1] There are many moments in the book where the notion of a foreign policy unique to liberal Democrats is quite clear, most especially in the book’s closing chapters on the Carter and Reagan-Bush years. But there are also points in the book where disputes among the liberal Democrats themselves come across as more or less as sharp as any disagreement that existed between the two parties when it came to foreign affairs, with the more idealistic figures like Morse or Schlesinger appearing as mere dissenting voices rather than as the key actors behind major decisions. Kirkendall can sometimes be a bit too trusting of the liberal political elites of the mid-twentieth century. At times, the book places too much emphasis on their high-minded rhetoric around democracy, freedom, and social justice. Kirkendall does not deny or ignore key events and developments in the 1960s like meddling in Chile’s 1964 elections or the funneling of resources into militaries that would go on to seize power in one Latin American country after another. However, he does occasionally downplay the extent to which these policies ran contrary to the ostensible goals of the Alliance.

Even so, this book provides an important contribution to the historiography of the period, providing novel perspectives on liberal approaches to U.S. foreign policy in Latin America during the Cold War for scholars and practitioners working on U.S.-Latin American relations to consider.

Miles Culpepper is a lecturer in the history department at UC Berkeley, where he also earned his PhD. He is currently writing a book on Guatemalan exiles during the Cold War period, based on his dissertation research.

The Strategy Bridge is read, respected, and referenced across the worldwide national security community—in conversation, education, and professional and academic discourse.

Thank you for being a part of the The Strategy Bridge community. Together, we can #BuildTheBridge.

Header Image: Alliance For Progress, La Morita, Venezuela 1961 (Cecil Stoughton).

Notes:

[1] “Politics stops at the water’s edge” is a aphorism attributed to Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg. https://www.languagehumanities.org/what-does-politics-stops-at-the-waters-edge-mean.htm

#Reviewing On Killing Remotely

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On Killing Remotely: The Psychology of Killing with Drones arrives as the latest addition to a niche subgenre of historical analysis that seeks to reconcile the psychological difficulty of killing with mankind’s rich history of successfully waged warfare. While the intense psychological burden borne by the soldier engaged in battle is not in doubt, understanding what specific factors exact the greatest toll, or how the willingness to kill relates to battlefield outcomes, remains ripe for exploration. The academic origin of this line of study is S.L.A. Marshall’s 1947 bombshell claim that less than a quarter of soldiers fire their weapons in combat. Assertions of fabricated and falsified post-combat interviews have tarnished many of Marshall’s historical contributions, but the natural reluctance to kill has generally been reaffirmed, and interest in psychological intent of combatants has been rekindled through popular works such as John Keegan’s The Face of Battle and Dave Grossman’s On Killing.

Wayne Phelps’s addition to this literature, On Killing Remotely, seems to be a direct continuation of Grossman’s work, and Phelps pushes the same thesis as Grossman—that warriors do not naturally want to kill—into the field of Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPAs). Given the prevalence of post-traumatic stress in the RPA community, the weapon system becomes a unique case-study of the psychological factors in warfare as remote operators exclusively shoot without being shot at. After taking the required time to functionally explain the RPA enterprise in terms of machines, people, missions, and methods, most of Phelps’s new findings involve discovering where RPAs fit into Grossman’s existing graphs, describing various difficulties with killing, and simply inserting the new-fangled method of warfare into its appropriate place with appropriate justification. Phelps bases these judgments on RPA aircrew surveys and interviews that seek to quantify the nature of psychological response and impact of killing via armed RPA.

However, the scale of the investigation must be addressed given the certainty attributed to many of these findings. To his credit, Phelps briefly acknowledges the limited size of the data set and calls this investigation a beginning rather than a conclusive treatise on RPA psychology, but that does not stop many of his conclusions from feeling like unsupported extrapolations or anecdotal tidbits rather than real truths. For context, RPAs fly half a million hours and often tally over a thousand strikes in each calendar year.[1] Phelps utilized a mere 254 surveys and conducted and underwhelming fifty in-person interviews to justify contentious assertions.

An especially evident example of potentially misleading information can be found in the graph that details the number of enemy killed by each respondent. Fifty-four percent of respondents reported they killed more than fifty people, and only ten respondents claimed zero kills, which appears remarkable and worthy of additional examination. However, squadron mission sets vary greatly, as do areas of responsibility and associated geographic rules of engagement. This leads to intense clusters of killing wherein some squadrons kill a great deal while others kill rarely. A much larger randomized sampling would likely provide far more insight.

Additionally, with a dedication that reads, “To the unsung heroes fighting our wars remotely,” Phelps finds himself rather unabashedly in the corner of the RPA warrior.[2] Much of the book reads like a public relations piece to exonerate the wrongfully accused RPA warrior from labels like disengaged, damaged, or lesser. While this view finds some merit throughout the work, it detracts from otherwise useful perspectives and conversations. But even through this overtly friendly lens, useful insight shines through.

Having flown weaponized RPAs over a five-year stint during his period of analysis, I found the author’s thorough examination of underpublicized truths especially refreshing. Morality and ethics regarding remote killing get a fair amount of press, but only rarely do the effects of sleeplessness from shift work, or the impacts of an entire chain of command being in the cockpit get looked at. These challenges play an outsized role in difficulties faced by RPA operators and may often cause bigger problems than the inherent moral ambiguity associated with killing from the other side of the planet.[3] Additionally, the role of culture in a new community cannot be understated when analyzing psychology despite not often being addressed. Phelps touches on many of the cultural problems faced in RPA units, with a chapter dedicated to the subject highlighting issues like a painful operations tempo, lagging promotion rates, and norms like wearing a fireproof flight suit that serve no purpose beyond heritage. Specific quotations from aircrew land well in support of these various ideas, lending reasonable credibility despite the small quantity of data. Also, ironing out exactly how RPAs meet certain Grossman-based concepts like the crew-served weapon, wherein distributing responsibility for killing eases its burden collectively, bolsters credibility throughout the book.

While my personal experiences do not perfectly support every conclusion put forward by Phelps, the fact that such a comparison could so easily take place speaks to the relatability of the work. Making such a unique and bizarre mission widely relatable is a remarkable achievement because the physical distance between killer and killed has never been greater in history, but simultaneously the emotional distance between the two has shrunk to an unimaginable closeness. RPA operators may observe an individual for weeks on end, getting to know their habit patterns, social structure, and hobbies only to eventually cause and watch that individual’s death in vivid high definition video. This strange dichotomy merits the specialized focus as the sole weapon system analyzed in the book. Being able to successfully execute such a mission repeatedly relies on training, conditioning, and many other healthy and unhealthy strategies, but is summarized most profoundly in the statement, “RPA warfare is a constant balancing act between dehumanizing the enemy and observing the enemy’s humanity.”[4]

A Tsunami of Ships and Aircraft: #Reviewing Victory at Sea

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None of this history is new. Paul Kennedy admits as much in Victory at Sea, his new history of the Second World War’s naval struggles. Almost eighty years after that war’s end, it sometimes seems little remains to be written about the war at sea. Is another history needed? Kennedy’s genius has always been his ability to highlight how the shifting tectonic plates of power underlie and help explain the surface history, sometimes represented in a single event. Rather than uncovering new history, Victory at Sea arranges existing history in ways that better reveal the whole. Kennedy draws one connecting thread through the resources, strategies, and ends of each naval power, and explains the goals of battles and how they affected the war’s outcome. Such succinct and overarching analysis is rare, making the work a valuable addition. For those learning to connect military means to grand strategic outcomes, the book is required reading. The story of ONS-5 is the preeminent exception to an approach that generally eschews recounting the details of battle—though Kennedy wants to discuss its details so badly he describes them in the text and includes a further appendix on them. One reason perhaps, beyond its human tale, is that the battle captures so many of the larger book’s themes. It was one night that crystalized the full arrival of the Allies’ industrial and technological power.

As Kennedy outlines, the 1930s featured six major naval powers: the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany, and Italy. The Washington Conference’s Five Power Treaty had ensured the end of unilateral British naval dominance and established a relative hierarchy. Navies usually take time to build, and despite the treaty’s lapse, in many ways its pattern remained. The first three powers were clearly in a class above the last three, but all were of sufficient size that they could potentially shape the outcome of a conflict. In five short years, from 1939 to 1944, that multi-polar naval world would collapse to the unipolar naval world that with limited exception has remained unchallenged until the present.

Americans tend to focus on the Pacific war, acknowledge the Atlantic war, and mostly forget the Mediterranean war, except for its amphibious assaults. Kennedy places them in better balance.

The change occurred across the war in three separate theaters. First, the battle for control of the North Sea and the Atlantic that began with an Anglo-French alliance fighting Germany, transformed into a contest between Britain and Germany after the French surrender, and ended with the Anglo-American alliance’s eventual defeat of the Kriegsmarine. Second, there was the battle in the Mediterranean, where the fighting would occur principally between the British and the Italian Navy and German Air Force. And finally, there was the Pacific war with Japan, which would prove a mostly American affair.[5] Americans tend to focus on the Pacific war, acknowledge the Atlantic war, and mostly forget the Mediterranean war, except for its amphibious assaults. Kennedy places them in better balance.

Similar themes emerge from his analysis across the three theaters. Victory at sea meant moving cargos across the sea to their destinations—not necessarily the destruction of enemy navies. This view has come to be called a Corbettian approach to sea control, but Mahan may have ultimately agreed—he would have most differed in believing the destruction of the enemy fleet was a prerequisite for moving cargo safely. Even if that had once been true, the maturing of both submarines and airplanes changed that dynamic.

The importance of airpower to sea control is not a new finding, but the regularity with which land-based air power—vice carrier-based—tipped or nearly tipped the balance becomes a consistent theme. The surprise with which this reality confronted many naval commanders early in the war is a potent reminder to refrain from discounting the influence long-range shore-based anti-ship missiles could have on naval conflicts today.

In two years, the Navy’s tonnage had more than quadrupled despite combat losses. Imagine today if the U.S. Navy built and trained crews for 800 ships in less than three years. At war’s end the United States Navy possessed almost twice as much naval tonnage as the remainder of the world’s navies combined.

More than anything else, the United States’ massive financial, technological, and industrial capacity—the tectonic plates of power distribution—shaped the outcome. The United States had begun a naval rearmament program in 1934 and supersized it as the war approached. Many of these ships and airplanes began to join the fleet in 1943. By whatever metric, ship count, ship tonnage, personnel, or aircraft; the U.S. Navy’s size exploded. In 1941, the U.S. Navy was roughly the size of the Royal Navy with warships that displaced just under two and half million tons. In 1943, the U.S. Navy displaced almost five and half million tons, and by 1944, 10 million tons, and growing. In two years, the Navy’s tonnage had more than quadrupled despite combat losses.[6] Imagine today if the U.S. Navy built and trained crews for 800 ships in less than three years. At war’s end the United States Navy possessed almost twice as much naval tonnage as the remainder of the world’s navies combined.[7] Britain had once maintained the two-power standard, the United States had achieved an all-power standard, and then some. All in less than 5 years. All without counting the similarly incredible construction of merchant ships. Even more incredible, had the U.S. Navy not existed in 1945, the Royal Navy alone would have been the “most powerful naval force the world had ever seen.”[8] Like a tsunami, this wave of Sailors, aircraft, and ships became almost unstoppable.

#Reviewing: Patents for Power

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C.J. Chivers’ book, The Gun: The Story of the AK-47, starts with an account of the first detonation of a Soviet nuclear bomb. The remainder of his book recounts the development of the AK-47 ‘Kalashnikov’ rifle, which was the product of collaborative design and mass production. The contrast Chivers draws in The Gun is between the tightly held development of the Soviet nuclear bomb and the open design and state sharing of technology around the AK-47. Chivers’ work and the new book Patents for Power: Intellectual Property Law and the Diffusion of Military Technology complement one another by providing an in-depth account of the AK-47, which is a weapon that is used by many participants in armed conflicts around the world.

The story of the development of the Kalashnikov rifle can be found throughout Patents for Power as it demonstrates one particular model—the Soviet model during the Cold War. This was a framework of mass production and open sharing of technology that was driven mostly by political factors rather than the strict adherence to the established licensing system.[2]

Patents for Power views intellectual property law through an international relations lens. The primary contribution of the book to these two fields is to reinforce the idea that the design of legal structures—both international and domestic—to protect and manage intellectual property directly impacts the protection and proliferation of military technology. Farley and Isaacs intend to explain how international relations affects the diffusion of military technology. They achieve this intent, but the book seems like the starting point for more detailed research that delves into the intersection between intellectual property law and international relations.

Farley and Isaacs intend to explain how international relations affects the diffusion of military technology. They achieve this intent, but the book seems like the starting point for more detailed research that delves into the intersection between intellectual property law and international relations.

The authors use several analytical methods to examine how the distribution of military technology is affected by intellectual property law. They use historical and contemporary case studies, and comparative approaches to intellectual property systems in different countries to explore the role of intellectual property law in regulating the arms trade and export controls—particularly from the perspective of the United States during the Cold War. While these multidisciplinary approaches can make the narrative in the book feel somewhat disjointed, it has the benefit of ensuring that the analytical method is appropriate to the topic explored in the relevant chapter. This results in a more compelling narrative for the book overall.

Structure

The sometimes impenetrable complexities of intellectual property law can deter its examination and conceal its importance in protecting military technology in the Information Age. The authors effectively use vignettes to situate a discussion of intellectual property concepts in each chapter. Examples of this technique include the comparison of development between the U.S. M-16 rifle and Soviet AK-47; the Soviet development of the Su-27 Flanker and the Chinese efforts to copy and improve this technology; and the Soviet copy of the B-29 Stratofortress (which became the Tupolev Tu-4) as a way of developing their strategic bomber force during and after the Second World War.

The sometimes impenetrable complexities of intellectual property law can deter its examination and conceal its importance in protecting military technology in the Information Age.

The introduction provides insight into the breadth of topics covered by the book—from an overview of the Revolution in Military Affairs, to the relevant international relations theory and the principles of international law. Because of the breadth of topics discussed, it only covers what is necessary to set up the remaining discussions in the book.

Chapter 2 is an overview of intellectual property law as it applies in the international context. The chapter covers the different forms of intellectual property—patents, trade secrets, and copyright. The focus of the intellectual property law discussion here is on its importance to the defense industry as a means for protecting a valuable source of income and assisting the broader public in a nation to benefit from innovation. The international aspects of intellectual property are also discussed as an essential enabler for international trade. The overview is useful for the reader with no background in this field, and it establishes an important foundation for the remaining chapters.

Chapter 3 situates the discussion of intellectual property law in the context of the defense industrial base (DIB) within the United States. There is an excellent overview of the role of the DIB in the revolution in military affairs—particularly the intersection of military innovation with the reform of military doctrine. The chapter also covers how intellectual property laws are used in the context of the defense industrial base, alongside secrecy provisions and contracting law, to protect the distribution of new military technologies from its inception to its sale. The chapter highlights the importance of such legal frameworks to regulate the transfer and ownership of intellectual property, particularly given the multi-sector collaboration—industry, academia, government—involved in military technology.

Comparative approaches to intellectual property protection are the subject of chapter 4. The protection of military technologies in Russia, China and South Korea form the basis of the comparison. An especially interesting discussion in this chapter surrounds the issue of the evolution of intellectual property over time in these countries, due largely to the driver of public-private partnerships. Military access to intellectual property held by civilian companies (dual-use technologies) became a key factor in the need to use intellectual property law frameworks to regulate public-private partnerships.

The utility of intellectual property law in the sale of military technology and the arms trade is the focus of chapter 5. An interesting example in this area is the relationship between Russia and China and the trade of military technology between the countries. As one example, Russia had exported Flanker (Su-27) fighter aircraft to China, which the latter nation improved through developments in Chinese avionics and electronic equipment. Russia claimed that this undermined its maintenance and supply contracts with China.

However, China’s copies of Russian aircraft are limited by Chinese engine technology, which provide less power than the Russian engines. Nevertheless, the maturity of Chinese industry is demonstrated by its ability to produce Flanker airframes and equip them with Chinese avionics. China’s copy of the Soviet Flanker demonstrates the limitations of the intellectual property frameworks between Russia and China. This bilateral framework does not seem to constrain Chinese practices in improving on Russian technology and possibly selling them to third parties, thereby undermining Russia’s sale to developing countries.

World War II Allied Logistics in the Mediterranean

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In War of Supply: World War II Allied Logistics in the Mediterranean, David Dworak presents a concise and path-breaking narrative of the march of allied logistics from the beaches of North Africa, to Sicily and mainland Italy, through southern France, and finally to the banks of the Rhine River in Germany. The author deftly tells the stories of how planning, operations, and logistics improved in the Mediterranean with each experience. Initially, logistics appeared to be a significant weakness, as seen in the almost farcical landings of Operation Torch. Many units landed on the wrong beaches and 242 of 378 landing craft were damaged or destroyed “despite having the calmest sea conditions of the past sixty-eight years, and limited enemy activity.”[1] But then Allied logistics grew into a behemoth that supported almost one million soldiers by 1944. By late fall of that year, the US Army had built a system of supply that made the invasion of Germany “logistically supportable.”[2] No rarer words have been said about any logistics operation in the annals of warfare. Dworak puts primary scholarship to the task and dives into the how of logistics—how it works, how it fails, and how operations and logistics work together, sometimes in counterintuitive ways.

In the historiography of the Second World War, scholars marvel at the wonders of Normandy and D-Day, followed by the famed Red Ball Express on the drive to Paris. Dworak makes the compelling case that the real support and logistics operation came from wartime experience further south. As a reader, it is delightful to see a simple and straightforward narrative play out. Dworak digs into all facets of logistics and stays on task. The author keeps his chapters fast-paced, focused on the big operations of Torch, Husky, Avalanche, Shingle, and Dragoon, while also describing fascinating tidbits along the way.

Dworak’s focus on logistics adds more support to the argument that the Mediterranean theater was of vital importance in teaching the Americans how to fight and how to supply their army, reinforcing Churchill’s insistence on fighting in North Africa and Italy before attacking into Northern Europe and Germany.

Dworak also gives a great account of the losing side, which avoids the trap of assuming that allied success in supply guaranteed German failure in the theater. For example, the author describes how the Germans managed to move more than 100,000 soldiers off the island of Sicily through the Straits of Messina, an operation that mirrored the Japanese sailing 20,000 soldiers off of Guadalcanal at almost the same time in 1943. Those successes in transportation stand in marked contrast to the failures of the Axis in most other campaigns. Dworak illustrates how panic, such as German units scuttling their own fuel supplies and improper allocation of resources during various landings, stymied efforts to stop the Allied advances in Italy and France. The descriptions of the German success in leaving Sicily and their failures in providing the logistics necessary to defend the beaches in Southern France lead to all sorts of counterfactual questions: How could the Germans do so poorly in logistics writ large but pull off the Sicily evacuations? What if the local German commander had not scuttled fuel at Salerno?

As Dworak weaves his narrative into Southern France, he unearths a trove of information pointing to how much Operation Dragoon—and the eventual line of communication that the allies established from the port of Marseille through France to the Rhine river in Germany—helped win the war. Dworak makes the fascinating conclusion that the logistics command that ran operations in the Mediterranean and into France had far more experience and knowledge than the one that ran the D-Day invasion in Northern France. As logisticians for the Normandy invasion were planning, the Mediterranean team was building a line of communication from the south of France to the Rhine.

This lack of experience became evident in Normandy. For example, planners for the Normandy invasion directed ships to only unload supplies deemed critical first, then move out to sea to keep the beaches at Normandy from being overwhelmed. Only later would the ships return to unload less critical cargo. Once the staff of experienced logisticians from the Mediterranean saw this loading practice, they ended it. This greatly increased the cargo moved across the beaches, which was more important than any logjams on the beaches in the initial movements. Logisticians from the Mediterranean understood that logistics was a long game and that all of the cargo would be needed forward at some point even if that risked initial overcrowding.

In highlighting the importance of the Mediterranean theater for allied logistics, Dworak masterfully addresses larger questions of allied strategy in Europe. He details the historical controversy surrounding Eisenhower’s decision to hold back the 6th Army at the banks of the Rhine in late 1944 to consolidate logistics before making a full push into Germany in 1945. Dworak avers that there were good reasons for Eisenhower to stop while making the case that the plan had the logistics to support a much earlier invasion from France into Germany. This is an amazing admission and one that leaves the reader wanting more. Had the 6th Army gone to Germany earlier, might that have shaped the balance of the post-war alignment? Could the war have ended sooner? Hopefully Dvorak’s next book addresses these questions and uses the same logistical lens to finish the narrative of the final push to German surrender.

Successful logistics requires as much leadership as it does mass. Much like combat, proper logistics requires proper leaders.

Dworak also drives home a critical point about logistics being a human versus a technical endeavor. Successful logistics requires as much leadership as it does mass. Much like combat, proper logistics requires proper leaders. In one of many examples, Dworak shows how Major General Thomas Larkin had the ability to work with Patton, Eisenhower, Bradley and many other allied operational commanders in the Mediterranean with great success. By contrast, Lieutenant General John Lee, the overall logistics commander for the effort at Normandy, lacked interpersonal skills, allowing his view of which staff should control the flow of logistics to clash with front-line commanders’ opinions. The author’s balanced approach and experience give him great insight into those leaders who were great logisticians and those who were not.

4Q22: Perspectives Matter

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In recent quarterlies published by The Strategy Bridge, many authors have tended to center the United States in discussions about strategic competition. In doing so, they have illuminated perspectives about the national security challenges facing that nation.

Such an approach can be limiting, however, because it is narrowly specific in its framing. As a U.S.-based journal—with a majority of our readers historically from the United States—it is perhaps natural that contributors argue from this perspective, but it can be troublesome to view challenges with a too-consistent perspective. Susan Colbourn articulates this dynamic, arguing, “The scholarly obsession in the United States with centering the United States is stunting our ability to analyse foreign affairs, leading too many of us to assume the United States can influence everything.”[1]

And, if alliances are a strength of the United States and Western nations in strategic competition, then it is more important than ever to view strategic competition from the perspective of a variety of nations to better understand their complex positions due to economic, diplomatic, political, military, and other circumstances.

In this spirit, the first piece of Strategy Bridge’s final 2022 quarterly returns to Afghanistan. Joe McGiff asks us to wrestle with how U.S. ethnocentrism affected statecraft, leading us not only to misconstrue ourselves while stereotyping others in this process. We cannot leave the challenges of the Global War on Terror in the past in the shift toward strategic competition given U.S. failures to understand our allies and potential adversaries.

The next piece, from Australian contributors Elizabeth Buchanan and Christopher Kourloufas, demonstrates how this limited understanding is affecting the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, with Australian strategy conducted by staff officers who have little understanding of either the nations involved or the region.

Our quarterly remains in this region for the next piece by Heather Levy, who argues that “large investments become lost opportunities when great powers fail to adequately account for the perspective of other nations in their foreign policy.” Here Levy refers particularly to setbacks in Cambodia and the Philippines.

Then Garrett Martin argues the United States should think less like a hegemon, which could be setting itself on a direct path to war with China, and more like a small nation. This approach would require the U.S. to de-emphasize long-term kinetic capabilities while increasing emphasis on sociocultural elements of multi-domain warfare.

Next, Amanda Cronkhite points to how the U.S. ignores its neighbors to the south while China invests heavily in the region, to its potential peril. However, her argument has ramifications beyond South America, as she points out how Western nations are losing the information war in cases where they think they are winning, as in the competing narratives about the Russian war in Ukraine. To win the information war, it is worth considering the target audience. Cronkhite points out, for example, that 85 percent of the world’s population lives outside of industrialized democracies.

Yvonne Chiu further stresses how the U.S. misunderstands strategic competition regarding Taiwan and China. Indeed, many in Taiwan wonder at the extent to which the U.S. fully understands Taiwan’s perspective. In strategic competition, the U.S. tends to consider other nations as pieces to be moved around a chessboard, an approach that only alienates its present and potential partners and allies.

Historically, the U.S. is not alone in this strategic narcissism, as Wesley Moerbe argues in the quarterly’s next piece. He offers a solution to this narcissism—the process of storytelling to help situate the strategist in an alternative perspective. As he explains, stories “transport an audience outside their own reality,” thus helping a strategist to “visualize a probable reaction to unfolding events from the perspective of another.”

Walter Hudson then shows it is possible to expand U.S. thinking beyond its often narrow focus on a military confrontation with China to consider an economic strategy. This approach also decenters the United States because it frames the U.S. as part of the complex adaptive system that is the global economy. In such a system, one studies the system rather than the constitutive elements of the system. Influential as the U.S. is in the global economy, no state can exist at the center of such a system, opening up possibilities for strategic developments that are non-linear.

Finally, our last two pieces in the quarterly draw on strategic empathy. Kyle Balzer provides a historical case study of the Cold War to warn the U.S. about the “pitfalls of an ethnocentric view of the security landscape” that adversaries draw on. Adversaries, after all, are bounded by “distinctive national styles” that do not always neatly align with American logic. Then J.B. Vowell and Craig Evans explore how U.S. Army Japan is seeking to operationalize strategic empathy by helping soldiers implement strategic empathy.

Together, all of these contributors help us understand the limits of what the U.S. can do in the near- and mid-term future. They also suggest how how stepping outside the perspective of a global hegemon might be an asset in strategic competition.

The Strategy Bridge is read, respected, and referenced across the worldwide national security community—in conversation, education, and professional and academic discourse.

Thank you for being a part of The Strategy Bridge community. Together, we can #BuildTheBridge.

Header Image: Viewing Machine, 2019 (Nadine Shaabana).

Notes:

[1] Susan Colbourn (@secolbourn) on Twitter, 19 May 2022, 12:05 PM, https://twitter.com/secolbourn/status/1527334581275222019.

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