Strategic Vision: National Security, Defense Policy, and the Geopolitics of Military Pre-Eminence

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Löfflmann
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Defense Policy ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
Pivot To Asia ◽  
Strategic Narratives ◽  
The Us ◽  
American Hegemony ◽  
Big Picture ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter explores how the US Department of Defense has acted as key producer of practical grand strategy discourse, regularly translating geopolitical imaginations, threat assessments and strategic narratives into concrete policy outcomes and security practices, from defense policy planning documents to the stationing of US troops and the conducting of military operations. High-level strategic documents published under the Obama presidency, such as the Quadrennial Defense Review reports or the Defense Strategic Guidance are examined in this chapter as key political outputs in providing the ‘big picture’ of national security. The chapter examines how several practical issues in defense policymaking and military planning were, at the same time, indicating are careful shift in the conceptualization and operation of American hegemony. The chapter details how budget sequestration had a lasting impact on the overall size of the US military while Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’ shifted its geopolitical and operational focus. This limitation, recalibration and downsizing challenged a status quo of American primacy and global military supremacy that politicians, policy experts and military officials had largely taken for granted since the end of the Cold War.

Reluctant Cold Warriors

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Kontorovich
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Soviet Economy ◽  
Accurate Analysis ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Us ◽  
Comprehensive Survey ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

The academic study of the Soviet economy in the US was created to help fight the Cold War, part of a broader mobilization of the social sciences for national security needs. The Soviet strategic challenge rested on the ability of its economy to produce large numbers of sophisticated weapons. The military sector was the dominant part of the economy, and the most successful one. However, a comprehensive survey of scholarship on the Soviet economy from 1948-1991 shows that it paid little attention to the military sector, compared to other less important parts of the economy. Soviet secrecy does not explain this pattern of neglect. Western scholars developed strained civilian interpretations for several aspects of the economy which the Soviets themselves acknowledged to have military significance. A close reading of the economic literature, combined with insights from other disciplines, suggest three complementary explanations for civilianization of the Soviet economy. Soviet studies was a peripheral field in economics, and its practitioners sought recognition by pursuing the agenda of the mainstream discipline, however ill-fitting their subject. The Soviet economy was supposed to be about socialism, and the military sector appeared to be unrelated to that. By stressing the militarization, one risked being viewed as a Cold War monger. The conflict identified in this book between the incentives of academia and the demands of policy makers (to say nothing of accurate analysis) has broad relevance for national security uses of social science.

The Handbook of European Defence Policies and Armed Forces

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Security Challenges ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
National Defence

The armed forces of Europe have undergone a dramatic transformation since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Handbook of European Defence Policies and Armed Forces provides the first comprehensive analysis of national security and defence policies, strategies, doctrines, capabilities, and military operations, as well as the alliances and partnerships of European armed forces in response to the security challenges Europe has faced since the end of the cold war. A truly cross-European comparison of the evolution of national defence policies and armed forces remains a notable blind spot in the existing literature. This Handbook aims to fill this gap with fifty-one contributions on European defence and international security from around the world. The six parts focus on: country-based assessments of the evolution of the national defence policies of Europe’s major, medium, and lesser powers since the end of the cold war; the alliances and security partnerships developed by European states to cooperate in the provision of national security; the security challenges faced by European states and their armed forces, ranging from interstate through intra-state and transnational; the national security strategies and doctrines developed in response to these challenges; the military capabilities, and the underlying defence and technological industrial base, brought to bear to support national strategies and doctrines; and, finally, the national or multilateral military operations by European armed forces. The contributions to The Handbook collectively demonstrate the fruitfulness of giving analytical precedence back to the comparative study of national defence policies and armed forces across Europe.

Together Forward?

The Last Card ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 74-88
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Current Approach ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
Joint Chiefs Of Staff ◽  
Sectarian Violence ◽  
The Us

This chapter examines debates over US policy in the summer of 2006, focusing particularly on the unhappy results of military efforts to tamp down violence in Baghdad. Two major military operations—Operations Together Forward I and II—were launched, intended, as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Peter Pace, recalled, to “begin the process of turning over the battlefield responsibilities to the Iraqi armed forces.” Both were clear disappointments, however, revealing how unprepared Iraqi forces were to assume responsibility for their country's security. Iraqi forces themselves were, in the words of the National Security Council's Meghan O'Sullivan, “perpetuating acts of sectarian violence” and were “as much part of the problem as they are a solution to the problem.” Throughout the summer, NSC staff thus sought to press the Iraq country team for a review of Iraq strategy, and pushed the president to ask General George Casey, commander of Multi-National Force Iraq (MNF-I), harder questions about where the current approach was leading. However, MNF-I and the US Embassy in Iraq continued to champion existing plans, believing that the existing strategy merely required more time.

Conclusion: the sword or the spirit?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jude Woodward
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
China’S Rise ◽  
Pivot To Asia ◽  
The Us ◽  
China's Rise ◽  
The Cold War

This book has considered the US decision to ‘pivot’ to Asia aiming to preserve its global primacy by containing China. Seeking to boost US influence among China’s neighbours, while painting China as a dangerous revisionist power and regional aggressor, its policy has parallels with the Cold War. But when the US embarked on its confrontation with the USSR it was at the height of its economic power. Today in courting Asian allies it has had little to offer but the power of its military machine. So while the US has made some progress in re-building its influence in the affairs of the region, it has been far from enough to stall China’s rise or to convince other Asian countries to break with China. Moreover on-going distractions in the Middle East, domestic opposition to the TPP, and other troubles mean it has not even been able to concentrate its resources on China, undermining confidence in the seriousness of its turn to Asia. As a result the US has failed to drive a decisive wedge between China and any neighbours apart from Japan and not been able to inflect its increased presence in the region into a more substantive advantage.

Cold War diplomacy

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beverley Hooper
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Arab Countries ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Communist China ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Foreign Ministries

From the early 1970s, the US-China relationship was central to diplomatic reporting, with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger’s visit to Peking in October 1971, President Nixon’s historic visit in February 1972, and the establishment the following year of small liaison offices in Peking and Washington. Following each of Kissinger’s further visits in 1973 and 1974, senior diplomats virtually queued up at the liaison office to find out what progress, if any, had been made towards the normalization of US-China relations. Peking’s diplomats, like some of their colleagues elsewhere in the world, did not always see eye-to-eye with their foreign ministries. There was little chance of their becoming overly attached to Communist China, as the Japanologists and Arabists were sometimes accused of doing for Japan and Arab countries. At the same time, living and breathing the PRC led some diplomats to regard Chinese Communism as being rather more nuanced—and the government somewhat less belligerent—than the Cold War images portrayed in the West, particularly the United States.

Epilogue

2019 ◽  
pp. 207-212
Author(s):  
Ingo Trauschweizer
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Historical Drama ◽  
Art And Politics ◽  
Military Planning ◽  
The Us ◽  
Operational Art ◽  
National Security State ◽  
The Cold War

Maxwell Taylor’s experience in the Cold War highlights four interrelated themes that have defined the US national security state and also shed light on the nature of strategy. First, the warfare state will guide decision-makers to seek military solutions to political problems. Sometimes that is appropriate, but at other times, as in Vietnam, it can drown out other approaches. Second, strategy and bureaucracy often work at cross-purposes. Again, decisions leading to the Vietnam War offer an illustration: instead of aligning means, ends, and political objectives, US strategy suffered from the collision of politics and policy with operational art and military planning. The various bureaucracies, though linked in the National Security Council, sought separate solutions. Third, strategy in general has increasingly become the fault line between operational art and politics and policy. It should be the connective tissue. Fourth, powerful and influential individuals served as contingent actors in the historical drama, but their options were limited by Cold War structures, ranging from bureaucracies that channeled possible actions to mind-sets that made it difficult not to view the problem at hand through the lens of the wider conflict and recent experiences. As they say in military and policy circles, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But what if you had several different hammers all trying to strike the nail at once?...

End of the Cold War and the Continuation of Reform

2019 ◽  
pp. 62-90
Author(s):  
David P. Oakley
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Intelligence Community ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
Intelligence Reform ◽  
Intelligence Support ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Over Time

The momentum for DoD intelligence reform quickly expanded into the broader Intelligence Community and Congress. The executive and legislative branches worked to improve intelligence support to military operations. Although many recommended reform measures were not initially instituted, the actions of a handful of individuals kept the discussion of intelligence reform and support to military operations alive. Over time, many of the issues that were not initially embraced found increased support as national security conditions changed and the requirement of support to military operations became immediate.

Huawei's Battle

2015 ◽  
pp. 107-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona Chung ◽  
Bruno Mascitelli
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Valuable Contribution ◽  
The Us ◽  
Political Tension ◽  
High Level ◽  
Telecommunications Company

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the causes and reasons for these actions and to ascertain what key strategic approaches and positioning lie behind the high-level political tension. This is a conceptual chapter that looks at Huawei, the giant Chinese telecommunications company that has become the focus of contract exclusion and finger pointing by certain Western governments. The finding of this chapter suggests that the argument of “national security” used by the US and Australia in refusing Huawei's NBN contract is controversial. The chapter provides the causes behind this argument. This chapter makes valuable contribution whether it be due to Cold War legacies or business competition; the exclusions do not sit well in this globalised economy.

Alchemical Transformations? Fictions of the Nuclear State after 1989

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Grausam
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Pynchon ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Nuclear Age ◽  
Nuclear Site ◽  
The Us ◽  
Aesthetic Practice ◽  
Plutonium Production ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Cold War

James Flint’s novel The Book of Ash (2004) is a book concerned with the toxic legacy of the Cold War and the literary challenge of representing the security state inherited from Thomas Pynchon. The plot concerns Cooper James, a computer programmer employed by the US military at Featherbrooks, an RAF outpost in North Yorkshire, and his search for the truth about his father. The figure of the father is inspired by the real-life American sculptor James Acord (1944–2011), the only private citizen in the world licensed to own and handle high-level radioactive materials. In 1989 Acord moved close to Hanford, site of US plutonium production and the most polluted nuclear site in the US, where he sought to create something like a nuclear Stonehenge as a long-term memorial to the nuclear age, and to develop artistic practices for transmuting radioactive waste into less harmful substances. Acord imagined his own aesthetic practice to be a kind of alchemy, and The Book of Ash is precisely in this same style, making alchemical transformation a literary subject but also a literary technique: it is a radioactive novel in its subject matter and the way it transmutes novelistic style and content over time.

Removing the Mask of Sanity: McCarthyism and the Psychiatric–Confessional Foundations of the Cold War National Security State

2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (04) ◽  
pp. 1066-1094
Author(s):  
ROBERT GENTER
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Sexual Behaviors ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Political Beliefs ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Psychiatric Discourse ◽  
National Security State ◽  
The Cold War

In the early Cold War, the US government institutionalized a national security program, centered on the investigation into the political beliefs of federal employees, to safeguard the nation from Communist subversion. Often interpreted as the result of a partisan battle between New Deal Democrats and conservative Republicans, the national security program had deeper origins, reflecting the influence of psychiatric discourse on public understandings of deviancy. Framed by a metonymical logic that linked radical political beliefs, deviant sexual behaviors, and other illicit behaviors under the category of psychopathology, the security program sought to guard against the threat posed by potentially dangerous individuals, a form of protection that necessitated the public disclosure by those deemed security risks of all aspects of their personal lives.

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