Nobody really knows what strategy is. The concept of the โbigger picture' seems to be broadly understood among practitioners in the profession of arms, yet a single definition for โstrategyโ still eludes us. Ask 100 people to define it and youโll likely receive 100 different answers. Each may be right, but none would be complete. … Continue reading #DefineStrategy Series: Part 1
Phillip Dolitsky recently critiqued my four part series of articles titled โHow to Eliminate Nuclear Weaponsโ here on Chesterfield Strategy (see โWhy Nuclear Weapons are Here to Stay.โ) Dolitskyโs 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 worldโs 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
The global intervention in Libya has been characterized by most as being a failure. I myself was too young to truly recall the incident beyond that a political figure had been removed from power in an African country. Most everyone seems to regard it as a failure and, after researching the event more in-depth, I … Continue reading Seven Months in Libya: A Reconsideration of Canadaโs Endeavor in Libya
Confess: itโs my professionthat alarms you.This is why few people ask me to dinner,though Lord knows I donโt go out of my way to be scary. - Margaret Atwood, โThe Loneliness of the Military Historianโ As someone studying strategy and warfare, I often remark that Iโm 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, congratulationsย on your selection for … Continue reading The War College Diaries: An Unofficial Guide to the Australian Command and Staff Course
โNor can technology abolish warโs 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.โ - 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?
โBut why, some say, the moon?โ[1] While definitions of strategy vary, few question the value of a strategy to provide a โbig ideaโ and a sense of how an organisation can work towards an aspirational goal. As big ideas go, the President Kennedyโs 1961 proposal that the US commit โbefore this decade is out, of … Continue reading Project Apollo and Strategy as a Conversation
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 โDIMEโ[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 Grayโs foresight. But the mutation that emerged has now become visible. … Continue reading The Geopolitics of Surveillance Capitalism
