Military, War, and Peace Commons^™

The Eagle’S Eye On The Rising Dragon: Why The United States Has Shifted Its View Of China, Jackson Craig Scott

Baker Scholar Projects

Since 1978, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has long been viewed as an economic trading partner of the United States of America (US). The PRC has grown to be an economic powerhouse, and the US directly helped with that process and still benefits from it. However, during the mid-2010’s, US rhetoric began to turn sour against the PRC. The American government rhetoric toward the PRC, beginning with the Obama administration, switched. As Trump’s administration came along, they bolstered this rhetoric from non-friendly to more or less hostile. Then, Biden’s administration strengthened Trump’s rhetoric. Over the past ten years or …

Congressional Oversight Of U.S. Government Programs, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides detailed overview of how the U.S. Congress conducts oversight of federal agency programs. Contents include a letter from a member of Congress to an agency head concerning an environmental development in Indiana, information on the foundations of congressional oversight, details on how Congress may require agency reports on various subjects in public laws, an example of a congressionally mandated report by the Department of Defense, documentation of congressional funding of individual federal agencies, examples of congressional committee hearings, congressional committee issuance of oversight and investigative reports which may include dissenting opinions, Congressional Budget Office cost estimates on congressional committee …

Daoism And Design: Mapping The Conflict In Syria, Ned Beechinor Marsh, Heather S. Gregg

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

In contemporary military operations, some problems are so complex they do not give way to linear solutions but require problem management instead. Combining the fundamentals of Dao De Jing philosophy with the US military design process offers a new perspective to analyze complex security problems, devise management strategies, and plan military operations. Applying this new approach to the complex security environment in Syria allows for a nonlinear mapping of long-term goals and a new perspective on relationships between key actors, environmental factors that restrict changes in the security environment, and where planners should focus their attention.

Professionalizing Special Operations Forces, C. Anthony Pfaff

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

Broken Nest: Deterring China From Invading Taiwan, Jared M. Mckinney, Peter Harris

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Deterring a Chinese invasion of Taiwan without recklessly threatening a great-power war is both possible and necessary through a tailored deterrence package that goes beyond either fighting over Taiwan or abandoning it. This article joins cutting-edge understandings of deterrence with empirical evidence of Chinese strategic thinking and culture to build such a strategy.

Crisis Management Lessons From The Clinton Administration's Implementation Of Presidential Decision Directive 56, Leonard R. Hawley

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Drawing on personal experience, the author asks what the current administration can learn from the Clinton administration’s implementation of Presidential Decision Directive 56, examines the real-world application of the directive during the Clinton administration and the pitfalls of its agency-centric successor during the Bush administration, and identifies recurring problems and best practices for successfully responding to current global crises.

Australian National Audit Office: Evaluating Australian Army Program Performance, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) evaluates the management and financial performance of Australian government programs for the Australian Parliament, Australian government agencies, Australian taxpayers, and individuals interested in the performance of these programs globally. This article examines how ANAO has examined the performance of Australian Army programs and strengths and weaknesses found in these programs while recommending changes to improve program performance. It also examines how government agencies and corporations which have been the subject of ANAO analyses have reacted to ANAO findings. This assessment also examines how Plan B (the possibility that Australia might have to rely less …

United States Department Of Defense Acquisition Of Leading-Edge Information Technology Services And The Impact Of Public Market Research On Efficiency And Effectiveness, Thomas Denning

West Chester University Doctoral Projects

This dissertation examines the acquisition of leading-edge IT services (LEITS), like those associated with cyber, agile software development, and cloud migration. In an effort to build on previous research, the purpose of this dissertation is twofold: to examine how Public Market Research impacts the LEITS acquisition process in the DoD and to discover strengths and value-added components that exist in the current government acquisition process leading to greater efficiency and effectiveness. Through a mixed methods approach, this dissertation provides recommendations for how to conduct the most efficient and effective LEITS acquisitions, striving to maximize a constrained budget, minimize time to …

Making The War Colleges Better, Richard A. Lacquement Jr

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of Wounds, Jonathan Nash

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

What configuration of strategies and discourses enable the white male and settler body politic to render itself as simultaneously wounded and invulnerable? I contextualize this question by reading the discursive continuities between Euro-America’s War on Terror post-9/11 and Algeria’s War for Independence. By interrogating political-philosophical responses to September 11, 2001 beside American rhetoric of a wounded nation, I argue that white nationalism, as a mode of settler colonialism, appropriates the discourses of political wounding to imagine and legitimize a narrative of white hurt and white victimhood; in effect, reproducing and hardening the borders of the nation-state. Additionally, by turning to …

Reforming The Pentagon: Reflections On How Everything Became War And The Military Became Everything, Mark P. Nevitt

All Faculty Scholarship

What best explains how “Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything?”— the provocative title of a recent book by Professor Rosa Brooks of Georgetown Law. In this Essay, I turn to the Department of Defense’s (DoD) unique agency design as the vehicle to address this question. Specifically, I first describe and analyze the role that the 1947 National Security Act and 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act play in incentivizing organizational behavior within the DoD. These two Acts have broad implications for national security governance. Relatedly, I address the consequences of these two core national security laws, focusing on the …

Will War's Nature Change In The Seventh Military Revolution?, F. G. Hoffman

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

This article examines the potential implications of the combinations of robotics, artificial intelligence, and deep learning systems on the character and nature of war. The author employs Carl von Clausewitz’s trinity concept to discuss how autonomous weapons will impact the essential elements of war. The essay argues war’s essence, as politically directed violence fraught with friction, will remain its most enduring aspect, even if more intelligent machines are involved at every level.

The One Exhibition The Roots Of The Lgbt Equality Movement One Magazine & The First Gay Supreme Court Case In U.S. History 1943-1958, Joshua R. Edmundson

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The ONE Exhibition explores an era in American history marked by intense government sponsored anti-gay persecution and the genesis of the LGBT equality movement. The study begins during World War II, continues through the McCarthy era and the founding of the nation’s first gay magazine, and ends in 1958 with the first gay Supreme Court case in U.S. history.

Central to the story is ONE The Homosexual Magazine, and its founders, as they embarked on a quest for LGBT equality by establishing the first ongoing nationwide forum for gay people in the U.S., and challenged the government’s right to engage …

You Say You Want A (Nonviolent) Revolution, Well Then What? Translating Western Thought, Strategic Ideological Cooptation, And Institution Building For Freedom For Governments Emerging Out Of Peaceful Chaos, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

With nonviolent revolution in particular, displaced governments leave a power and governance vacuum waiting to be filled. Such vacuums are particularly susceptible to what this Article will call “strategic ideological cooptation.” Following the regime disruption, peaceful chaos transitions into a period in which it is necessary to structure and order the emergent governance scheme. That period in which the new government scheme emerges is particularly fraught with danger when growing from peaceful chaos because nonviolent revolutions tend to be decentralized, unorganized, unsophisticated, and particularly vulnerable to cooptation. Any external power wishing to influence events in societies emerging out of peaceful …

Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

This short nontechnical article reviews the Arrow Impossibility Theorem and its implications for rational democratic decisionmaking. In the 1950s, economist Kenneth J. Arrow proved that no method for producing a unique social choice involving at least three choices and three actors could satisfy four seemingly obvious constraints that are practically constitutive of democratic decisionmaking. Any such method must violate such a constraint and risks leading to disturbingly irrational results such and Condorcet cycling. I explain the theorem in plain, nonmathematical language, and discuss the history, range, and prospects of avoiding what seems like a fundamental theoretical challenge to the possibility …

Us Policy On Small Arms Transfers: A Human Rights Perspective, Susan Waltz

Human Rights & Human Welfare

From Somalia and Afghanistan to Bosnia, Haiti, Colombia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Congo, small arms and light weapons were a common feature of the human rights calamities of the 1990’s.

© Susan Waltz. All rights reserved.*

*A shorter version of this paper is published as “U.S. Small Arms Policy: Having It Both Ways,” in the Summer 2007 issue of World Policy Journal.

This paper may be freely circulated in electronic or hard copy provided it is not modified in any way, the rights of the author not infringed, and the paper is not quoted or cited without express permission …

State-Building In Iraq, Hafsteinn Hafsteinnsson

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Whether the 2003 invasion of Iraq was principally strategic or humanitarian, the United States’ involvement in Iraq has become a complex state-building mission. While there is agreement within the international community on the importance of rebuilding a democratic Iraq, there are many conflicting viewpoints on how this operation should proceed.

Back To Basics: Us Foreign Policy For The Coming Decade, James E. Goodby, Kenneth Weisbrode

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

The Human Terrain Of Urban Operations, Ralph Peters

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

The Army's Command Sergeant Major Problem, John C. Bahnsen, James W. Bradin

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.