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There are reasons to celebrate the recent publication of The New Makers of Modern Strategy: From the Ancient World to the Digital Age. This is the third edition of a venerable series, which began with the Makers of Modern Strategy first published in 1943 at the height of World War II, followed in 1986 by a second edition during the Cold War. Taken together, these books are a touchstone of strategic studies, the applied multidisciplinary field that encompasses the full range of military and non-military themes concerned with global and national security, defense, and war. The New Makers reflects the evolution of strategy during the past 80 years, and its greatly expanded scope incorporates a number of firsts. Reaching backward to the classics, Sun Zi and Thucydides now join Carl Von Clausewitz at the top of the strategic pantheon, while the range of contributors, geography, and themes reflects the maturing of the field well beyond the Western world. As the two previous editions did for their own eras, The New Makers is a call to action and will be our current generation's guide to the multiple strategic challenges that are transforming our 21st century world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese military has embarked on a series of organizational and doctrinal reforms intended to better enable it to fight modern war. Prominent among these reforms is the growing emphasis on space to enable long-range precisions strikes and on counterspace to deny space capabilities to an adversary. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has officially designated space as a new domain and established an organization to command space forces. With this increased focus on space, the PLA may begin to develop a doctrine to govern the use of space in military operations. The higher priority given to space, especially space control, by the PLA coincides with similar actions by the US military, increasing the possibility of warfare in space and the risks of escalation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What specific forms of reasoning underlie the US approach to Asia, what downside risks do they imply, and to what extent can they be mitigated? This article examines the theoretical underpinnings of the US “rebalance” to Asia by categorizing US policies according to three types of logic: military power; economic liberalism; and institutionalism. It then uses international relations theory as a diagnostic tool to assess risks in these approaches. Recent efforts toward improving transparency in contested maritime areas and capacity-building of local allies and partners may address the strategy’s most acute risks, while inevitably generating more in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article seeks to explain the basic dynamics of the development of the German military approach in Afghanistan between 2003 and 2010 by looking at the impact of the Bundeswehr’s established uses of historical experience. First, the German military approach in Afghanistan has slowly evolved from a peacebuilding and mediation mission towards a full-fledged combat deployment. Second, the Bundeswehr’s exclusive focus on the World War II experience has contributed to the emergence of the Balkans experience as a formative experience that shaped initial operational thinking in Afghanistan. Third, because a thorough debate on the historical foundation of counterinsurgency remained absent, the operational shift in 2009 was perceived as a return to ‘classical’ military tasks and thus led to an almost exclusive focus on training for combat. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article questions the predominantly pessimistic assessments over the future of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). After analysing available evidence on states’ interests and interactions within the NPT’s framework, it argues that several negative expectations are unwarranted. Conversely, the article identifies three potentially threatening scenarios. Therefore, it scrutinizes the likely impact of reactive nuclear proliferation; analyses the probability of significant actors challenging the existent nuclear architecture; and explores whether the treaty’s enforcement might soon be diluted. The article concludes the NPT is unlikely to face fundamental threats in the foreseeable future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

India and Pakistan are currently engaged in a competition for escalation dominance. While New Delhi is preparing for a limited conventional campaign against Pakistan, Islamabad is pursuing limited nuclear options to deter India. Together, these trends could increase the likelihood of nuclear conflict. India, for example, might conclude that it can launch an invasion without provoking a nuclear reprisal, while Pakistan might believe that it can employ nuclear weapons without triggering a nuclear exchange. Even if war can be avoided, these trends could eventually compel India to develop its own limited nuclear options in an effort to enhance deterrence and gain coercive leverage over Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Entering the twenty-first century, China has demonstrated an assertive foreign policy, not only in employing various types of economic and military leverage but also in conducting the Three Warfares (三战) – psychological warfare, public opinion warfare, and legal warfare. This article attempts to identify the motives and methods of China’s Three Warfares by analyzing its history, logic, and agents. Based on this analysis, the author also presents the position of the Three Warfares in China’s foreign policy and the warfares’ impact on the international security environment involving other major powers and China’s neighbors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the central debates in contemporary international relations scholarship concerns the issue of whether balancing has occurred in response to US-based unipolarity, and if it has, how this should be characterised. Existing research has seen analysts argue that major power responses to unipolarity can be placed in one of either three categories: an absence of balancing, soft balancing, and hard balancing. This article contributes to the scholarly literature by providing a case study of hard internal Russian balancing against the US’s development and deployment of Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) systems during the Bush Administration (2001–08). Russian hard balancing against the US has involved: (1) fielding new strategic nuclear and conventional weapons equipped with BMD countermeasures, and, relatedly, (2) making changes in military doctrine. As a result, security dilemma dynamics are increasingly in evidence in US relations with Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The war on al-Qaeda and its affiliates appears to be endless but every war must end. Winding down the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq has been difficult, but both were embedded in what was then called the ‘war on terrorism.’ What does ‘success’ in that war mean? With the death of bin Laden and the increase in drone operations, how far is the US from achieving it? Can this war end? The article analyzes the ongoing US response to the 9/11 attacks in historical context, revealing four patterns common to all prolonged wars: means become ends, tactics become strategy, boundaries are blurred, and the search for a perfect peace replaces reality. It concludes by laying out an effective strategy for ending the war. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the effects the drone strike campaign in Pakistan is having on Al Qaeda Central. To that end, it constructs a theoretical model to explain how the campaign is affecting Al Qaeda’s capacity to carry out terrorist attacks in the United States and Western Europe. Although the results of one single empirical case cannot be generalised, they nonetheless constitute a preliminary element for the construction of a broader theoretical framework concerning the use of armed drones as part of a counterterrorism strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, several thousand Afghan Taliban forces fled across the border to Pakistan, and the area became a safe haven for Afghan insurgents. In 2014, the transnational dimension of the insurgency is still highly prominent. Although regional support for insurgents is not uncommon, how to counter this aspect is mostly ignored in counterinsurgency (COIN) theory and doctrines. In this article, a regional counterinsurgency framework is developed, using the regional counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan as an example. The framework will facilitate the systematic inclusion of regional COIN measures in theory and doctrine. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

‘Mowing the Grass’, Israel’s strategy in the twenty-first century against hostile non-state groups, reflects the assumption that Israel finds itself in a protracted intractable conflict. The use of force in such a conflict is not intended to attain impossible political goals, but a strategy of attrition designed primarily to debilitate the enemy capabilities. Only after showing much restraint in its military responses does Israel act forcefully to destroy the capabilities of its foes, hoping that occasional large-scale operations also have a temporary deterrent effect in order to create periods of quiet along its borders. The Israeli approach is substantively different from the current Western strategic thinking on dealing with non-state military challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]