Newly commissioned officers and officer hopefuls look to various areas for role models. Some looks to business and politics while others look to science and academia. Yet, most look towards military officers, persons such as GEN Creighton Abrams, LTG Lewis “Chesty” Puller, or ADM Chester Nimitz. Many are able to find key qualities for officers … Continue reading General Sam and the Warrior-Scholar: The Importance of Self-Education in the Armed Forces
By Alan Cunningham Misinformation was at the heart of the 2016 Presidential Election and has been a recurring problem for governments and the public across the globe since then. With the election of President Joe Biden, the proliferation of misinformation and conspiracy theories online has grown substantially. Even during the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, it … Continue reading The Information War: How the Biden Administration Can Deal with Misinformation Online
By Warrant Officer Class One Brad Doyle, Regimental Sergeant Major Combat Training Centre. The RSM at Divisional, Brigade and Battle Group level has a number of functions and tasks. What is the function that best describes the RSM during planning? Is the role defined and do RSMs know of this role? The Manual of Army … Continue reading THE REGIMENTAL SERGEANT MAJOR IN PLANNING
Phillip Dolitsky recently critiqued my four part series of articles titled “How to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons” here on Chesterfield Strategy (see “Why Nuclear Weapons are Here to Stay.”) Dolitsky’s response is well researched, cogent, and clear. He is an able scholar, but we do have some points of disagreement. People often think that because I … Continue reading Why Nuclear Weapons Are Going to Go
The more one reads about strategic studies and strategic history, the more one finds that the old Latin adage, Si vis pacem, para bellum, has rightly dominated the minds of the world’s greatest statesmen and strategists. In a world that has known war longer than it has known peace, strategists are obligated to think through … Continue reading Why Nuclear Weapons Are Here to Stay
Confess: it’s my professionthat alarms you.This is why few people ask me to dinner,though Lord knows I don’t go out of my way to be scary. - Margaret Atwood, “The Loneliness of the Military Historian” As someone studying strategy and warfare, I often remark that I’m not too fun to be around at dinner parties. … Continue reading Thoughts from a Budding Strategist
This article is a collation and edit of emails sent to Army members selected for attendance on the Australian Command and Staff Course for 2021 by an Army member attending the 2020 course as it happened. It contains the opinions of the author and completely unofficial in its content. Introduction Firstly, congratulations on your selection for … Continue reading The War College Diaries: An Unofficial Guide to the Australian Command and Staff Course
‘Nor can technology abolish war’s central essence as the realm of uncertainty and of the clash of wills. Processing power can no more replace discernment and sheer guts at the strategic level than on the battlefield itself.’ - The Dynamics of Military Revolution As more have come to accept that our global society is on … Continue reading Winning Wars: Technological advantage or the will to fight?
The closer you look at Information Operations (IO), the harder it becomes to define. Indeed, so too does the broader information instrument of national power; a component of the ‘DIME’[1] model, as well as many other models used to understand national power. The perceived complexity of IO is often the cause of needless friction in … Continue reading Information Operations: Marketing for War
In his 1998 landmark False Dawn, John Gray wrote that whatever mutation was to emerge from the disintegration of global free market capitalism and the uncontrolled spread of technology, it would likely be unrecognizable from capitalisms past. Two decades on, we can attest to Gray’s foresight. But the mutation that emerged has now become visible. … Continue reading The Geopolitics of Surveillance Capitalism
