Note #20. Iraq & Iran: Agile Strategies or More Missteps?
- January 30, 2021
- 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)
- November 9, 2020
- 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 #28. To Defeat Disinformation, First Arm the Mind
- July 27, 2020
- 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 #23. Collapsing the Loop: How China’s Narrative Subverts OODA Decision-making & What to Do About It
- April 13, 2020
- Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
- Asia-Pacific, Cyber, Strategy
- No Comments
Colonel John Boyd’s OODA Loop—Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act— is a powerful model for making decisions in contested environments. Strategic use of information can defeat it. Understanding narrative strategies can protect it.
Paper #8. How to Integrate National Defense & Security Strategies: A Detailed Analysis
- August 16, 2019
- Thomas A. Drohan, Ph.D., Brig Gen USAF ret.
- Americas, Commercial, Leadership, Security, Strategy
- No Comments
As a detailed follow-on to The US National Security Strategy Needs Combined Effects, this paper integrates combined effects with the US National Defense Strategy (NDS), too.
Note #9. Understanding Iran on its Own Terms
- July 12, 2019
- 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
- July 3, 2019
- 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
- June 25, 2019
- 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?