Books

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Partnership for the Americas: Western Hemisphere Strategy and U.S. Southern Command

James G. Stavridis

Since its creation in 1963, United States Southern Command has been led by 30 senior officers representing all four of the armed forces. None has undertaken his leadership responsibilities with the cultural sensitivity and creativity demonstrated by Admiral Jim Stavridis during his tenure in command.

Breaking with tradition, Admiral Stavridis discarded the customary military model as he organized the Southern Command Headquarters. In its place he created an organization designed not to subdue adversaries, but instead to build durable and enduring partnerships with friends. His observation that it is the business of Southern Command to launch “ideas not missiles” into the command’s area of responsibility gained strategic resonance throughout the Caribbean and Central and South America, and at the highest levels in Washington, DC.

Pursuing his vision for the Americas with limited resources, Admiral Stavridis made the most of every ship, airplane, Soldier, Sailor, Airman, Marine, and Coastguardsman committed to the region, employing each on constructive missions designed to create goodwill and mutual respect.

Perhaps Jim Stavridis’ most enduring contribution to Southern Command is the newly constructed headquarters complex in Miami. The new building, which finally creates a permanent lodgment for the command in the city that the Admiral correctly describes as the “Gateway to the Americas,” is a testimonial to his persistence, persuasiveness, and credibility within the Department of Defense and the U. S. Congress. More than a building, the new headquarters is tacit recognition of the importance of the command and acknowledgment that Miami is the single right location for the institution that, as much or more than any other, expresses our commitment to peace and stability in this hemisphere.

Admirals and Generals leave their marks on the organizations they command in different ways. Some solve the problems of the day; others set courses that will influence events and relationships for decades. Clearly, Admiral Stavridis is in the latter category. He has set wheels in motion that will transform our American culture to a culture of the Americas. xii PARTNERSHIP FOR THE AMERICAS

This thoughtful book should be required reading for those who recognize that the security of the United States, and indeed our destiny, are inextricably intertwined with those of our neighbors to the south.

General Charles E. Wilhelm
United States Marine Corps (Retired)
Civilian Surge: Key to Complex Operations

Hans Binnendijk and Patrick M. Cronin

The United States today manifestly lacks adequate civilian capacity to conduct complex operations—those operations that require close civil-military planning and cooperation in the field. This book is intended to fill that gap. Its main conclusion is that current efforts to build a civilian response capacity for complex operations are unfinished and that the Obama administration needs to dedicate additional attention and resources to complete the task.
Crosscutting Issues in International Transformation: Interactions and Innovations among People, Organizations, Processes, and Technology

Derrick J. Neal, Henrik Friman, Ralph Doughty, and Linton Wells II

This book is a compilation of papers presented at the International Transformation Conference in Stockholm, Sweden on June 2-3, 2009. The conference was hosted by the Swedish Defence Research Agency, FOI. The papers are organized according to the categories of culture, interagency, transformation initiatives, leadership, and adaptive organizations.

The complexities of the task make definitions of transformation a challenge and often open to debate. The unpredictable nature of the future international security environment defies a tightly bounded definition so the International Transformation Chairs have adopted an inclusive description: “Transformation is a process that shapes the changing nature of competition and cooperation through new combinations of concepts, capabilities, people, and organizations.”
Military Perspectives on Cyber Power

Larry K. Wentz, Charles L. Barry, and Stuart Starr

CTNSP convened several workshops to address challenges in cyberspace, cyberpower, cyberstrategy, and institutional factors. Several representatives from the military Services participated extensively in those workshops. During those workshops, a variety of cyber issues emerged about the roles of the Services in the areas of roles and missions and the creation of needed intellectual capital. Subsequently, each of the Services identified volunteers who graciously generated white papers to illuminate the cyber debate.
Transforming NATO: An NDU Anthology

Hans Binnendijk and Gina Cordero

Since September 11, 2001, the National Defense University has undertaken a series of studies on the Transformation of NATO for 21st Century missions. These studies focused on needed military capabilities, political transformation, new operational requirements, new missions, and NATO science and technology. Some of these studies made recommendations that were adopted as NATO policy while others may be ahead of their time. The purpose of this volume is to collect these studies under one cover and to stimulate further transformation.
From Reform to Reduction: Reports on the Management of Navy and Department of Defense Laboratories in the Post-Cold War Era

J. Eric Hazell

This book reviews approximately 65 of the significant reports issued on Department of Defense (DOD) and Department of the Navy (DON) management of research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) from the end of the Cold War through the late 1990s. It is designed for two primary audiences: (1) DOD, congressional, and other government staff who need an accessible overview and quick reference and bibliographic guide to issues during that period; and (2) researchers and historians, especially those interested in available sources. The book is organized both chronologically and thematically, and engages some of the principal arguments, regarding management of defense research and development (R&D) in the 1990s. Dr. Hazell’s work is a clear, concise, and especially well-written history of the impact of the post-Cold War downturn in DOD’s support of the Navy’s in-house laboratories. The book presents vital information on some five dozen key reports issued during this period and includes descriptions of unique source material.
Coping with the Dragon: Essays on PLA Transformation

Neyla Arnas, Tai Ming Cheung, David C. Gompert, Stuart E. Johnson, Martin Libicki, Timothy Lo, Duncan Long, Michael McDevitt, James Mulvenon, and David Shlapak

Should the independence movement in Taiwan regain political momentum, however, the potential for U.S. military intervention in the Taiwan Strait would increase. Further, the perception of U.S. vulnerability in the region could invite assertiveness. So, despite the fact that armed conflict between the United States and China is in no one’s interest, China’s burgeoning power requires that critical factors in U.S. plans for the defense of Taiwan be examined. This collection of essays offers just such an examination. It looks at China’s growing strength, the strategies underlying U.S. plans for military intervention in the Strait, U.S. vulnerabilities, and options for how these vulnerabilities might be overcome through the development of new technologies and strategies.
Enhancing Army Science and Technology: Lessons from Project Hindsight Revisited

Richard Chait, John W. Lyons, Duncan Long, and Albert Sciarretta

This book draws on a series of studies known as Project Hindsight Revisited conducted by the authors at the National Defense University from 2004–2006. The Hindsight Revisited studies examined, in three reports, the development of four current U.S. Army weapons systems: the Abrams main battle tank, the Apache attack helicopter, the Stinger anti-aircraft missile, and the Javelin anti-tank missile. In exploring how these weapons systems were taken from conceptual design to full-scale production, the studies brought to light crucial factors in their successful development. This book pursues significant implications of the studies’ findings, with the intention that this analysis and commentary will help the Army’s science and technology (S&T) leadership manage the Army S&T portfolio today and tomorrow.

Collaboration with industry, with other DOD partners, with academia — this has been, is, and will continue to be vital to Army S&T success. The Army has benefited, is benefiting, and will continue to benefit from investment in critical technologies that serve multiple weapons systems, in basic research, and in unique equipment and facilities. The Army laboratories have been, are, and will continue to be crucial to technical success.
BATTLE WISE: Seeking Time-Information Superiority in Networked Warfare

David C. Gompert, Irving Lachow, and Justin Perkins

This book is an inquiry into the possibility of improving the operational thinking and decisionmaking of U.S. military individuals, teams, and forces who fight for their nation. The unstoppable spread of information networking and know-how gives rise to the need for a new edge—one that utilizes but transcends networks—by developing people, teams, and decisionmaking methods that convert information into better choices and outcomes. We call this new edge battle-wisdom and form a view of the need for and nature of battle-wise people, forces, and decisionmaking.
Transforming for Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations

Hans Binnendijk and Stuart E. Johnson

Through superiority, recent military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq were exceptionally quick and successful in defeating the enemy. However, the Armed Forces were not adequately prepared to respond to lawlessness, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and attacks on coalition forces from unconventional insurgents. It is imperative to transform how the U.S. military prepares for and executes stabilization and reconstruction (S&R) operations. It is necessary for S&R to be planned before the conflict and executed promptly following the conflict as part of the transformation.

This book examines the various elements of the stabilization and reconstruction capabilities needed by the U.S. military. It addresses systematically the range of issues that must be resolved to transform S&R operations, including military strategy, organization, technology, personnel, and education.
In the Tracks of Tamerlane: Central Asia’s Path to the 21st Century

Daniel L. Burghart and Theresa Sabonis-Helf

Central Asia remains a relatively overlooked region compared to other parts of the world, yet energy reserves of gas and oil and recent focus on the region’s terrorist presence has made Central Asia increasingly important to understand. This book examines the course of events in Central Asia since independence, through the eyes of 22 specialists in the region. A product of the Pre-Conflict Management Tools project launched in April of 2003 by CTNSP, the purpose of the book is to increase understanding of the challenges faced by the region, with the goal of preventing or limiting the potential for conflict brought about by these challenges.
Effects of Directed Energy Weapons

Philip E. Nielsen

Effects of Directed Energy Weapons is an encyclopedic treatment of how Directed Energy Weapons work, how the energy of these weapons is propagated to the target, and how the weapon/beam-target interaction creates effects (damage) in the target. This is a technical exposition, written at the undergraduate physics and engineering level that could serve either as a text book or as a reference text for technical practitioners. The text addresses Kinetic Energy Weapons in addition to Lasers, Microwaves and Particle Beams.

This book is on the effects of directed energy weapons in terms of how they propagate to and interact with targets. Propagation and target interaction are the key elements in an analysis of a weapon’s utility to accomplish a given mission. This book presents a unique source of information for the less-explored world of dealing with the utility of directed energy weapons. This book should also serve as an introduction to the language of directed energy weapons for military planners and other non-technical persons who need to understand what the engineers and scientists involved in their development are talking about.
Transforming America’s Military

Hans Binnendijk

Transforming America’s Military, edited by Hans Binnendijk. This book explores the issues that face the U.S. military in a time of transformation: new missions, new technologies, efforts by each of the Services, on the part of our allies, as well as the challenges we face after September 11.

Military transformation requires developing new technologies, operational concepts, and organizational structures to conduct war in dramatically new ways. The United States is undertaking such a transformation to tackle its 21st century missions. A properly transformed military can develop significant advantages over a potential enemy. But the process also introduces risks that, if not properly managed, could dangerously undermine military capability. This book, therefore, sets out the arguments for a purposeful and measured transformation that relies on sound experimentation as the basis for change, rather than the riskier strategy, proposed by some, of skipping a generation of technology.