This is a collection of Articles published in Defence Studies. You can view the entire collection here.
This Research Symposium on Challenges for the 21st Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ‘ contains an introduction to a special section of Defence Studies with eight further essays capturing panel discussions hosted by the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy on 9-10 February 2023, in support of the transition of the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff between GEN Mark Milley and Gen Charles Q. Brown. While Gen. Brown was not yet confirmed at the time of the seminar, a broad range of international academic and practitioner participants sought to offer insights to the incoming Chairman’s team, focusing on changes in international ordering. These articles reflect the views of the authors and do not necessarily represent the position of any government or international organisation. The editors would like to invite short response essays of no more than 800 words that may be published after editorial consideration.
Edited by:
Simon J. Smith (Staffordshire University)
Jordan Becker (Department of Social Sciences, United States Military Academy)
Joshua Woodaz (Department of Social Sciences, United States Military Academy)
Strategy, technology, industry and politics: challenges for the 21st Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Abstract: This article introduces nine essays capturing panel discussions at the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy on 8–9 February 2023, in support of the Office of the United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These essays were selected from among 31 panel essays to represent central defense issues: alliance management, technology in conflict, defense industrial policy, and the domestic politics of defense strategy. The participants asked one another how each of these challenges were likely to shape international order and ordering, and how the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff could best prepare. The authors of this introductory essay argue that while the constellation of challenges outlined by the nine essays in this special section are clearly daunting, they are not totally unprecedented, and the US and its allies have tools at their disposal to respond effectively. US strategists may need to focus more on the domestic sources of foreign and security policies in allies and adversaries alike and implement emerging technologies alongside time-tested human tools of statecraft, all while rebuilding US and allied defense industrial bases amid complex and conflictual domestic political economies.
Geostrategic context: bridging alliances in the shadow of Sino-American competition
Abstract: The United States, its Allies, and its partners can adapt to the demands of the emerging strategic context by learning lessons from the tumultuous past five years, i.e. the COVID pandemic and related challenges across Western society, deterioration of relations between China and the West, and Russia’s illegal annexation and (re)-invasion of Ukraine. On the one hand, the bridging of alliances should reinforce existing frameworks by widening areas of cooperation across sectors, deepening collaboration in areas like technology transfer and industry, and lengthening the time horizon to plan and execute activities together – with the intent to insulate Western power against the combined strength of Russian and Chinese subversion and aggression. But on the other, policymakers must ruthlessly prioritize the allocation of scarce resources and development of partnerships with like-minded stakeholders.
US Alliance management in the shadow of sino-American competition
Abstract: Authoritarian, revisionist, and revanchist powers are exerting pressure on the liberal international order and challenging the United States’ vital security interests across theaters. The United States will increasingly need to simultaneously tackle challenges in two critical theaters while also addressing global threats. To do so effectively, it will need to lean in and actively capitalize on its chief geostrategic advantage over its competitors and adversaries – its global network of alliances and strategic partnerships. However, alliance management faces both traditional and emerging challenges. These range from ensuring effective burden sharing, to providing alliance assurance and balancing interests and values along with allies’ contributions across theaters and domains. In addition, because the United States is operating in a world where all instruments of power, military and non-military, are increasingly utilized in an interconnected way, it will also need to look at defense and security alliance management through the lens of issues ranging from industrial policy to economic security. This essay sheds light on these “old” and “new” challenges, providing insights into critical issues of alliance management that the United States will face in the emerging security environment.
Emerging technology and strategy
Abstract: Technology is often an importance consideration in a state’s theory of victory. States must consider how technology advances their strategic ends and the most appropriate ways to source technology. As states seek technological overmatch or offsets, they must also wrestle with the strategic cost, risk, and advantage of emerging technologies. Yet, technological advantage is likely to be fleeting. Successful competition depends on states’ ability to scale rapidly in times of crisis, to train soldiers in network-centric and austere environments, to effectively establish norms of AI use, to compete in the diffusion of global dual-use technology, and to question assumptions of technological emergence.
Emerging technology, strategy, and international order
Abstract: This essay provides an overview of three avenues by which emerging technology affects the international order: perceptions of technological effects, alliance integration and operability, and compliance with liberal ordering principles. It concludes with three recommendations for policymakers. First, strategically implement the ‘hype’ surrounding emerging technologies. Second, when integrating technology into alliance doctrine, carefully address abandonment and entrapment concerns to ensure ally buy-in. Finally, understand that technological advances have changed the set of options available to policymakers below the level of armed conflict, thereby reverberating on perceptions of the liberal order and opening alternative routes to state alignment.
Irregular warfare in strategic competition
Abstract: After two decades of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US military has shifted to preparing for large-scale combat operations. However, it would be a mistake to discard hard-earned lessons from these conflicts. Despite contemporary advances in technology and important differences between current US competitors and the Soviet Union, irregular warfare will play a prominent role in the new era of strategic competition. It was a prominent form of US-Soviet competition during the Cold War, is already used extensively by the United States and its competitors and remains attractive given concerns about escalation between nuclear-armed powers. Given the continued relevance of irregular warfare, we focus on two main lessons from the US experience. First, since irregular warfare is about influencing populations and achieving political goals without large-scale combat operations, influencing and working alongside the partner is the primary mission. The second lesson follows directly from the first; if irregular warfare is ultimately about achieving policy goals with an economy of military force, IW is a team sport requiring joint and interagency collaboration to be effectively implemented.
American arms and industry in a changing international order
Abstract: United States support for Ukraine and preparation for a potential, likely protracted, conflict with China has drawn attention to the fragility of the U.S. defense industrial base. Since the end of the Cold War, the American defense industry has optimized for peacetime and low-attrition conflicts, prized efficiency and cost-savings over capacity and flexibility, and incentivized short-run returns over resilience and innovation. While this design may have made sense in a period of undisputed U.S. dominance, the rise of the People’s Republic of China as a peer competitor and the emerging demand that the U.S. deter and, if necessary, win one or more protracted conflicts requires that Washington take a more intentional and direct role in shaping the capability, capacity, and resilience of the U.S. defense industrial base.
Defense industrial policy in a changing international order: rethinking transatlantic burden-sharing
Abstract: Though it is a core function of a sovereign state, governments do not navigate defense policy free from outside influences and constraints. The provision of external security requires armed forces to be adequately equipped but the distribution of material resources – defense-industrial capacity – for such equipment is not even but rather concentrated in the international system. How do alliance politics and defense-industrial policy connect? Our contribution highlights the material resources for military alliance effectiveness and emphasizes a strategic view of the relationship between these material factors and alliance burden-sharing. The sudden surge in demand for materiel resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine revealed the defense-industrial fault lines within the transatlantic alliance. We outline existing dependencies and interdependencies, identify trade-offs and connections between industrial policy and defense spending, and formulate policy recommendations based on our findings. Taking a political economy of security perspective, these recommendations are aimed at a better understanding of how industrial politics and alliance stability are intertwined. They suggest pathways to a new and more stable transatlantic defense-industrial bargain in an era of increased great power conflict.
Domestic politics and international competition: populism and the importance of understanding rhetoric
Abstract: How do ideology, foreign policy, and the international system interact with and shape one another? This paper examines the relationship between ideology and foreign policy in the United Kingdom, India, and China and finds three common threads. First, while ideology likely affects foreign policy formulation, the causal mechanisms involved are complex and not necessarily uniform across states. Second, destabilizing forces like populism are increasing around the world with the potential to disturb current conceptions of the international order. Finally, from a policy perspective, distinguishing between a state’s operational and symbolic rhetoric can reduce the likelihood of strategic miscalculation. With these commonalities in mind, we contend that foreign policymakers must approach other states understanding that each state’s domestic situation is unique and that while Sino-American competition looms large in American policymaking, it might not be the driving force behind other states’ foreign policy decisions. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the official policy or position of the U.S. Army, Department of Defense, or United States Government.
Photo Credit: DOD Photo by Benjamin Applebaum