Paper #45. AI-assisted Psychological Strategies: Human-directed Critical Thinking to Disarm Theocratic Strategy

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Cyber, Leadership, Middle East & North Africa, Security, Strategy
  • No Comments

This article completes our series on AI-assisted strategy, but with a stronger emphasis on combined effects. I use the language of combined effects strategy. Combined effects strategy is a broader alternative to the prevailing paradigm of combined arms that dominates failed US security strategy. Unlike papers #42 and #43 that focused on either cooperative or…

Paper #36. Commanding & Controlling the OODA Loop: Iran’s Narrative Strategy

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Cyber, Middle East & North Africa, Strategy
  • No Comments

This paper applies a narrative weaponization model to decision making (Observe, Orient, Decide and Act), using Iranian disinformation. Papers 23 and 24 did the same with disinformation from China and Russia. Understanding how narrative strategy works in the information environment is key to detecting and countering disinformation.

Note #20. Iraq & Iran: Agile Strategies or More Missteps?

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Middle East & North Africa, Security, Strategy
  • No Comments

As in Note #19, this thought-piece refers to agile strategies as those that can adjust ends, ways and means. Missteps are changes without strategic advantage. How will the Biden administration perform with respect to Iraq and Iran?

Paper #33. Special Ops Command-Africa Strategy: Analysis & Recommendations (Part II)

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Middle East & North Africa, Security, Strategy, Sub-Saharan Africa
  • No Comments

Following our historical context review of ten African states in Part I (Paper #31), this section begins Part II with linkage analysis, focusing on strategy in Somalia.

Paper #32. A Case for Peace

  • former government official
  • Middle East & North Africa, Security, Strategy
  • No Comments

Abraham, 4 millennia ago, was not placed favorably into the contested region on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. No wonder. As the first monotheist guided by the instructions of Yahweh, he was rejected by all sides.

Paper #31. Special Ops Command-Africa Strategy: Analysis & Recommendations (Part I of II)

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Middle East & North Africa, Security, Strategy, Sub-Saharan Africa
  • No Comments

Security challenges on the African continent are diverse and acute. Threats are more than military, requiring all of the skill sets and partnerships that special operations forces possess.

Paper #28. To Defeat Disinformation, First Arm the Mind

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Asia-Pacific, Cyber, Eurasia, Middle East & North Africa, Strategy
  • No Comments

Disinformation is a global threat. Pervasive digitized technology and social media provide rich opportunities to distort public perceptions at scale. Authoritarians assail democracies incessantly. Comparitech recently discovered a Facebook bot farm that controls nearly 14,000 fake accounts and produces 200,000 posts per month.

Paper # 27. Aggregates, Supply Chains & Influence Maneuvers: Synthesis for Competition and Warfare

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • All Analysis and Planning, Asia-Pacific, Commercial, Cyber, Middle East & North Africa, Strategy
  • No Comments

Synthesis combines separate reactants into a new whole, releasing energy. In our highly interactive information environment, this process ranges from rules-based competition to totalitarian warfare.

Stick & Rudder #1. A Basic US Strategy Toward Iran: Deterrence, Defense, Persuasion & Coercion

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Middle East & North Africa, Strategy
  • No Comments

In August 2019 (Note #11), while waiting to see if Iran’s shootdown of a US drone would prompt a counterstrike, I noted the apparently contradictory US policies.

Paper #15. Countering Cyber Attacks on Infrastructure

  • Will Miller, Major, US Army
  • Americas, Asia-Pacific, Commercial, Cyber, Eurasia, Leadership, Middle East & North Africa, Strategy
  • No Comments

State-sponsored cyber attacks against critical infrastructure are increasingly pervasive. Their global presence and effective methods are asymmetric, coercive, and debilitating. 

Note # 11. Strategy Doesn’t End with a Limited Strike

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Middle East & North Africa, Strategy
  • No Comments

The Trump administration’s apparently contradictory actions this week toward Iran are not contradictory if we look at cooperation and confrontation as a strategy of combined effects.

Note #9. Understanding Iran on its Own Terms

  • Ron Machoian, Ph.D., Col USAF ret.
  • Middle East & North Africa, Strategy
  • No Comments

Note #8, “Mirror Imaging Iran and the World,” brings strategic culture to the forefront of today’s anxious discussion about how best to coerce Iran into cooperation with international norms. 

Note # 8. Mirror Imaging Iran and the World

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Middle East & North Africa, Strategy
  • No Comments

We tend to mirror image our competitors by using clock-world analogies that apply less and less to today’s cloud-world. 

Paper #5. The Power of Last Resort: An Iran Strategy

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Middle East & North Africa, Strategy
  • No Comments

How should the US compete under the restraint of using armed force as a last resort against Iran, a pseudo-democratic theocracy that wages complex warfare in ways the US eschews?

Note # 7. Iran’s Shoot-down and a Strategic US Response

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Middle East & North Africa, Strategy
  • No Comments

The Iranian regime’s shoot-down of an unmanned, non-stealth, hyper-expensive US reconnaissance aircraft in international airspace today was a highly anticipate-able event.