Reports & Papers

From July 11-12, 2023, NATO leaders gathered in Vilnius, Lithuania for one of the most significant NATO summits in history. This timely brief by Eric Rosenbach, Grace Jones, and Olivia Leiwant serves as a background piece on Ukraine’s history with NATO, potential future pathways for accession, and the operational impact Ukraine’s NATO membership could have on the alliance. 

The American public is increasingly losing trust and confidence in the military and has a lower propensity to serve. This has significant implications for the safety and security of the nation. To overcome these issues, the Army must develop a long-term strategy to create a positive organizational culture. This requires senior leaders to focus on educating and training junior Army leaders on how to improve the organizational climate while also modernizing bureaucratic processes that frustrate soldiers and undermine morale.

The U.S. should accept with humility its inability to fully eliminate terrorism. Specifically, U.S. policy must balance “ends, ways, and means;” establish clear and achievable objectives; adopt efficient, effective, and resource-sustainable strategies; ensure synchronization of diplomatic and military efforts; build alliances to share the burden of countering terrorism; and leverage cooperative mechanisms and regional partnerships to increase the capacity and willingness of regional states to defend their sovereignty and contribute to multinational coalitions against terrorism.  A balanced, integrated, and synchronized strategy encompassing defense, diplomacy, economic, and humanitarian assistance lines of effort should be cornerstone of a revamped foreign policy in the coming decades.

The fields of automation and artificial intelligence are broad, having applications in diplomatic, informational, military, and economic activities. Within this realm, lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) are a new enabler for achieving political ends through the application of the military instrument of power. As the world is past the point of considering whether robots should be used in war, the goal of the discussion herein is to examine how autonomous systems can be used ethically. This article seeks explicitly to demonstrate that fielding and employment of lethal autonomous weapons systems can be done effectively and ethically by maximizing the advantages and minimizing the shortfalls of both technology and the human mind. 

This paper responds to a topic from the Army War College’s Key Strategic Issues List, 2018-2020: Evaluate the ramifications of China’s and/or Russia’s interests in Africa for U.S. land forces and suggest options, both to compete and to cooperate, to further U.S. interests.

While U.S. land forces may benefit from competition or cooperation with Chinese elements in Africa, I judge that they possess limited agency to compete or cooperate in the context of these definitions. Therefore, I will take a whole-of-government approach to furthering U.S. interests in Africa vis-à-vis China.

The Joint Force needs to develop capabilities, doctrine, and training that will give it an advantage in this extremely complex environment at the tactical and operational levels. Historically, the military has adapted conventional capabilities to develop advantages in an urban environment, but the size, ubiquity, and complexity of today’s urban terrain require dedicated analysis and preparation.  This paper offers military planners and policy makers a starting point for understanding the need for developing a cohesive strategy to ensure the Joint Force is able to successfully reduce its urban blind spot and effectively conduct urban operations in support of US national security interests.  Given the rapid urbanization of the 21^st century and how cities are increasingly the dominant social, political, diplomatic, and economic centers, the Joint Force must take measures to address shortfalls across all services and echelons to be ready to meet future urban challenges in all warfighting domains. To continue the status quo is simply unacceptable.