Tag Archives: defense

America’s Future—Defense Policy Principles, Part I

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I wrote about nature of war from foreign policy perspective here.

In this first post about national defense policy principles and force structures, I want to talk about the meaning of “war” and “state of war”  from a defense policy perspective.  There is far more to war than shooting and exchanging missile fire, although overtly military actions are certainly central aspects of any war, especially in the end game.  A clear understanding is necessary if Defense and State are to work together as the unified whole they must in order for the United States effectively to defend itself in wars of any type.

This is a preview of America’s Future—Defense Policy Principles, Part I. Read the full post (1386 words, estimated 5:33 mins reading time)

Deterrence

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Deterrence is one means of influencing another nation’s behavior.  It is, by its nature a passive activity, relying as it does on persuading another nation not to do something by threatening a response so powerful that any gain from the undesired behavior is overwhelmed by the loss from the threatened response.  One nation might deter another from initiating a nuclear attack, for instance, by threatening a nuclear response of devastating effect.

This is a preview of Deterrence. Read the full post (1877 words, estimated 7:30 mins reading time)

US and Russia: Relations Re-reset

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Spiegel Online International‘s Matthias Schepp provides an interesting view of US-Russian relations, via his quasi-interview with the Russian ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin.  The nominal topic was the US missile defense shield that President Obama keeps chattering about installing in New Europe against rogue states like Iran.  But there’s far more in the subtext.

Ambassador Rogozin asks the question, “If space aliens were to completely disarm Iran, would Washington continue with its plans to build a missile defense system in Poland?”  Of course, this is a cynically disingenuous question: given the Russian obstruction to any sort of effort to prevent the Iranians from getting nuclear weapons—which obstruction they have claimed to be based purely on Russian economic self-interest—they’d only attempt to interfere with their space aliens, also.

This is a preview of US and Russia: Relations Re-reset. Read the full post (592 words, estimated 2:22 mins reading time)

America’s Future

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This isn’t as apocalyptic as it might sound; on the contrary, this is the first in an occasional series I’ll be writing on our foreign and defense policies, with the latter being approached both in its own right and as an arm of our foreign policy.

In this post, I intend to outline what I believe is the environment for these policies as we move through the 21st century.  Another post will address the framework of our foreign and defense policies, and future posts will look at necessary structures for each, actions for and by each, and how events of the day might be handled by the new policy(s).

This is a preview of America’s Future. Read the full post (1490 words, estimated 5:58 mins reading time)