These are my personal views that do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Defense or any element thereof.
It is my privilege have completed a three monograph series for the U.S. Army's Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), where I have been an External Researcher with several chapters and three monographs published, since the mid-1990's.
UPDATE (the Book is Much Better than the Monographs)
Seven National Security Talking Points for the Presidential Debate Cycle
Grand Strategy. America does not have a Grand Strategy – a review of all threats and all policies and all costs – together. The last grand strategy review was Project Solarium under President and former General Dwight D. Eisenhower. What we have done since then is spend money without accountability. There are ten high-level threats to humanity starting with Poverty, Infectious Disease, and Environmental Degradation. Among the neglected critical policies are those dealing with Agriculture, Energy, and Water.
If I am elected President I will personally lead a Grand Strategy Summit.
Strategic Comments Expanded Below: 01 NATO does not know 80% of what it needs to know; 02 NATO does not plan for 60% or more of what it needs to plan for (all ten high-level threats instead of just war and terrorism); 03 NATO needs to plan for de-Americanization of NATO and Europe; 04 NATO needs to help EU and EU police plan for the de-Nazification of Europe including the retirement of all GLADIO arms, cash, and personalities; 05 NATO could and should shift toward becoming a global peace-building enterprise orchestrating military contributions to Whole of Government and Multinational Multi-Agency programs that apply Open Source Everything Engineering (OSEE) to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
The United States has long been a target of hybrid warfare by states seeking to disrupt or influence U.S. decision-making. Hostile activities can be categorized under four paradigms: nullification of political actors – creating discord within a constituency so that it cannot effectively unify around a policy, or undercutting the credibility of a prominent policymaker who champions unwanted outcomes; assistance to anti-government movements – identifying elements in society which are willing to attack (rather than participate in) the policymaking process with vitriol or violence; fomenting distrust of the U.S. policymaking process, in order to sap its legitimacy; and appearing to fill needs / wants that the U.S. government cannot and thereby supplanting the U.S. government in a specific area. (Of course the countries that have been most active in this area – Cuba and Venezuela – have been unable to sustain their own states.)
This is the author's preliminary draft of the second of three monographs focused on the future of the US Army as an expeditionary force in a complex world that is rapidly decentralizing while also facing major development challenges. This second monograph (the first presented a notional Grand Strategy for discussion) presents the holistic analytic model and the resulting strategic generalizations from the Marine Corps’ original study, Overview of Planning and Programming Factors for Expeditionary Operations in the Third World (Marine Corps Combat Development Command, March 1990).[1] The model is neither complete nor current – it is a starting point for reflection. A new comprehensive model is needed that supports Grand Strategy not only across the D3 – Defense, Diplomacy, and Development – planning and programming domains, but across Whole of Government (WoG) as well, and ideally, also into the multinational and “eight tribe”[2] conceptual space as well – future operations demand the full integration of both estimative intelligence and operational inclusion of all elements of society, not just government – military.
