Recommended Reading & Viewing

Top Billing! Information Dissemination Guest Post Series

Galrahn needs to be commended for organizing this excellent series and also the top-notch contributors who participated, including a sitting Member of Congress. A first-rate blog event!

Wayne P. Hughes, Jr., Captain USN –Is there a connection between your strategic and tactical assertions?

Dr. Andrew Exum –What should the US Army be contributing to AirSea Battle? 

Jan Van Tol –When matching the strategic objective of preventing war to resources, can the US Navy prevent war in the 21st century, and if so, how? 

Rep.  J. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) –What is the potential and what are the challenges the Navy faces in fielding a UCLASS to the fleet? 

Feedback and Discussion

SWJ Blog  1. (Octavian Manea) The Russian COIN Campaign in North Caucasus 

How different is the ranking of priorities in the Russian COIN compared to the Western pop-centric approach? In what kind of missions and priorities were the main resources invested?

I assume you’re referring to doctrinal approaches here. It’s important to point out that there are still plenty of Western analysts who believe that heavy “enemy-centric” approaches are more effective than the “population-centric” approaches upon which our doctrine is based. Western doctrinal COIN approaches start with and revolve around “security” – for the government as well as the local population, whereas you can see from the chart in my book on page 201 that the Russian approach considers security of the local population a much lower priority. In the Western approach, it is important to start trying to gain the support of the indigenous population through a number of means (security, economic, civil affairs projects, diplomatic, etc), while the Russians initially put these types of activities way at the bottom of their list (although Ramzan Kadyrov has placed a much higher emphasis on those types of activities since he has assumed the presidency).  The Russian Main Effort has always been focused on the general Russian population within Russia proper, as opposed to the indigenous peoples of the North Caucasus.  And as an enemy-centric approach, they have emphasized killing the enemy over building support for themselves among the local population. All in all, I’d say the Russian and Western priorities are generally very different.

2. (Alex Verschoor-Kirss) Foucault and Fourth Generation Warfare: Towards a Genealogy of War and Conflict 

Inclusion does not equate with my endorsement.  Frankly, there’s a cocked-up misunderstanding of historical methodology (and the field of military history) and hero-worship of Michel Focault; however, the piece is certainly thought-provoking as it is a critique of 4GW coming way out of left field and worth a read.

Abu Muqawama (Kelsey Atherton) –Guest Post: Learning from Greece the Hard Way

Page 1 of 2 | Next page