HEDGEMONY: A Wargame to Evaluate Senior Joint Professional Military Education Learning Objectives

The Officer Professional Military Education Policy directs Joint professional military education institutions to develop officers who demonstrate critical and creative thinking skills. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ’s intent is to develop strategically minded officers who will “creatively apply military power to inform national strategy, conduct globally integrated operations, and fight under conditions of disruptive change.”1 The wargame Hedgemony is unlike most other wargames. Its focus is on teaching defense professionals how strategies are a complex interaction between force development, force posture, and force employment. Hedgemony also provides a way in which the Marine Corps War College measures its program outcomes.

Diagnosis of the problems in Korean military force development systems

The Republic of Korea (ROK) military has pursued development with a focus on the defense force development system since the Yulgok project, which began in the 1970s for the purpose of self-defense. Currently, the ROK defense force development system seems to be very methodical, and it determines requirements by using the joint combat development system, reflects the budget in the defense planning and management system, and manages the acquisition project in the defense acquisition system; however; it has many problems. These problems include fierce competition among the services, limited verification, ambiguous standards and references for requirements, complicated procedures and regulations, and failure to reflect the rapid changes in the security environment and science and technology in military force development. The most important issue is that the Joint Chiefs of Staff should lead the development of the forces based on the concept of joint operations; however, they are focused on only the current operation and neglect their main goals as the top military organization, such as mid- to long-term force development and military strategy. The Joint Chiefs of Staff should revise the organization, mission performance system, and regulations to properly perform the core functions of the defense organization that establishes long-term response strategies and builds response capabilities according to the changes in the security and strategic environment.

The CIA and the Bomber and Missile Gap

This chapter is concerned with analysing the Soviet strategic threat. It opens with a discussion of how technological innovations creating relatively small movable weapons ensured that modern warfare had forever changed. Atomic intelligence became a matter of the highest priority, as did spying on the aircraft and missiles that would deliver these weapons. US intelligence underestimated the speed at which the USSR could develop and test an atomic weapon and overestimated the number of bombers capable of delivering such weapons. Developing better intelligence became a principal national priority. Document: AQUATONE Briefing for the Joint Chiefs of Staff RE Guided Missiles, Atomic Energy, and Long Range Bombers.

Environmental Warfare against American Citizens: An Open Letter to the Joint Chiefs of Staff

While the public perception of the recent attempts to unseat duly-elected U.S. President Donald J. Trump is thought to be solely of national origin, there is strong evidence of a more pernicious, United Nations’ sanctioned environmental assault on America and on American citizens. The United States and other sovereign nations are in the midst of a highly organized, covert environmental warfare assault, underlain by deception and deceit, orchestrated by a foreign entity, and perpetrated in America by the U.S. Air Force and its contractors, and facilitated by intelligence-agency operatives. The intent, to slowly and insidiously sicken, weaken, and debilitate citizenry, cause weather and climate chaos, cripple agriculture, and devastate the environment, is so cleverly underwritten and camouflaged as to have gone unnoticed in the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America and, presumably, is unknown to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But it is described here. American military officers have the responsibility to protect their own citizens, especially as they possess the means to destroy human and environmental health. Systematically poisoning the air Americans breathe, harming human and environmental health, causing weather and climate chaos, damaging agriculture, and deceiving the public as to the adverse human and environmental health consequences – all under secret orders originating from a foreign entity – we allege, violates not only their Oath of Office, but is tantamount to treason. The United States Air Force co-optation, deceit, and unquestioning capitulation to a foreign entity should be of grave concern to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. With due humility we must emphasize that no military asset is worth damaging human and environmental health, especially on a national or planetary-scale, and especially due to a deceptively-worded, Trojan horse, United Nations international treaty whose signatories presumably were duped into signing in the false belief that they were preventing hostile environmental warfare.

Strategy, Diplomacy, and the Cold War

This chapter takes a look at U.S. war planning during the Cold War. Looking through Joint Chiefs of Staff records, the chapter shows that U.S. war planning, although crude, began in the early months of 1946. If war erupted, for whatever reasons, the war plans called for the United States to strike the Soviet Union (USSR). Expecting Soviet armies to overrun most of Europe very quickly, planners assumed that the United States would launch its attack primarily from bases in the United Kingdom and the British-controlled Cairo-Suez base in the Middle East. To protect the latter, it would be essential to slow down Soviet armies marching southward to conquer the Middle East. The United States needed the Turkish army to thwart Soviet military advances and required Turkish airfields to insure the success of the strategic offensive against targets inside the USSR.

The Ghost of Dimitri

This chapter is set during the September 22, 1993, Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing to review General John Shalikashvili’s nomination to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It first explores the development of a controversy that breaks out after General John Shalikashvili’s nomination when a Defense Daily report and a Simon Weisenthal Center press release, based on a reading of Dimitri Shalikashvili’s own memoirs housed at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, announce that Dimitri served under the Waffen-SS during World War II. This is followed by a flashback, from Dimitri’s point of view, of how and why he joined the German war cause and what he did while serving for them. The chapter ends with an overview of the Senate confirmation hearing where Shalikashvili denies knowledge of his father’s SS association and the committee okays Shalikashvili’s confirmation, subject to a suitable replacement being found to take over his current position as SACEUR.

Blondi and the Boy on the Bridge

The chapter opens with Donna Bechtold watching Larry King’s September 22, 1995, interview on CNN with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Shalikashvili. Through her musings, readers learn she fled Peoria in 1954 in order to not jeopardize his future, raising the theme of how the actions of others influence our lives and help determine our success. She also reveals that Shalikashvili’s statement to Congress that he didn’t know about his father’s Waffen-SS association was a lie, and that his struggles with knowing that his beloved father had “made a deal with the devil” in hopes of freeing his native Georgia was the wellspring, later in life, for much of Shalikashvili’s striving during his military career to always do the right thing and for the right reasons.

Boy on the Bridge

John Shalikashvili: From Boy on the Bridge to Top American General tells the captivating tale of how John Shalikashvili, a penniless, stateless World War II refugee achieved the American dream by being appointed the thirteenth chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking officer in the US military, during the Clinton administration. Through a gripping narrative covering his wartime upbringing, aristocratic family background, parental influence, immigrant experience, and betrayals by loved ones—particularly by his high school girlfriend and by his father’s affiliation with the Waffen-SS, which came to light during Shalikashvili’s confirmation process—the biography explores the themes of nature vs. nurture and the role of agency vs. luck (i.e., the influence of his own actions vs. factors beyond his control) in determining Shalikashvili’s character, leadership abilities, and career success.