U.S. Naval War College faculty members publish their learned opinions on diverse topics and time periods in various media outlets including academic journals, online publications, scholarly texts, and popular editions.
This document is a summary of 16 key research and game findings focused specifically on the characteristics of civil-military response to a pandemic scenario. The numbered bullets below correspond to more detailed explanations of findings presented later in the document. While these findings are in no way definitive or complete, they are a sampling of relevant guidance based on research, gaming and expert opinion. It is our hope that these 16...
Many of Sir John Orde’s contemporaries thought he was a coward, partially responsible for Nelson’s failure to track down the Combined Fleet during the summer months of the Trafalgar Campaign. Sir Julian Corbett disagreed, arguing that Orde demonstrated laudable strategic insight. Most modern historians have followed Corbett’s lead. This article challenges the Corbettian consensus to suggest a new interpretation of Orde’s actions off Cadiz.
This article analyses the Islamic State media department’s involvement in deceptive influence efforts. Relying on an extensive database, the author identifies situations when decisions are made to involve the media in deception efforts, and why. He finds that the Islamic State used deception infrequently and carefully, while carefully balancing the need for credible and truthful information activities.
A brief history of the U.S. Naval War College.
A sober analysis of IS's media and propaganda output, essential for understanding what drives the movement. Goes beyond the descriptive and sensationalist to present and analyze a series of milestone source materials. Contextualizes the movement's approach to warfare, propaganda and governance. Useful for students, journalists, military personnel and civilians alike.
This article summarizes key lessons from the authors’ efforts to collect, analyze, and present a holistic perspective of this movement through its own works. The authors present three important themes central to the group's ability to survive: the centrality of territory and population control, the deliberate routinization of its leadership and organization, and its skill in propaganda.
The U.S. Army’s unofficial two-volume history of the Iraq War offers a critical examination of the conflict, one that is illuminating and controversial. In 2013, while serving as the U.S. Army’s Chief of Staff, General Raymond T. Odierno commissioned a team of Army warrior-scholars, all of whom had served in Iraq during the war, and asked them to conduct a candid examination of the conflict.
This article examines the British response to the failure at Bantry Bay in 1796. Doing so reveals not only the continuing significance of the invasion threat and the ways in which the British countered it, but also the challenges facing British military officials. Drawing on previously unexamined sources, it connects naval defense efforts to broader questions of British and Irish history.
From 17-18 September 2019, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences - National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health and the U.S. Naval War College (NWC) conducted a game at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Maryland. Titled “Urban Outbreak 2019,” this two-day, three-move analytic game was internally developed by the NWC’s Humanitarian Response Program and emerged as an output from their 2018...
The 'unification' of the United States Army and Navy under the 1947 National Security Act, combined with efforts to cut expenditures after the Second World War, spawned vicious inter-service competition that undermined civilian control of the military. The nastiest feuds were between the Air Force and Navy, and then the Navy and civilian leaders of the fledgling Department of Defence.
Why have special operations forces become a key strategic tool in the conduct of modern warfare? How do these specially trained and equipped elite units function? What types of missions do they conduct? Special Operations: Out of the Shadows addresses these questions and more in a comprehensive survey of special ops, encompassing cutting-edge research, current debates, and critical case studies.
A new generation of naval historians is bringing a variety of social, cultural, administrative and other approaches to naval history, but international comparisons have so far remained elusive. This book fills that gap. It presents new approaches in social history and stretches them across the boundaries of European states in the age of sail.
The study of foreign policy decision-making seeks to understand how states formulate and enact foreign policy. It views foreign policy as a series of decisions made by particular actors using specific decision-making processes. The origins of this focus on decision-making are generally traced to the 1950s and 1960s, with the literature increasing in complexity and diversity of approaches in more recent decades.
Relations between Washington and Beijing improved swiftly in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, especially in comparison to the nadir that had been reached during the April 2001 EP-3 incident. This new tide of cooperation has included counterterrorism initiatives, regional partnership in such complex situations as Afghanistan and North Korea, and even some modest agreement on the importance of maintaining the status quo with...
In the post-Cold War strategic environment, Beijing could plausibly have opted for Soviet-style geostrategic competition with Washington, but it has not. Chinese leaders have not thus far, and almost certainly will never, amass thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert or deploy significant forces to a network of bases spanning the globe.