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 #34. Cyber Security-Resilience: Compliance & Competitiveness in the Information Environment

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

Manipulating information over cyber networks has become a societal weapon of choice. Compared to traditional military, diplomatic and economic instruments of state power, cyber information power has competitive advantages. 

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 #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 #23. Collapsing the Loop: How China’s Narrative Subverts OODA Decision-making & What to Do About It

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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?