Sea Power: The Great Enabler

What is the strategic relationship between sea power and land power, with air power adjunct to, and very occasionally all but independent of, both? Two propositions are considered here. First, it is suggested that command of the sea yields a more absolute and extensive superiority in that environment than does command on land in its environment. Second, this article considers the idea that command at sea yields possibilities for influence on land superior to the influence at sea that can flow from command on land. Command is employed to mean a working control and not an absolute, literally exclusive—let alone ubiquitous—control. An effectively absolute control can be achieved, however

Defense, War-Fighting and Deterrence

Having been in retreat through most of the 1970s, the advocates of a mutual assured destruction approach to nuclear deterrence and force planning are staging something of a comeback

Targeting Problems for Central War

Strategy in Central War? The design of targeting schema is a strategic task-­that is to say it is an exercise in applied strategic thinking. Strategy is supposed to relate military assets to political purposes. In principle, at least, there can be no argument but that strategic judgment should guide sub-SIOP, SIOP, and post-SIOP targeting plans. In practice there is considerable ground for philosophical dispute

Maritime Strategy and the Pacific: The Implications for NATO

Ambitious in its purpose, this article seeks to explore the implications for NATO of developments in the Pacific-both in the near term and the far term, and both in peace and in the case of a major failure of deterrence, in war