73 research outputs found
Operating in the Gray Zone: An Alternative Paradigm for U.S. Military Strategy
So-called gray zone wars are not new, but they have highlighted shortcomings in the way the West thinks about war and strategy. This monograph proposes an alternative to the U.S. military\u27s current campaign-planning framework, one oriented on achieving positional advantages over rival powers and built around the use of a coercion-deterrence dynamic germane to almost all wars as well as to conflicts short of war.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1424/thumbnail.jp
Clausewitz’s Center of Gravity
Over the last two decades, the U.S. military has struggled to understand the center of gravity concept as developed by Carl von Clausewitz and to find practical ways to apply it. In the process, however, each of the services—shaped as they are by different roles, histories, and traditions—has brought individual perspectives to Clausewitz’s expression and redefined it in its respective image. Thus, the U.S. Marine Corps, a relatively small force designed more for win- ning battles than fighting campaigns or wars, prefers to strike at enemy weak- nesses. Accordingly, it initially equated enemy centers of gravity (CoGs) with key vulnerabilities
Globalization and the Nature of War
The author explores the nature of war, and how it has changed as a result of globalization. He uses the Clausewitzian model of war\u27s trinity (political guidance, chance, and enmity) as a framework for understanding the nature of war, a concept that has been only vaguely represented in defense literature. He then analyses the global war on terrorism via that framework. He concludes that the Clausewitzian trinity is alive and well. Globalization is strengthening the role that political guidance is playing in war, it may well increase the elements of chance and uncertainty, and it is clearly exacerbating basic feelings of enmity among different cultures. It is this last area that the author sees as the most critical in the war on terrorism. If there is a center of gravity in this conflict, it is in the ideas that have fueled radical Islam.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1801/thumbnail.jp
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