Paper #54. Effective Ops Require Competitive Initiative in a Multi-Dimensional Strategy

  • ICSL admin
  • Asia-Pacific, Security, Strategy
  • No Comments

The Imperative for Competitive Initiative Democracies need multi-dimensional strategies suited to the highly competitive information and AI age. There are dozens of regional and functional US national strategies, but the overarching one is the US National Security Strategy (NSS). For historically understandable reasons, the NSS focuses on weapons technology as the most effective approach to…

Paper #53. The PRC’s “One Country, Two Systems” Deception: Narrative Strategy for Information Advantage

  • ICSL admin
  • Asia-Pacific, Security, Strategy
  • No Comments

The Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) “One Country, Two Systems” narrative toward Taiwan out-competes the US “strategic ambiguity” and “one China” policies even though it’s false. How? The narrative operates as a strategy to gain information advantage by propagating meaningful identity in structured content. In short, Narrative = Meaning, Identity, Content, and Structure (Ajit Maan, Dangerous…

Note #23. Net Assessment and JADC2: A Step Toward All-Effects Warfare?

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

Net Assessment The purpose of net assessment is to gain an asymmetric advantage over competitors. US goals generally seek technological superiority. The US Office of Net Assessment, in a rare run of leadership continuity (Andy Marshall, 1973-2015), analyzed strategic competitions and recommended offsets against adversary strengths. Some offsets threatened the mutual vulnerability of Mutual Assured…

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 #44. China’s Belt and Road Initiative as Combined-Effect Strategy: How Democracies Can Compete

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Asia-Pacific, Leadership, Security, Strategy
  • No Comments

ICSL Paper #41 developed “concepts of influence,” a critical component to effective strategy. Concepts of influence are the ways and means that act on will and capability to bring about the ends of strategy. They may be entirely human-created or assisted or created by artificial intelligence. This paper applies concepts of influence to show how…

Paper #41. Concepts of Influence: Critical to Strategy and Human Control of Artificial Intelligence

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Cyber, Leadership, Strategy
  • No Comments

Strategy for dynamic end-states must be multi-dimensional to be competitive in the information environment (ICSL Note #22). If operations are not informing and influencing, they become existential rather than instrumental. They justify themselves, which makes for poor strategy. Yet strategy is the competition that matters most for relevant operations. As we consider the three basic…

Paper #38. What “Talk-Fight” Ideologues Understand About Warfare: All-Domain, All-Effects in the Information Environment.

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Leadership, Security, Strategy
  • No Comments

Prevailing in an operational environment does not matter if one loses in the information environment. Vietnam Workers Party nationalists understood this. Taliban religious fundamentalists understand this. Why do we not, and what to do about it?

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.

Stick & Rudder #5. A Basic Strategy Toward China: Rules-based Competition that Cooperates & Confronts

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Asia-Pacific, Commercial, Security, Strategy
  • No Comments

Competing effectively with the authoritarian regime in Beijing requires a superior blend of cooperation and confrontation.

Stick & Rudder #3. An All-Effects Strategy Against COVID-19: Secure & Induce, Persuade & Dissuade, Defend & Deter

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Commercial, Security, Strategy
  • No Comments

COVID-19 is an advanced threat against humanity, requiring a broad-based combination of effects to defeat.

Paper #16. Comparative Threats and Integrated Effects: Japan

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Asia-Pacific, Security, Strategy
  • No Comments

Using complex warfare concepts from Papers #13 (East Asia) and #14 (China), we apply that approach to Japanese security strategy, with comparisons to China and Russia.

Paper #14. Comparative Threats and Integrated Effects: China

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Asia-Pacific, Security, Strategy
  • No Comments

This paper uses concepts of complex warfare established in ICSL Paper #13 to analyze the world view, threat assessment, and combined effects strategy of China.

Note #5. Mastering the Spectra of Competition

  • Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
  • Commercial, Security, Strategy
  • No Comments

Previous notes introduced combined effects strategy for complex warfare. We can understand this form of warfare as a competition that blends cooperation and confrontation.