Search

Begin New Search Topic Security Political Geography United States Journal PRISM Publication Year within 10 Years

1. The Uneasy Relationship Between Economics and Security

Author:
Alexander Ferguson
Publication Date:
12-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
The most publicly discussed link between economics and security is the relationship between economic performance and power. the underpinnings for this relationship come from the philosophical approach that sees political power stemming from economic power. espoused at least since the 17th century by english Civil War philosopher James Harrington, these ideas saw their most well known expression in the philosophy of Karl Marx, who saw economic change driving political change. If economic structures determined politics then the link with security is clear. Carl von Clausewitz's likened war to other areas of conflict within developed societies, such as commerce and politics: “It is a conflict of great interests which is settled by bloodshed, and only in that is it different from others.”
Topic:
Security and War
Political Geography:
United States, Iran, and Germany

2. Decade of War: Enduring Lessons from a Decade of Operations

Author:
Elizabeth Young
Publication Date:
12-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
The year 2001 began with the inauguration of a U.S. President deliberately aiming to shift the use of the military away from the numerous humanitarian and peacekeeping interventions of the 1990s toward responding to and defeating conventional threats from nation-states. The mood was optimistic, with the new U.S. national Security Strategy, recently put in place by the departing Clinton administration, citing widespread financial prosperity and conveying no sense of an imminent threat to the homeland.2 But this situation proved fragile: the events of a single day, September 11, 2001, altered the trajectory of the United States and the way it used its military over the next decade. a nation focused on countering conventional threats was now confronted by an enemy that attacked the homeland with low-tech means in asymmetric and unexpected ways—individuals armed with box-cutters using hijacked civilian aircraft.
Topic:
Security and War
Political Geography:
United States

3. Securing the State: National Security and Secret Intelligence

Author:
David Omand
Publication Date:
09-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
Consider the artist Michelangelo standing in front of a block of Carrara marble rough-hewn from the quarry. As he later described that moment, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” Sculptors need the patience to recognize that many small steps will be needed to realize their vision. The sculptor needs a strategic sixth sense that can continuously adapt the design to the conditions of the material while testing whether each small incision, however immediately appealing and easily achieved, will end up weakening the final structure. The sculptor needs the confidence to know that the design can be adjusted in response to the inevitable small slips and misjudgments made along the way. Call it the ability to hold the desired ends in mind while being continuously aware of the ways open for achieving them and the means that are at hand. Even the most technically skilled sculptor equipped with the sharpest chisels needs to have a clear sense of the end state – to see at the outset, “the angel in the marble” – that could be the final result of all the labor to come. That is the strategic cast of mind needed for planning modern counter-terrorism.
Topic:
Security and Terrorism
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

4. The Military in a Wicked World: A European Union Military Point of View

Author:
Bruce Williams
Publication Date:
09-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
We live in an increasingly wicked world, both in the common understanding of the word (given the growing number of serious security bushfires around the world threatening to join into a larger forest conflagration) and from a systems engineering perspective;1 where interrelationships between concurrent and coincident actors and events necessitate increasingly complex solutions, to even the most seemingly simple crisis, if unintended consequences are not to dominate outcomes.
Topic:
Security, NATO, and Humanitarian Aid
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

5. A Recurrent, Variable and Complex Challenge: The Uncertain Trajectory of Stabilization and Reconstruction in U.S. Security Strategy

Author:
Kari Mottola
Publication Date:
09-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
Despite the apparent strength of their case, the community of planners, veterans, think-tankers and civic activists working in external security and humanitarian missions are puzzled and frustrated with the past and present performance of the United States in such missions, and anguished about the future.2 It is not that the United States has not taken action in foreign conflicts, regional instabilities or humanitarian catastrophes. It is not that the response to fragile or failed states has not been a key agenda item in U.S. foreign and security policy throughout the post-Cold War era. Where America as a polity has come short is in failing to recognize, as a permanent national security interest, the need to design and pursue a strategic policy on stabilization and reconstruction. While the concept may be debatable and the capability may be constrained by developments, what those devoted to the cause call for is a policy with a sustainable balance between ends and means and commensurate to the responsibility of U.S. global leadership.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, and Cold War
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

6. Towards a Taxonomy of Militaries in Contemporary Africa

Author:
Jeffrey Herbst, Alan Doss, and Greg Mills
Publication Date:
09-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
The African development and governance picture is today highly differentiated with some countries developing successful democracies while riding a wave of growth, others facing outright institutional failure, and a great number in-between. Critical to understanding the different paths that countries have taken, and the likely even greater divergences in the future, is the relationship between civilians and soldiers. Starting soon after independence in the early 1960s, the seizure of power by soldiers was emblematic of the problems African states faced in promoting good governance. Now, at a time when most soldiers are back in their barracks, economic growth has accelerated and democratization has progressed. However, the picture varies greatly from country-to-country. In this paper, we develop a taxonomy of African militaries to understand why some countries have better civil-military relations than others, what is the likely path in the future, and the potential role, if any, for outsiders. African militaries are characterised, just as African states themselves, by different capacities and civil-military records.
Topic:
Security, Cold War, Political Economy, and United Nations
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, and Sierra Leone