Geography & Strategy - CounterStrikeMedia

CAPTURING THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF THE AFRICAN HORN AND GULF; HOW CHINA DOES A RIM-PAC

6/29/2019

Is China Starting Its Own RimPac?
By Tuan N. Pham, Proceedings: "The road to ‘Rim of China’ is through southeast Asia and ASEAN."

In brief: Road to the caliphate: The Salafi-jihadi movement’s strengths
Katherine Zimmerman | American Enterprise Institute

People problems between the Gulf and the Horn of Africa
Karen E. Young | AEIdeas
The Gulf isn't just sending billions of dollars to the Horn of Africa. It's also receiving (and deporting) millions of migrant workers, which is affecting the region's development east and west of the Red Sea.

THE INDIAN - US ALLIANCE & RICHELIEU'S GRAND STRATEGY

6/29/2019

From Inertia to Integration: Getting Serious About U.S.-India Defense Cooperation
By Benjamin E. Schwartz, The American Interest: "India and the United States are declared “major defense partners.” But as Secretary Pompeo visits New Delhi this week, they are still not nearly as aligned as interests and values suggest they should be."

The Elephant in the Room: Auditing the Past and Future of the U.S.-India Partnership by Sameer Lalwani and Heather Byrne

Raison d'Etat: Richelieu's Grand Strategy During the Thirty Years' War by Iskander Rehman

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THE STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE OF THE MIDDLE EAST & THE THUCYDIDES TARIFF TRAP

6/29/2019

Strategic Geography Of The Middle East
by Tony Badran via The Caravan
With the end of the Cold War the United States lost a sound understanding of the strategic geography of the Middle East. Before the fall of the Soviet Union, US strategy focused, correctly, on historical power centers on the outer rim of the Levant and Mesopotamia. The land in between these power centers – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan – was the arena for proxy war and competition between great powers.

U.S.–China Trade War, Part Two: The Thucydides Trap
By Chet Nagle, CD media: “Intellectual elites and mainstream media have been captivated by Dr. Graham Allison and his prediction that China and the United States are inexorably heading toward war. Like Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book, “The End of History and the Last Man,” Dr. Allison’s book is fatally flawed."

CONSTITUTIVE FACTORS OF THE US ALLIANCE SYSTEM; HINT, RAYTHEON

6/24/2019

Moving on from INF: Let’s harness the potential of the Missile Technology Control Regime
(Defense News) Two agreements struck in 1987 have served U.S. interests well for most of their lives in terms of arms control and nonproliferation: the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, known as INF, and the Missile Technology Control Regime, a voluntary multilateral export control regime among 35 member states that seek to limit the proliferation of missiles and missile technology.

Who needs ICBMs?
(Defense One) The recent news that Boeing will not bid to build the U.S. Air Force’s next-generation ICBM sent ripples of concern throughout the defense world. Absent Boeing’s participation, Northrop Grumman will have no competition for the contract on one of the biggest replacement programs in the U.S. nuclear modernization plan.

Five Factors Will Decide the Survival of the U.S.-Led Alliance System
By Mason Richey, the interpreter: "The hub-and-spokes alliance model – comprising the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, and Thailand – has been a pillar of stability in the Asia-Pacific throughout the Cold War and into the contemporary period. But 2019 is very different from 1999, much less 1969, as the U.S.-led alliance architecture faces numerous new threats."

Raytheon designs sensors for Blackjack — & OPIR
(Breaking Defense) Raytheon currently is sitting in the catbird’s seat when it comes to missile warning satellites, with a hand — and contracts — in both the Air Force’s flagship Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared (Next-Gen OPIR) and DARPA’s hot Blackjack program.

Next gen jammer deliveries & OPIR: New Raytheon SAS boss
(Breaking Defense) One of the most sensitive and important unclassified programs, Raytheon’s Next Generation Jammer, should see its first two pods delivered to the Navy by the end of this year for the first phase of testing.

Aerojet Rocketdyne Competing for Engines on Future ICBM
By Loren Thompson, Forbes: "The unsettled state of the program, known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), doesn’t just impact the big aerospace integrators who want to be prime contractor. It also affects a highly specialized supply chain of domestic contractors whose ranks have thinned dramatically since the end of the Cold War."

TRUMP'S THIN INDO-PACIFIC POLICY: ENVELOPING A RELOADED CHINA

6/22/2019

HOW TO FIGHT CHINA

BLOOMBERG

Addressing America's Operational Shortfall in the Pacific by Mark Montgomery and Eric Sayers

China’s People’s Armed Police: Reorganised and Refocused
By Henry Boyd & Meia Nouwens, IISS: "Now with a more centralised command structure and enhanced use of new technology like uninhabited air vehicles, China’s People’s Armed Police is being transformed into a more reliable and effective force focused on three core missions – internal security, maritime security and supporting the People’s Liberation Army in times of war."

New US Indo-Pacific strategy isn’t going to scare China
Hal Brands | Bloomberg Opinion
The Department of Defense's new Indo-Pacific strategy clearly identifies some key tasks the US must accomplish to counter China’s rise. But the Indo-Pacific report is more interesting in that it highlights, intentionally and unintentionally, the key challenges the US has yet to overcome.

THE PLAYGROUND OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE: DIVIDING A FALLEN CALIPHATE

6/21/2019

Playground for Powers
by Camille Pecastaing via The Caravan
In August 1920, in the Parisian suburb of Sèvres, envoys of the allied powers signed an eponymous treaty dividing into zones of influence the fallen Ottoman Empire and Islamic Caliphate. The regime of "mandates" it instituted was simultaneously the culmination of European imperialism in the Middle East, and its final undertaking. Mandates were not meant to last: it was a phase of foreign trusteeship, in anticipation of independence that, by the 1970s, would be the norm across the region.

MANAGING THE CHALLENGE THAT IS CHINA, NUCLEAR RUSSIA; REASSESSING NET ASSESSMENT

6/15/2019

Blessed Be Thy Nuclear Weapons: The Rise of Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy
by Michael Kofman

On Will and War by Douglas A. Ollivant

Net Assessment: Is Realism Realistic? by Melanie Marlowe, Bryan McGrath, and Christopher Preble

Managing The China Challenge
by Larry Diamond via PolicyEd
Due to China’s covert, coercive, and corrupting efforts to gain cultural and informational influence, America must reevaluate its relationship with China and find ways to counter its attempts to manipulate American entities.

THE SIX DAY WAR FOR THE SOUL OF ISRAEL

6/15/2019

The Six-Day War and the Israeli Dream
By Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen, June 13, 2019
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The Six-Day War was a decisive turning point in the Zionist enterprise. But the project of building Israeli communities on the West Bank and the messianic aspects of Zionism were not born in 1967. They are stages in processes that were initiated by the workers’ parties and the Herut movement.
Continue to full article ->

INNOVATION IN OPERATIONAL THINKING

6/15/2019

Why America Needs a New Way of War
By Chris Dougherty, CNAS: "Despite the warning signals and the dire consequences, changes to U.S. military strategy and operational thinking have been incremental, lethargic, and too focused on finding “silver bullet” technological solutions."

Giselle Donnelly writes: The nuclear “triad” of ground-based and submarine-launched ballistic missiles and intercontinental-range bombers has been the basis of American great-power deterrence since the Soviet Union’s first nuclear test in 1949. Be it causation or simply correlation, it is remarkable that there has been no direct great-power war since then. To be sure, proxy and third-party conflicts have abounded, but the motto of the late Air Force’s Strategic Air Command, “Peace is our profession,” deserves more than ridicule. Yet over the past several decades, the strength of this triad has been slowly deteriorating. – American Enterprise Institute

Dissecting Strategic Decision Making
By Frank Hoffman, Strategy Bridge: ""The rationale for going to war was not deeply interrogated—indeed it was never even debated in an NSC meeting. The President and his senior officials did not make certain to acquire all the information available at the time; repeatedly they ignored or bypassed the testimony of experts.""

BUILDING MILITARIES IN FRAGILE STATES

6/12/2019

Building Militaries in Fragile States
By Matthew J. Kuhlman, Strategy Bridge: "To be effective at helping partner militaries establish internal defense the U.S. must become deeply involved in the partner state’s sensitive military affairs, and the role of antagonistic external actors must be mitigated."

CHINA, RUSSIA & THE WORLD ISLAND

6/12/2019

CHINA:
China Tests New Sub-Launched Strategic Missile
By Bill Gertz, The Washington Free Beacon: "JL-3 flight test timed to Shanahan visit to Singapore."

China and Russia Want to Control the ‘World Island’
By James Stavridis, Bloomberg: “Increasing military cooperation helps both sides now, but in the long run Beijing will rule."

THE FRENCH IN ALGERIA

6/9/2019

Symbols of Change
By Matthew Kopp, Strategy Bridge: "The French experience in Algeria provides an example of the difficulty of managing complex collective historical memory."

Assessment of the Legion as the Ideal Small Wars Force Structure
By Brandon Quintin, Divergent Options: "After the Massacre at the Wabash in 1791, George Washington and Henry Knox reformed the U.S. Army as the Legion of the United States. The Legion was a self-contained modular army composed of four identical combined-arms units. During the Fallen Timbers campaign, the Legion proved itself the ideal force structure for use in small wars."

GLOBAL GEOPOLITICS

ATLAS PRO YOUTUBE

DOUGLAS BARRIE: SPACE DEFENSE

THOMAS BUSSING: RAYTHEON MISSILE DEFENSE, STRATEGIEST

JAMES ACTON: NUCLEAR MISSILE DEFENSE

DR. MICHAEL PILLSBURY

HENRY ROWEN
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CHARLES WOLF JR.
File Size:	665 kb
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ANDREW MASHALL 'YODA'
File Size:	1471 kb
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AMERICA NEEDS NEW ALLIANCES

why_america_needs_new_alliances_-_wsj.pdf
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POLYBIUS & ANCIENT GRAND STRATEGY
File Size:	2040 kb
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CENTER FOR POLITICAL & MILITARY POWER

SUN TZU ISN'T WORKING FOR CHINA ANYMORE

SUN TZU ISN'T WORKING FOR CHINA
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THE QURAN & MORAL STRATEGY FOR THE LONG WAR

WHEN WAR WITHOUT END, FINALLY ENDS

WHEN WAR WITHOUT END, FINALLY ENDS
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THUCYDIDES & THE LONG WAR PROBLEM

HOW TO UNDERSTAND THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR

WHAT HAPPENED DURING PELOPONNESIAN WAR
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THUCYDIDES TRAP IS GREAT POWER COMPETITION

THUCYDIDES TRAP = GREAT POWER COMPETITION
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CENTER STRATEGIC, BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS: U.S. GRAND STRATEGY

DAVID P. GOLDMAN COLUMN ASIA TIMES

HOW BEST TO UNDERSTAND U.S. - CHINA RELATIONS

STRATEGY BRIDGE

Winning World War IV David P. Goldman.pdf
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THE NEW ASIAN OBSERVER

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