Steven Aftergood: JCS on Strategy — Directing All the Instruments of National Power

STRATEGY: DIRECTING THE INSTRUMENTS OF NATIONAL POWER The tools that can be used to assert national power and influence have often been summarized by the acronym DIME — Diplomatic, Informational, Military, and Economic. But “US policy makers and strategists have long understood that there are many more instruments involved in national security policy development and …

Reference: National Intelligence University Strategy Plan — Comments by Robert Steele

NIU Strategic Plan (2017-21) Thoughts on NIU Strategy Neither the IC nor NIU understand the full spectrum of threats, most of which are not military.  Top ten threats to humanity per LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft and High Level Panel are, in this order: poverty, infectuous disease, environmental degradation, inter-state conflict, civil war, genocide, other atrocities, …

Steven Aftergood: Congressional Research Service on The North Korean Nuclear Challenge – Military Options and Issues for Congress [Robert Steele: How President Trump Can Win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018]

A new report from the Congressional Research Service identifies and examines seven possible directions for US policy, none of them risk-free or altogether satisfactory: *    maintaining the military status quo *    enhanced containment and deterrence *    denying DPRK acquisition of delivery systems capable of threatening the US *    eliminating ICBM facilities and launch pads *   …

David Isenberg: Trump & Private Military Contractors — Can Jim Mattis Close This Door?

Trump and the Return of Private Military Contractors The PMSC sector is the U.S. military’s American Express card; it dare not deploy without it. Or, to use a more morbid pop culture reference, consider the first Alien movie, when they try to remove the facehugger from a crewman’s face, only to realize that trying to …