THE STRATEGIST AND THE WEB REVISITED:

AN UPDATED GUIDE TO INTERNET RESOURCES

James Kievit

and

Steven Metz

October 17, 1996
*******

The views expressed in this report are those of the authors

and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of

the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the

U.S. Government. This report is cleared for public release;

distribution is unlimited.

*******

Comments pertaining to this report are invited and should be

forwarded to: Director, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army

War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA 17013-5244. Copies of this

report may be obtained from the Publications and Production

Office by calling commercial (717) 245-4133, DSN 242-4133, FAX

(717) 245-3820, or via the Internet at rummelr@carlisleemh2.army.mil.

*******

All 1995 and later Strategic Studies Institute (SSI)

monographs are available on the Strategic Studies Institute

Homepage for electronic dissemination. SSI's Homepage address is:

http://carlisle-www.army. mil/usassi/.
FOREWORD

Every day of the "Information Age" makes more material

available via the Internet. Yet simply "surfing the 'Net'," while

perhaps enjoyable as recreation, is ill-suited for rapidly

locating valid, salient information. This is particularly true

for analysts or military professionals seeking to develop

strategy, to research national security issues, or to provide

policy advice. With the original edition of this essay in

February 1996, James Kievit and Steven Metz began an effort to

construct guideposts for strategic thinkers and practitioners to

follow when travelling the "information superhighway." That such

a "travel guide" is valuable is amply demonstrated by the

rapidity with which SSI's stock of the original The Strategist

and the Web has been exhausted.

Accordingly, the authors have "revisited" the Web and

updated this guide for planners and researchers interested in the

practice, problems, and policies of contemporary national

security and military strategy. As with the first version of this

essay, the authors conclude that the Internet still is not "a

solution to the analyst's need for relevant, timely information,"

but they remain convinced that individuals and organizations must

prepare themselves for the day when "an analyst's collection of

Internet 'bookmarks' will be nearly as valuable as a rolodex of

personal contacts is now."

The Strategic Studies Institute provides this update as a

further contribution to the Army's preparations for the

challenges which lie ahead in the "Information Age."

RICHARD H. WITHERSPOON

Colonel, U.S. Army

Director, Strategic Studies Institute
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF THE AUTHORS

LIEUTENANT COLONEL (RETIRED) JAMES KIEVIT was a strategic

research analyst at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies

Institute (SSI) from 1993 until his retirement in 1996. A U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers officer for 24 years, he served on the

faculty of the U.S. Military Academy, as an analyst and study

director at the U.S. Army Concepts Analysis Agency, and in a

number of troop and staff assignments in the United States and

Europe. He also designed the SSI Internet home page.

DR. STEVEN METZ is the Henry L. Stimson Professor of Military

Studies at the U.S. Army War College and an analyst at the

Strategic Studies Institute. He has also served on the faculty of

the Air War College, the U.S. Army Command and General Staff

College, and several universities, and is the author of more than

50 articles and monographs on world politics and national

security affairs. He can be contacted at (717) 245-3822, FAX 245-

3820, e-mail metzs@carlisle-emh2.army.mil or stevenmetz@aol. com.

His mailing address is:

Strategic Studies Institute

U.S. Army War College

122 Forbes Ave

Carlisle, PA 17013-5244
SUMMARY

For analysts or planners attempting to craft appropriate,

timely solutions to strategic problems, the ability to collect

information rapidly and to evaluate its relevance and validity is

a crucial skill. Computers linked via the Internet can offer

timely access to millions of documents and files on a vast range

of topics, and the number of documents available increases on a

daily basis. But to make maximum use of the Internet as a

research tool, researchers must understand it. And analysts

trained in library, archive, and word-of-mouth research must

learn where to look for salient electronic information.

Like its predecessor, The Strategist and the Web Revisited

provides an Internet "Primer"--an introductory road map of the

Internet explaining its most important features: the World-Wide

Web (WWW), Usenet news groups, and electronic mail ("e-mail").

Then it examines numerous catalog and search engine, Department

of Defense, U.S. Government information, think tank and

professional journal, international organization and foreign

government, and news and regional information Internet sources.

From these it identifies both sites of current value to a

strategic analyst, and those with the potential to become

important resources after further development.

Today, although valuable, the Internet is not a solution to

the analyst's need for relevant, timely information. Within a few

years, though, an analyst's collection of Internet "bookmarks"

will be nearly as valuable as a rolodex of personal contacts is

now. The astute strategist will prepare for this. Only by

exploring the web today and developing effective methods for

finding and using electronic information, will he or she be ready

when the Internet finally does make the leap from novelty to

necessity.

To help make this exploration easier, Appendix A provides

the URLs (electronic addresses) for all the sites reviewed in the

essay. Alternatively, you can begin your exploration by visiting

SSI's "Strategic Hotlist" at: http://carlislewww.army.mil/usassi/ssioutp/linkpage.htm
THE STRATEGIST AND THE WEB REVISITED:

AN UPDATED GUIDE TO INTERNET RESOURCES

Authors' Note:

This essay is a update of The Strategist and the Web,

published by the Strategic Studies Institute in February 1996.

Readers who are not familiar with the original are encouraged to

read this entire essay. Readers acquainted with the original

essay may want to skim or even skip the Introduction and Internet

Primer sections and proceed directly to the Internet Road Map

section for the updated reviews of Internet sites.

Introduction.

Information has always been the lifeblood of strategic

analysis. Once it was difficult to acquire enough information to

assess the security environment, monitor changing events

(especially those far from the major media centers), and draw

reasonable conclusions. Today, technology has changed things--

analysts now have access to a virtual torrent of information. But

while the quantity of information is no longer a problem,

assuring its timeliness and quality can be. For strategic

analysts, the ability to collect information rapidly and to

evaluate its relevance and validity is now a crucial skill.

To a large extent, the computer has become the tool of

choice for strategic research. By allowing the nearly

instantaneous transfer of information, computers certainly help

assure it is timely. But computer-based research has its own set

of problems. Analysts trained in library, archive, and word-ofmouth research must learn where to look for salient electronic

information. The Internet offers a partial solution to this

problem. Through it, nearly everyone with a microcomputer and a

modem can easily access millions of documents and files on a vast

range of topics. But the Internet is not a panacea for the

problems of strategic analysis. To make maximum use of it,

researchers must understand its strengths and weaknesses.

An Internet Primer.

The Internet is a network of millions of linked computers

around the world. These can range from the simplest PC to

supercomputers owned by universities and governments. The

Internet is not centrally managed or controlled.1

 No one

establishes rules for the type of material it contains.
Essentially, anyone with a computer and some relatively simple

software can establish a "site" containing information that

other Internet users can examine, download, or print. A few sites

are "pay for use" or require a password, but the vast majority

are open. This anarchy and fluidity leads to great variation in

the quality of information on the Internet. It ranges from the

useless and the banal to the indispensable and the insightful. It

takes some skill to quickly distinguish into which category a

site belongs, particularly since many of the most visually

appealing and interesting sites are intellectually shallow while

some of the most important sources of information are, to put it

bluntly, rather boring to look at. For the most part, at present,

style has won out over substance on the Internet--it contains

many glossy magazines and slick brochures, but only a few weighty

tomes.

In addition, the Internet is an extraordinarily fluid

medium, literally changing by the minute. New sites appear at a

breathtaking rate--major online Internet catalogs receive

thousands of new listings every day. At the same time, many sites

change addresses and others just go away. And because it only

takes a few minutes at a computer to modify a site, data can

change frequently. This means that mastery of Internet

information is extremely perishable. A researcher away for even a

few weeks may find a massive amount of new information during his

next visit, but may also find that older data is no longer

available. The Internet is less like a library where the holdings

remain relatively constant than a public kiosk board whose

information has a brief life span.

On top of the vast amount of new material entering the

Internet, its structure and essence are also changing. The

Internet was initially built by governments and universities as a

research tool to allow the rapid exchange of data among

scientists.2

 Today, most of its phenomenal expansion is fueled by

commercial firms selling online access or marketing goods and

services, and by individual subscribers. Advertising and "pay for

use" sites have appeared. The look of the Internet has also

changed dramatically. Text-only "gopher" sites have largely been

replaced by graphics-laden and sometimes video-enhanced "web

pages."* The transformation will continue. This is a mixed

blessing. More of value is available on the Internet every day,

but there are also more distractions to wade through while

getting to it.

Three features of the Internet are most relevant for
strategic analysts: the World-Wide Web, Usenet news groups, and

electronic mail ("e-mail"). E-mail is simply a means of

interpersonal communication that falls somewhere between the

immediacy of a phone conversation and the more thoughtful but

slower exchange of ideas previously done by writing letters and

memos. The specifics of using it vary greatly according to the

mail software being used. Besides one-to-one correspondence, email multiple address lists can be used to generate focused

discussion groups with specific membership for specific topics.3

Usenet news groups are collections of individuals interested in

a particular topic who post messages, questions, problems, or

issues on the Internet and reply to those left by others. The

messages can be stored at an Internet site that participants

*Many of the terms used in this essay can be found in the

glossary at Appendix B.
access using web browser software like Netscape or Internet

Explorer, or they can be distributed by e-mail. News groups are,

in effect, electronic discussions and debates. While there are

thousands of them dealing with every conceivable topic, most of

those focusing on strategic, political, and military issues are

relatively unsophisticated, making them of limited value for

serious research. There is great potential, though, for limitedaccess news groups restricted to true experts.4

 This is probably

one wave of the future.

The world-wide web (also known simply as "the web"), which

is based on "home pages" combining text, graphics, links to

related sites, and, increasingly, audio and video, has become the

most popular and rapidly-expanding element of the Internet. In a

sense, the world-wide web is the Internet's library and can be a

powerful source of timely information. But there are no

librarians monitoring either the categories or the quality of

information available. More than any other part of the Internet,

the web requires researchers to develop effective, personalized

techniques for rapidly finding appropriate data and assessing its

quality. This is not an easy task for busy national security

specialists and strategic analysts.

Internet Road Map.

To guide strategists unfamiliar with the byways, commercial

stops, and remainder areas of the information superhighway, the

rest of this essay offers an introductory road map of the web,

suggesting sites of current value and noting others with the

potential to become important resources.

Catalogs and Search Engines. Since one of the major

challenges for users of the world-wide web is locating

appropriate material, some of the most useful sites do not

provide actual data but instead offer ways to find and connect to

other sites. These are the Internet's catalogs. Their most

valuable resources are collections of "links." Links are special

text (usually colored differently from the rest of the text and

underlined) or pictures which automatically transfer the user to

another Internet site when they are clicked on using a mouse. For

instance, while connected to a computer in Switzerland or

Australia, clicking on a link to the Strategic Studies Institute

will temporarily disconnect the user from the overseas computer

and connect him to the one at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania,

where the Strategic Studies Institute home page is kept.
Although others like EiNet Galaxy are rapidly closing the

gap, the most extensive and powerful catalog is Yahoo, which

began as the project of computer scientists at Stanford

University but is now a commercial firm.* This change means that

*The names of specific Internet sites are in italics. The

electronic addresses (or URLs) used to access the sites 

discussed are listed in Appendix A.
Yahoo has added a few fairly innocuous advertisements, but

presumably the financial backing helps assure that the catalog

remains well-maintained. Yahoo contains electronic links to

thousands of Internet sites on every conceivable topic, including

many political, economic, and military ones. Of its fourteen subcatalogs, the ones on Government, Regional, and News sites are

most likely to aid strategic researchers. The Regional subcatalog, for example, provides access to the CIA World Factbook,

to the Country Studies/Area Handbook Program, and to thousands of

links related to 221 countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. And

the News sub-catalog provides access to hundreds of magazine,

newspaper, and news wire links.

While Yahoo has its own search tool, some of the dedicated

Internet search engines are even more powerful and flexible. Most

will scour the web using parameters provided by the user and then

provide a list of "hits" that meet the conditions. The user can

access the hits by clicking on the links in the report provided

by the search engines. InfoSeek, WebCrawler, Excite, Alta Vista,

Open Text, and Lycos provide similar functions. Analysts should

use multiple search engines during research, since the same

search string will achieve astonishingly different results

depending on the search engine employed.5

 Increasingly, "meta

search" services like Starting Point can be used to connect to

all the major search engines, thus making it unnecessary to

access each one individually.

Many of the catalogs including Yahoo provide a list of new

Internet sites. The Net Scout Services offers even better ways to

do this. It includes a weekly newsletter called the Scout Report

that summarizes new Internet resources, and a service called Net

Happenings that lists about 30 new sites each day. Both of these

can be accessed directly over the web, or received by e-mail.

Information on e-mail subscriptions is available at the web

sites. Netsurfer Digest is a similar weekly compilation of new

sites delivered by e-mail. Internet Resources Newsletter is not

distributed by e-mail and must be accessed at its web site, but

it provides a wealth of information for serious researchers

rather than catering to those seeking mostly entertainment on the

Internet. It is a British site, so British resources dominate the

listings, but those from many other countries are also listed and

assessed. Some other Internet sites such as USA Today and Cable

News Network provide short lists of new sites, but their focus is

more on home pages that are entertaining or popular than on those

that provide research resources.
U.S. Department of Defense Sites. Department of Defense

organizations are extensively represented on the Internet, which

is not surprising since the concept began partly as a component

of the government's "survivable communications system"

initiative. But despite the numbers and logical structures of

most Department of Defense web sites, most tend not to be of

great value to the strategic researcher. This is because they are

simply electronic brochures offering a basic description of an

organization, its mission, and its location or the opportunity to

interact in a limited way administratively.6

 Only a few

Department of Defense sites offer research material on national

security strategy, policy, or military strategy.

DefenseLink is an entry point to Internet sites operated by

the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the armed services, and

related defense agencies. More importantly, DefenseLink provides

a means to search and download Department of Defense directives,

obtain transcripts of important speeches, and connect to other

sites dealing with specific military operations (for example,

BosniaLink). DefenseLink is hindered by the absence of a

directory of key personnel in the Office of the Secretary of

Defense, but does have the potential to grow into a key resource.

Two related sites, the Secretary of Defense and the Unified

Commands, are not particularly useful, largely providing fact

sheets on their organizations. The similar Joint Chiefs of Staff

site does provide online access to two important documents: the

current National Military Strategy and Joint Vision 2010. And the

Defense Intelligence Agency site now provides access to several

publications in full text online.

Each of the military services has a centralized directory of

its Internet sites. The Army home page, America's Army, is a

catalog or "hotlist" of the hundreds of Army home pages. The

sites are indexed alphabetically and by subject area. Most of

these are of little interest to a strategic analyst; there are

currently only two entries listed under "strategic planning," one

under "strategy," and one under "strategic defense." Recent

speeches by senior Army leaders, while not available via the Army

home page, can be found via the DoD's ArmyLink. AirForceLink

provides access to numerous Air Force organization sites. Again,

few of these offer information for strategic research. Some do

include a list of contacts and a few offer e-mail addresses. But

AirForceLink frequently seems very slow to load, so skip it and

go directly to the more useful AirForceLink News and Library

sites. The first offers a searchable data base of recent news

releases, and the second offers online access to a significant
number of airpower related publications. NavyOnLine provides

links to other Navy organizations, and access to ASCII text

versions of recent Navy press releases online. Entering

"strategy" into the NavyOnLine search index resulted in 21

"hits." Although most turned out to be of limited utility (such

as a long-range plan for the development of the Naval Undersea

Warfare Center), one led to a potential "gold mine" for a

researcher interested in U.S. military strategy. This is the

OPNAV N513 Strategy and Concepts Branch site which provides

access to at least 20 Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps

"Strategic Policy Documents." Finally, MarineLink offers the

usual links to Marine Corps organizations, and access to several

U.S.M.C.-related publications. And, although it still contains

some "click here" statements unconnected to any actual links, the

"user friendliness" of its important "U.S.M.C. Concepts and

Issues" document has been much improved over its earlier online

version.

The Defense Technical Information Web is an alternative

starting point for Department of Defense Internet sources and has

a useful link locator page. The Army Knowledge Network,

originally intended to be a conduit of all Army electronic

information, thus far merely provides identification of those

developing the structure. One of its subordinates, the Automated

Historical Archives System, was to develop, maintain, and

distribute online the Army's electronic, multimedia archives for

post-Vietnam contingencies, operations, peacetime preparation for

war, and planning for the future. This should be an ideal source

for the strategic analyst. Unfortunately, it is currently in the

midst of merging with the Army's Center for Army Lessons Learned

(CALL). This is both likely to delay electronic availability of

information and to increase the operational and tactical focus of

material provided.7 In addition, current plans appear to be to

restrict access to CALL's data base to DoD and specially

identified "need to know" personnel.

The Marshall Center, which is the Internet page of the

United States European Command's George C. Marshall Center for

Security Studies, is well-organized and provides useful

information about Center staff. It also offers online access to

some publications, documents, and conference reports dealing with

European security. The Army's Foreign Military Studies Office,

which is charged with assessing regional military and security

issues through open source media and direct contact with foreign

military and security specialists, provides online access to its

publications on strategic issues and military operations other
than war, including a few translations of foreign publications.

The Army Research Laboratory Publications site has informa-tion

on the current and projected technology innovations in its

"Annual Review" documents. TRADOC PAM 525-5: Force XXI

Operations, provides the Army's "conceptual foundations of War

and Operations Other Than War in the early decades of the 21st

Century."

Finally, one might expect the Internet sites of the highlevel military colleges--the Department of Defense's academics--

to prove especially useful for research. This is not entirely

true. The National Defense University (NDU) does provide a wellorganized link page to its affiliated colleges and organizations.

The home pages of NDU's subordinate colleges and organizations

vary in quality. The only items of use to researchers on the

Armed Forces Staff College site are bibliographic listings from

its library links. The rest is the sort of descriptive

information on courses and departments found in any college

catalog. The faculty directories of the National War College, the

 Armed Forces Staff College, and the Industrial College of the

Armed Forces are organized strictly alphabetically, with no quick

way to determine an unknown individual's area of expertise. The

Industrial College of the Armed Forces page still indicates that

it eventually intends to provide access online to ICAF faculty

and student publications but the links included as "under

construction" were last updated in April 1995! The most valuable

link from the National Defense University is to its Institute for

National Strategic Studies. This well-organized page includes a

searchable index (which provided 21 hits related to "roles and

missions" and 35 related to "national security policy"), the

ability to view the full text of published studies online,

conference and symposia information, and a staff directory

including biographical data, contact phone numbers, and e-mail

addresses.

While its graphics make it slow to load, Air University is a

major innovator in at least one area: it provided an interactive

opportunity, via its link to 2025, to explore and share ideas on

air and space capabilities for the future. Although the formal

study has been completed, and the 2025 Final Report is available

online, individuals can still submit thoughts on the future of

airpower using entry forms provided. AU Press is valuable for its

book and publications listings of airpower-related material. One

shortcoming is that currently the listings provide summary and

biblio- graphic information only; there is no capability to

obtain full text online although hard copy ordering information
is supplied. There is also both an author and title index to

recent airpower publications. The graphics of Air Chronicles

makes this site slow to load but it does provide access via its

"Contributor's Corner" to otherwise unpublished essays and

articles including some with strategic relevance. The more

recent, however, cannot be viewed with a normal browser but only

with "Adobe Reader" software--which Air Chronicles provides via a

downlink if you have sufficient free disk space. The files of

other articles are very large, up to 1MB, so be prepared to wait

for them to load. Air Chronicles also links to Airpower Journal.

At this site, some recent articles and short essays can be viewed

online and all can be downloaded.

The existing Internet site of the U.S. Army War College

(USAWC) is primarily public affairs oriented. Only the Department

of Corresponding Studies of its teaching departments provides

even faculty information. Of more value to the strategic

researcher are the college's associated institutes. The Center

for Strategic Leadership (CSL) and Peacekeeping Institute (PKI)

home pages are well laid out. While basically providing

organizational information, the CSL page does offer a few studies

online and the PKI page provides a few documents and a useful

hotlist of peacekeeping-related links. The Military History

Institute offers several searchable photographic archives and

some bibliographic material, but unfortunately there is not yet

online access to even a small portion of the Institute's

holdings. The Strategic Studies Institute site has the usual

organizational material and publications catalog, but also

provides full text of many of its newer analytical studies,

conference and symposia information, a staff directory with

biographical data, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses, and a

collection of links to other Internet sites of value for

strategic research. Its major shortcomings are a lack of a

searchable index to its publications, some delay in keeping its

outreach and faculty directory information up to date, and the

fact that many older studies still are not available online. A

recent addition to the USAWC pages is Parameters, the Army's

senior professional journal. This site provides a complete index

of past articles (searchable if you are using Netscape), full

text of selected articles and review essays from recent issues,

and information on subscribing or submitting manuscripts for

possible publication.

The Naval War College is the most recent senior service

college to arrive on the Internet. Unfortunately, besides a

limited telephone directory and organizational, but not
individual, e-mail directory, the site as yet offers nothing of

interest to a strategic analyst or planner. The Naval

Postgraduate School focus is on the technological aspects of

operations research and systems analysis. The school's Department

of National Security Affairs is listed, but cannot be accessed.

Other U.S. Government Information Sources. Many Executive

branch agencies have established world-wide web home pages with

basic, brochure-level information about their organization and

function, but, as with the Department of Defense, few of these

can serve as a resource for analysts or researchers. The National

Security Agency and Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) are

examples (although the ARPA site does offer some press releases

and testimony). Similarly, the National Technical Information

Service site is a catalog of the agency's vast holdings of

scientific, technical, and business-related information, but

little of it can be read online, downloaded, or printed. If it

were, researchers would gain greatly. The White House site is one

of the most popular on the world- wide web. It is glitzy and fun,

but offers no material of value to strategic analysts.

The Department of State is a frustrating location on the

web. For a strategic analyst dealing with U.S. foreign policy,

this site, which provides foreign policy news, speeches,

statements, and reports, could be an extraordinarily useful tool

for keeping abreast of official policy. But while it has been

improved recently by the introduction of a web home page and a

search engine, it remains awkward to use and difficult to access.

Much of the key policy information remains accessible only via

"gopher" technology. To get a hard copy of a one page story from

the Department of State Dispatch, users must print the whole

document which sometimes runs over 50 pages. And posting of the

Dispatch is slow, the most recent version available online being

several weeks or even months old.

A few other Executive branch sites do include important

research material. The United States Information Agency actually

has two sites, each valuable in different ways. The United States

Information Agency Home Page, designed for domestic consumption,

offers via its Foreign Commentary on U.S. selected excerpts and

translated articles from major foreign newspapers and magazines.

But it is the United States Information Agency International Home

Page, designed for overseas consumption, which definitely should

not be overlooked by U.S. analysts. Its Electronic Journals

provides access to current and back issues of five publications

(Economic Perspectives, U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda, U.S. Society
& Values, Global Issues, and Issues of Democracy), although once

again Adobe Acrobat is the required reader. Even more useful is

its Daily Washington File which, although many of its subelements are gopher links, provides an extensive collection of

time-sensative policy statements on economic, diplomatic, and

security issues. Similarly, the Voice of America site, having

corrected its previous link problems, is a potential gold mine

with its ability to search through 2 years of broadcasts.

The U.S. Congress has both good and mediocre Internet sites.

The Senate Armed Services Committee and the House National

Security Committee sites simply list members and provide contact

information. The Congressional E-mail Directory is a good,

searchable resource. The general U.S. Congress site--named Thomas

after President Jefferson--is one of the most important pages on

the Internet for Americans interested in political affairs. It

provides the full text of legislation, a searchable transcript of

the Congres- sional Record, bill summaries and status reports,

information on hot legislation organized by topic, a copy of the

U.S. Constitution, and a useful primer on the lawmaking process.

It also includes links to other congressional sources, including

senators and representatives with e-mail or home pages. With

improvements in its search engine, Thomas could move from a very,

very good site to a truly superb one. The Library of Congress web

page also combines tremendous potential and serious shortcomings.

It may eventually be the premier site on the Internet for

researchers, but now offers mostly basic information about the

Library, a few links to other sites, and searchable catalogs.

Once an analyst finds a citation from the catalogs, he or she

must then go to a library to retrieve the material rather than

having online access to it. An extremely well-designed site

providing a powerful search tool for legislation and other

congressional documents is GPO Access. Public access to these

documents is either from a Federal Depository Library or directly

from the Government Printing Office. CapWeb is another source of

congressional information, but is not affiliated with the

government.

Research Organizations and Professional Journals. Several 

gateways deal specifically with think tanks and research

organizations focusing on world politics and security policy.

International Security Network and IANWeb are good examples. In

fact, the Swiss-based International Security Network is currently

the single most useful site on the world-wide web for national

security analysts and researchers. Its hotlist of think tanks,

universities, government organizations, and news groups is as
exhaustive as possible in such a fluid medium. It also provides a

wealth of other information on the structure and lexicon of the

Internet and a few documents that can be downloaded. The wellorganized National Security Website created by the Foreign Policy

and Defense Studies Department of the Washington, DC-based

Heritage Foundation also has a very useful hotlist, and provides

full-text online access to many publications and documents. SACIS

is a truly outstanding site with links to the United Nations,

various U.N. agencies, a range of other international

organizations, data bases of international law documents, and a

few other international affairs pages. It, along with the United

Nations Scholars' Workstation, offers better ways to access

United Nations' material than the U.N.'s own home page. Some

useful links are also found in the Stanford Center for

International Security and Arms Control. The American Studies Web

is an entry point into the domestic political, social, and

economic arenas, and provides a searchable index. The Electronic

Headquarters for the Acquisition of War Knowledge (EHAWK) is

primarily a gateway to Internet locations dealing with military

history, although it does include links to military-oriented news

groups and e-mail discussion groups which might have relevance to

contemporary issues.8 The most comprehensive "military" gateway

is Rongstad's Military Links; but despite its logical

organization be prepared to sort wheat from chaff.

Another type of gateway is found in the American

Universities and the Colleges and Universities sites. These

provide links to many universities around the world. Most of

these, in turn, have faculty e-mail directories which a

researcher can use to contact experts in the field he or she is

analyzing. The university home pages vary greatly in quality.

Some, like Columbia University, make it easy to identify faculty

experts in specific fields and send them e-mail. Others, like the

University of California at Berkeley, are difficult or impossible

to use, either failing to list faculty expertise and e-mail

addresses, or requiring the user to go to two or three separate

sections of the site to locate and contact experts. Frequently,

individual staff or faculty members at an institution have useful

home pages. An excellent example is the International Affairs

page created as a personal project by Nathan Gilliatt. His

extensive hotlists of interest to researchers include brief

descriptive information about each site, something many other

lengthy hotlists could benefit from.

As might be expected, many major think tanks and 

organizations dealing with security and military issues approach
the Internet as a marketing device rather than a research

resource. Their sites are primarily online catalogs offering a

basic description of the organization and information on ordering

and purchasing their products. An example is the International

Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), publisher of vital

documents like The Military Balance, Strategic Survey, Survival,

and the Adelphi Papers. Similar sites are the Center for

Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Jane's Information

Store, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI),

Center for International Security and Arms Control (CISAC), and

Association of the United States Army. A few others such as RAND,

the Stimson Center, and the Hoover Institution on War,

Revolution, and Peace offer a bit more, including detailed

information on their research programs and some archives. The

RAND page also offers a basic information sheet on the Arroyo

Center, its Army research division, and some other elements like

the Center for Asia-Pacific Policy. The site does make it

difficult to contact specific researchers. Unless users know who

they are looking for from the start, they must wade through the

RAND pages to find the name of a specific researcher, and then go

back to the beginning to search an e-mail directory. More

advanced Internet pages provide a direct mail link from their

directory of experts.

If some prestigious think tanks like CSIS, RAND, IISS, and

SIPRI offer little usable material over the Internet, others

often give more online. The CATO Institute, for example, provides

a searchable index to its publications library, and more than 260

full text studies online. Some University-affiliated think tanks

such as the Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies (JCSS), the New

Zealand-based Centre for Strategic Studies (CSS), the School of

Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and the John F. Kennedy

School of Government also offer more actual full text online

reports and studies. These sites can be of tremendous value to

the electronic researcher interested in focused regional or

topical material.

In an attempt to counterbalance the "military-industrial

complex," some defense spending watchdog groups have established

well-designed Internet sites. These include the Center for

Defense Spending (which also offers the latest issue of their

publication Defense Monitor) and the Military Spending Working

Group. While these can be unabashedly critical of the defense

establishment, they provide a useful alternative perspective

which a strategic analyst can use to gain a balanced

understanding of the defense budget debates. A similar site, not
directly focused on budgetary issues, is the Project on Defense

Alternatives.

Other Internet sites provide information on a specific

national security topic. These include MILNET, with open source

data on worldwide military and intelligence structures, weapons,

and force strengths; the Program on Peacekeeping Policy that

includes news, reports, and links on peacekeeping; and the Carter

Center with information about the organization founded by the

former president and its involvement in Third World

democratization and development. Similarly, the Center for

Nonproliferation Studies provides material on the spread of

weapons of mass destruction and their associated technologies;

Democracy Net covers the work done around the world by the

National Endowment for Democracy; and the United States Institute

of Peace gives a collection of links to sites, news groups, and

other resources concerned with conflict resolution. The British

American Security Information Council site, BASIC, provides

information relating to "international security policy in Europe

and North America." Press releases and short analytical papers

are available online, larger studies must be ordered. For those

interested in intelligence organizations and issues, IntelWeb

offers valuable descriptions of the intelligence communities of

most nations, and Loyola University provides two excellent

sources in its Strategic Intelligence and Military Intelligence

hotlists. On a related but distinct issue, the Institute for the

Advanced Study of Information Warfare and Information Warfare on

the Web are valuable attempts to provide basic information and

links on a subject of rapidly increasing importance.9

Among the "single issue" sites, the Joint Services

Conference on Professional Ethics stands out. It provides a forum

for military officers and academics to discuss ethical issues

relevant to the military and includes a posting of a monthly

ethical problem with comments and discussion from other

participants. It also offers papers from an annual conference.

This is not truly a strategic site--its greatest use is probably

for cadets and junior officers still constructing a professional

persona--but it is so well done that it vividly illustrates the

potential of the Internet.

The Internet also provides strategic analysts a way to keep

up with key academic journals covering world politics and

security issues. A number of them have home pages providing

subscription information, the contents of the most recent issue,

and usually a few articles that can be read, downloaded or
printed. Examples include Washington Quarterly, Foreign Affairs,

Foreign Policy, Journal of Democracy, International Security,

International Organiza- tions, Political Science Quarterly,

Fletcher Forum, and World Politics. Some important journals of

opinion which cover world politics and national security like

Atlantic Monthly, National Review, and the New Republic also

provide online versions of the current issue and sometimes recent

back issues as well.

International Organizations and Foreign Govern- ment Sites.

A few foreign governments are moving rapidly to provide Internet

access to information on their foreign and defense policies, but

they tend to be highly concentrated geographically. There are

virtually no government web sites of value in Latin America or

the Middle East. Some governments in Eastern Europe appear

interested in establishing Internet sites, but their pages are

often difficult or impossible to access. In Sub-Saharan Africa,

the African National Congress site is very good and provides

South African news as well as policy statements, but is the sole

representative from the region. Somewhat more surprisingly, the

Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs page is one of the few

official sites in the Asia-Pacific region that offers much for

researchers. It includes summaries of current issues, press

conferences, major speeches and articles, and the diplomatic blue

book. Also from Japan is NIRA's World Directory of Think Tanks.

The directory provides information on 232 think tanks in 64

countries: contact information, main areas of research, research

findings, staff information, and other material.10 Unfortunately,

however, the directory is not a hotlist--it does not provide

direct connection to the actual organizations. Elsewhere, the

Australian Defence and the Canadian Department of National

Defence pages are good, but deal more with recent reorganizations

than with strategy or world affairs. The Canadian Forces College

provides a solid collection of military links on its Peace and

Security page.

Western European governments have established some very

useful web sites, including the German Foreign Office's

Auswärtiges Amt (which also includes a link to the Englishlanguage German Information Center), the Swiss Zentralstelle für

Gesamtverteidigung, and the France Defence site. The British

Ministry of Defence home page shows the potential of these types

of resources. It contains a summary of the 1995 United Kingdom

"White Paper," and the full text of the 1994 paper. In addition,

the Ministry of Defence page contains a comprehensive press

release information section, including access to the U.K.
"Central Office of Information Internet Services"--which provides

a searchable listing of all press releases by all U.K. government

organizations. UK CALS NEWS, another link on the Ministry of

Defence page, provides information on the U.K. defense

acquisition process and individual current program status.

Some important international organizations also have

Internet sites. The World Bank includes useful reports and

documents on Third World development. The United Nations, while

still maintaining its gopher site, has also established a new web

site. This provides general organizational information, access to

treaty information via its International Law link, and full text

search of Security Council resolutions, but still only gopher

access to General Assembly resolutions. The latter are listed

only by number and date rather than subject, so researchers must

know precisely what they are looking for in advance. A hotlist to

information regarding U.N. organizations is found at the UNITED

NATIONS System of Organizations site. The total package of U.N.

sites, if updates continue, could be some of the most useful

locations on the Internet for strategic analysts. The text of

many treaties can be found at the Multilateral Treaties gopher of

Cornell University. Many regional and specialized organizations

such as the Organization of American States and the Organization

for Economic Cooperation and Development have also built web

sites, but most of them only provide basic information about the

organization's structure and mission rather than the text of

resolutions and other material of interest to an analyst.

Europa, the web site of the European Union, is by far the

most useful of the regional organizations' sites. It includes

policies and agendas as well as basic organizational information.

The newly-opened NATO site is an absolute gold mine of material,

including the text of basic documents, communiques, press

releases, speeches, and studies. It also offers information on

seminars and workshops, and has a large collection of documents

on the Yugoslavia crisis, both from NATO itself and from the

United Nations.

News and Regional Information. The availability of world

news on the Internet is expanding. The World News Connection

provides news stories from around the world. It is particularly

crucial for regionalists dealing with regions overlooked by the

mainstream media. Essentially it is an online version of the

Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) reports. The down

side is that users--even government ones--must pay for the

service. However, the subscriptions are flexible, offering both
short-time access for researchers involved in a single project

and longer terms for individuals or organizations with a

recurring need. Interestingly (perhaps ominously as far as some

researchers are concerned), it appears World News Connection is

intended to totally replace paper subscriptions of FBIS. The

Reuters news wire is provided in a number of spots including

Yahoo, Excite, and commercial service providers such as America

Online (AOL). AOL is particularly valuable because it gives the

full Reuters wire rather than selections like Yahoo and Excite.

This can be important for research on areas of the world like

Africa that do not garner much attention from the mainstream

media. The Associated Press is also available, but stories only

stay online for a very short period of time, there is no archive,

and coverage of world events is less comprehensive than the full

Reuters wire (although similar to the shortened version of

Reuters found on Yahoo and Excite). The Cable News Network posts

transcripts of many of its broadcasts as well as audio and video

clips. These cover many topics but not in much depth. National

Public Radio also provides transcripts of newscasts and some

feature stories. The USA Today page provides a truncated version

of the paper. The New York Times site includes the full paper.

Coverage of specific parts of the world varies by region. 

There is much material on Europe, including the excellent OMRI

(Open Media Research Institute) Daily Digest which covers the

former Soviet Union. There are some good Asian news sites.

Unfortunately, The Asian-Centered Media Perspective: An Asian

Reading of Asia, a hotlist of Asian news sites, has many out-ofdate URLs. In most cases you can still eventually reach the

desired source via intermediate "we have moved" pages, but you

must be patient. For Africa, one site definitely worth a visit is

Contemporary Conflicts in Africa, which provides extensive

coverage on the prevention, management, and resolution of

conflict throughout the continent. Although some pages are

graphics intensive, they seem well-organized and load quickly,

and the reports, maps, and databases available make up for the

eyestrain the occasionally garish color combinations may cause.

The Republic of South Africa is well-covered on the Internet:

News Briefings from the ANC publishes nearly a hundred news

stories a day from the South African press. Coverage of Latin

America and the Middle East is thin, although the Central

American UPDATE and IGCC Middle East Information Resources

provide some coverage. The best way to find specific regional

news sources is through the outstanding collection of links on

the World News Index. Yahoo and the International Security

Network also offer links to some regional news providers.
Conclusions.

Is access to the Internet a necessity for contemporary

strategic analysts? With the possible exception of e-mail access,

probably not. Despite its rapid expansion, the world- wide web is

still in its infancy. The bulk of information on it still is

brochure-level and most web sites are marketing devices rather

than sources of data. Analysts wading into the web for the first

time will find it a swamp. Not only is a small proportion of the

available information truly useful, but what is useful tends to

be badly organized. Nearly all relevant information of value can

be found elsewhere in printed form. In many ways, the web is for

a national security professional as a microwave oven is for a

cook. A cook with plenty of time and a well-stocked kitchen

doesn't need a microwave. Without these, though, a microwave can

be crucial. So too with the web. A strategist with few time

pressures and access to a well-stocked library doesn't need the

web. Strategists facing time pressure or who don't have a wellstocked library available will find it more useful.

Today, the Internet is far from a mature resource. Users and

information providers are still experimenting to find out what

works and what doesn't. Change continues to be extensive and

rapid. New resources and methods appear and others fade away on a

daily basis. Within a few years, though, presence on the Internet

is likely to stabilize somewhat. Although contemporary providers

of information, with the exception of a handful of electronic

magazines ("e-zines" or "cyberzines"), see the web as a

supplement to conventional publishing and distribution rather

than a substitute for it, eventually there may be vital

information on the web not available in any other medium. FBIS's

giving way to World News Connection may be the first step in that

direction. If--more likely when--this happens on a large scale an

analyst's collection of Internet bookmarks will be as valuable as

a rolodex of personal contacts is now. The astute analyst will

prepare for this. By exploring the web today and developing

effective methods for finding and using electronic information,

he or she will be ready when the Internet finally does make the

leap from novelty to necessity.

ENDNOTES

1. The "Network Information Center" funded by the National

Science Foundation probably comes the closest to "controlling"

the U.S. portion of the Internet, in that it is responsible for
the top-level domain database for registration of domain names

and Internet Protocol numbers. This database matches "carlislewww.army.mil" (something a human can, hopefully, remember) with

the IP #144.99.192.240 (which few humans could give meaning to,

but which is essentially for the correct routing of bits and

bytes). But once NIC has agreed to an "address" its "control" of

anything related to that address effectively ceases.

2. For more information on the creation and structure of the

Internet, see: "Architecture of the Internet" at

http://www.boardwatch. com/isp/archit.htm; also "History of the

Internet" at http://www.boardwatch.com/mag/95/jun/bwm1.htm. These

two articles, originally published in Boardwatch magazine, cover

the technical aspects of the 'net in reasonable detail, but are

understandable (as well as occasionally humorous) enough for

technophobes.

3. J. Leland at RAND's Arroyo Center has used this

technique.

4. For example, the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey

created a news group focused on discussion of command, control,

communications, computers, and intelligence (C4I) issues,

primarily involving professionals in the field.

5. For example, a search string of "military strategy,

national security policy" returned the following diverse results

on September 26, 1996: Quantity of documents: zero (Magellan) to

2,037,522 (Excite). Quality (judged by top ten documents

retrieved): Excellent think-tank and government strategy-related

publications (AltaVista and Excite) to weak National Military

Park guides (Lycos).

6. These pages are not unimportant to the public or the

concerned organizations, but do not materially assist an analyst

researching a strategic question. Some are excellent sources for

researching tactical, operational, or administrative issues,

however. Examples include TRADOC--the U.S. Army Training and

Doctrine Command--and U.S. Military Academy.

7. This is because CALL has traditionally had a

tactical/operational focus. With a few exceptions its target

audience has largely been the maneuver and support units of the

field army, rather than the strategic planning community. As an

example, the Center For Army Lessons Learned furnishes an index

to some Army branch publications. These, while of only limited
interest to the strategist, are valuable for those more

interested in the operational or tactical levels of combat.

8. Both of the authors believe familiarity with and

understanding of historical events and trends are crucial to

developing valid contemporary strategies and policies, and they

make use of well-organized sites such as the Center of Military

History [http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/default.htm]. For this

endeavor, however, our focus is on sites which primarily provide

contemporary, rather than historical, strategic material.

9. Analysts should also be aware that not everything useful

on the Internet will be found in "obvious" locations. For

example, another excellent document related to information

warfare was discovered at a Computer Security Institute site

[http://www.digpath.com/news/10_13_95/1tech003.html].

10. The current directory was compiled in 1993, so some of

the information is probably outdated. A 1996 version is "under

construction."
APPENDIX A

REFERENCES

Publications.

Hardcopy.

"How to Get There From Here: The Best, The Easiest, and the

Cheapest Ways to get on the Internet," Fast Forward (magazine

insert), The Washington Post, February 1996, pp. 6-11.

Ed Tittle and Steve James, HTML For Dummies, Foster City,

CA: IDG Books Worldwide, Inc., 1995. Ignore the title, enjoy, and

be enlightened by "Part I: Welcome to the World Wide Web," pp. 3-

43.

Online.

Hauben, Michael and Ronda. Netizens: On the History and

Impact of the Net. April 1995. http://www.columbia.

edu/~hauben/netbook/

Zakon, Robert H. Hobbes' Internet Timeline. 1993-96.

http://info.isoc.org/guest/zakon/Internet/History/HIT.html

Internet Sites.

The method for accessing the Internet sites listed here will

vary according to the web browser used. To open a site with

Netscape, one popular browser: either click on the "Open" button,

pull down the "file" menu and select "open location," or hit

control-O. Then type in the URL (electronic address) provided.

Remember that URLs are case-sensitive!

2025 http://www.au.af.mil/2025/2025home.html

2025 Final Report http://www.au.af.mil/au/2025/

Advanced Research Projects Agency http://www. arpa.mil/

Afghanistan http://www.yahoo.com/Regional/ 

Countries/Afghanistan/

African National Congress http://www.anc.org.za/
Air Chronicles http://www.cdsar.af.mil/air-chronicles.html

AirForceLink http://www.dtic.dla.mil/airforcelink/

AirForceLink Library

http://www.dtic.dla.mil/airforcelink/pubs/

AirForceLink News http://www.dtic.dla.mil/airforcelink/pa

Airpower Journal http://www.cdsar.af.mil/apje.html

Air University http://www.au.af.mil/

Alta Vista http://altavista.digital.com/

America's Army http://www.army.mil/

American Studies Web

http://pantheon.cis.yale.edu/~davidp/pol.html

American Universities http://www.clas.ufl.edu/CLAS/americanuniversities.html

Armed Forces Staff College http://www.afsc.edu/

Army Knowledge Network http://leav-www.army.mil: 80/akn/

ArmyLink http://www.dtic.dla.mil:80/armylink/

Army Research Laboratory Publications

http://www.arl.mil/EA/Publications.html

Articles http://204.7.227.67/force21/articles/art-toc.html

Associated Press http://www1.trib.com/NEWS/f_listintro.html

Association of the United States Army http://www.ausa.org/

Atlantic Monthly http://www2.theAtlantic.com/atlantic/

AU Press http://www.au.af.mil/au/aupress/aupubs.html

Australian Defence http://www.adfa.oz.au/DOD/dodhmpgn.html

Auswartiges Amt http://www.auswaertiges-amt.government.de/
Automated Historical Archives System http://leavwww.army.mil/aknahas.htm

BASIC http://www.igc.apc.org/basic/index.html

Bosnia Link http://www.dtic.dla.mil/bosnia/

Cable News Network http://www.cnn.com/

Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies http://www. ciss.ca/

CapWeb http://policy.net/capweb/congress.html

Carter Center http://www.emory.edu/

CATO Institute http://www.cato.org/home.html

Center for Army Lessons Learned

http://call.army.mil:1100/call.html

Center For Defense Information http://www.cdi.org/

Center for International Security and Arms Control

http://www-leland.stanford.edu/group/CISAC/

Center for Nonproliferation Studies http://cns.miis.edu/

Center for Strategic and International Studies

http://www.csis.org/

Center for Strategic Leadership http://carlislewww.army.mil/usacsl/

Central American UPDATE http://www.us.net/cip/96013tx.cau

Central Intelligence Agency http://www.odci.gov/

Centre for Strategic Studies http://www.vuw.ac.nz/css/

CIA World Factbook (via Yahoo)

http://www.yahoo.com/Regional/CIA_World_Factbook/

College and University Home Pages

http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/cdemello/univ.html
Congressional E-mail Directory

http://www.webslingerz.com:80/jhoffman/congress-e-mail.html

Contemporary Conflicts in Africa

http://www.synapse.net/~acdi20/welcome.htm

Country Studies/Area Handbook Program

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/country.html

Daily Washington File

http://www.usia.gov/products/washfile.htm

Defense Intelligence Agency http://www.dia.mil/

Defense Link http://www.dtic.dla.mil:80/defenselink/

Defense Technical Information Web

http://www.dtic.dla.mil/dtiw/

Democracy Net http://www.ned.org/

Department of National Defence http://ww.dnd.ca/ dnd.htm

Department of State http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu:80/dosfan.html

EiNet Galaxy http://www.einet.net/

Electronic Journals

http://www.usia.gov/journals/journals.htm

Electronic Headquarters for the Acquisition of War Knowledge

(EHAWK) http://www.olcommerce.com/ cadre/index.html

Europa http://www.cec.lu/

Excite http://www.excite.com/

Fletcher Forum http://www.tufts.edu/fletcher/forum.html

Force XXI http://204.7.227.75:443/f21home.html

Foreign Affairs

http://www.enews.com:80/magazines/foreign_affairs/

Foreign Commentary on U.S.

http://www.usia.gov/usiahome/medreac.htm
Foreign Military Studies Office http://leavwww.army.mil/fmso/

Foreign Policy

http://www.enews.com:80/magazines/foreign_policy/

France Defence http://www.ensmp.fr/~scherer/adminet/min/def/

German Information Center

http://langlab.uta.edu/langpages/GIC.html

GPO (Government Printing Office) Access

http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/aaces001.html

Hoover Institution http://hoover.stanford.edu/

House National Security Committee

http://policy.net/capweb/House/HComm/hns.html

IANWeb http://www.pitt.edu/~ian/

Industrial College of the Armed

Forces http://www.ndu.edu/ndu/icaf/icafhp.html

InfoSeek Net Search http://www2.infoseek.com/

Information Warfare on the Web

http://www.fas.org/irp/wwwinfo.html

Institute for National Strategic Studies

 http://www.ndu.edu/ndu/inss/insshp.html

Institute for the Advanced Study of Information Warfare

http://www.psycom.net/iwar.1.html

IntelWeb http://www.awpi.com/IntelWeb/

International Affairs

http://www.duke.edu/~gilliatt/internatl/

International Institute for Strategic Studies

http://www.fsk.ethz.ch/d-reok/fsk/iiss/iisshome.html

International Organizations

gopher://gopher.enews.com/11/magazines/alphabetic/all/iorg
International Security

gopher://gopher.enews.com/11/magazines/alphabetic/all/int_securit

y

International Security Network http://www.fsk.ethz.ch/dreok/fsk/defs_hom.html

Internet Resources Newsletter

http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/irn.html

Internet Sleuth http://www.intbc.com/sleuth/

Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies

http://www.tau.ac.il/jcss/

Jane's Information Store http://www.janes.com/janes. html

John F. Kennedy School of Government

http://ksgwww.harvard.edu/

Joint Chiefs of Staff

http://www.dtic.dla.mil:80/defenselink/jcs/

Joint Services Conference on Professional Ethic

http://www.duke.edu/jscope/

Journal of Democracy

gopher://gopher.enews.com/11/magazines/alphabetic/all/democracy

Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/

Lycos http://www.lycos.com/

MarineLink http://www.usmc.mil/

Magellan http://mckinley.netcom.com/

Marshall Center http://www.marshall.adsn.int/ marshall.html

Middle East Information Resources http://wwwigcc.ucsd.edu/igcc /memulti/infolinks.html

Military Spending Working Group

http://www.clark.net/pub/gen/mswg/
MILNET http://www.onestep.com/milnet/

Ministry of Defence http://www.mod.uk/

Ministry of Foreign Affairs http://www.nttls.co.jp/infomofa/

Multilateral Treaties

gopher://gopher.law.cornell.edu/11/foreign/fletcher

National Defense University http://www.ndu.edu/

National Public Radio http://www.npr.org/

National Security Agency

http://www.fas.org/pub/gen/fas/irp/nsa/

National Security Website http://www.nationalsecurity. org/

National Technical Information Service

http://www.fedworld.gov/ntis/ntishome.html

National Review

gopher://gopher.enews.com/11/magazines/alphabetic/all/national_

review

National War College http://www.ndu.edu/ndu/nwc/ nwchp.html

NATO http://www.nato.int/

NavyOnLine http://www.ncts.navy.mil/

Naval Postgraduate School http://www.nps.navy.mil/

Naval War College http://www.usnwc.edu/nwc/

Net Happenings http://www.mid.net:80/NET/

Net Scout Services http://rs.internic.net/scout/

Net Surfer Digest http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/

New Republic http://www.dc.enews.com/magazines/tnr/

New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/

News Briefings from the ANC
http://pantheon.cis.yale.edu/~jadwat/anc/

NIRA's World Directory of Think Tanks

http://www.nira.go.jp/ic/tt-info/nwdtt/idex.html

OMRI (Open Media Research Institute) Daily Digest

 http://www.omri.cz/Publications/Digests/DigestIndex.html

Open Text http://www.opentext.com/omw/f-omw.html

OPNAV N513 Strategy and Concepts Branch

http://n4.nosc.mil/N3_N5/N5/N513/poldoc.html

Organization of American States http://www.oas.org/

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

http://cs1-hq.oecd.org/

PARAMETERS http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/ Parameters/

Peace and Security http://www.cfcsc.dnd.ca/welcome. html

Peacekeeping Institute http://carlislewww.army.mil/usacsl/pki/

Political Science Quarterly

http://www.enews.com:80/magazines/polisci_quarterly/

Program on Peacekeeping Policy

http://ralph.gmu.edu/cfpa/eace/peace.html

Project on Defense Alternatives 

http://www.comw.org/pda/pdahome.htm

RAND Corporation http://www.rand.org/

Rongstad's Military Links

http://members.aol.com/rhrongstad/private/milinksr.htm

SACIS http://www.cam.org/~sac/SACIS.html

Scout Report http://rs.internic.net/scout/report/

Senate Armed Services Committee

 http://policy.net/capweb/Senate/SenateCom/ARMED.html
Stanford Center http://www-leland.stanford.edu/ group/CISAC/

Starting Point http://www.stpt.com/

Stimson Center http://www.stimson.org/pub/stimson/ index.htm

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

(SIPRI)http://www.sipri.se/

Strategic Studies Institute http://carlislewww.army.mil/usassi/

The Asian-Centered Media Perspective: An Asian Reading of

Asia http://weber.u.washington.edu/ ~sbyeap/mediasia.html

TRADOC http://www-tradoc.army.mil/

TRADOC PAM525-5 

http://204.7.227.75:443/force21/tradoc525/525-5toc.html

UK CALS News http://www.mod.uk/pe/cals/home.htm

Unified Commands

http://www.dtic.dla.mil:80/defenselink/unified.html

United Nations gopher://nywork1.undp.org:70/1http://

www.un.prg/

United Nations Scholars' Workstation

http://www.library.yale.edu/un/unhome.htm

UNITED NATIONS System of Organizations

 http:/www.unsystem.org/index7.html

United States Information Agency Home Page

http://www.usia.gov/

United States Information Agency International Home Page

http://www.usia.gov/usis.html

United States Institute of Peace

http://witloof.sjsu.edu/peace/usip.html

United States Military Academy (West Point)

http://www.usma.edu/
U.S. Army Command and General Staff College http://leavwww.army.mil/

U.S. Army War College and Carlisle Barracks http://carlislewww.army.mil/

U.S. Congress (Thomas) http://thomas.loc.gov/

U.S.Marine Corps http://www.hqmc.usmc.mil/

USA Today http://www.usatoday.com/

Voice of America http://www.niss.ac.uknews/voiceofam.html

Washington Quarterly http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/jrnlscatalog/washington.html

Web Crawler http://webcrawler.com/

White House http://www.whitehouse.gov/

World Bank http://www.worldbank.org/html/Welcome. html

World News Connection http://wnc.fedworld.gov/

World News Index

http://toad.stack.urc.tue.nl/~haroldkl/index.html

World Politics

http://www.dc.enews.com/magazines/world_politics/

Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com/

Yahoo Government sub-catalog http:www.yahoo.com/ Government/

Yahoo News sub-catalog http:www.yahoo.com/News/

Yahoo Regional sub-catalog http:www.yahoo.com/ Regional/

Zentralstelle für Gesamtverteidigung

http://sipo2.ethz.ch/zgv/index.htm

Zimbabwe http://www.yahoo.com/Regional/Countries/Zimbabwe/
APPENDIX B

GLOSSARY

Bookmark. All software for accessing the world-wide web

offers the user a means of placing a bookmark at a site to make

it easier to find in the future. Since the user may have followed

many links to arrive at a site, it is vital to bookmark those

that may be of use. A well-organized collection of Internet

bookmarks will become an increasingly valuable asset for

strategic analysts.

Gateway. A web site that offers links to other web sites

rather than providing information or data on a topic. See also

"hotlist."

Gopher. A predecessor of the world-wide web. A menu-driven

system offering text only. Users of the web can access gopher

sites and retrieve information.

Home Page. Usually the first body of information provided

when accessing a web site. Similar to entering the reception area

of an office building with a receptionist offering directions to

desired locations. Provides basic information about the

organization or individual creating the site and usually links to

other information at that site or at related sites. Anyone with

access to an Internet server can create a home page, so they

range from personal pages providing information about the

individual to those run by government agencies or major

corporations.

Hotlist. A web page that consists almost exclusively of

links to other web pages.

Internet (the 'net). A system connecting millions of

computers around the world. It is not centrally managed or

controlled.

Links. Most web pages include graphics or "hypertext" (often

displayed in a different color than the rest of the text and

underlined) which, if clicked on, transfer the user to another

body of information within the web page or connect them to

another web page, sometimes in a different part of the world. By

following such links, a user can find a variety of information

sources. Following links is also known as "browsing" or "surfing
the 'net.'"

USENET News Groups. Discussion groups built around a

particular topic. Some are managed, others are not. Groups take

two forms: e-mail groups where subscribers receive comments and

postings from other users, or bulletin boards which users access

and then read posted messages or post their own.

Search Engine. A computer program resident at a web site

that searches for other web sites using parameters provided by

the user.

Server. A computer connected to the Internet. Users cannot

directly dial-up the Internet using a modem, but must gain access

through a server. Many government offices, universities, and

large businesses provide access for their employees. For access

at home, a user can either subscribe to one of the commercial

online services such as America Online, Compuserve, and Prodigy,

which provide Internet access in addition to their other

features, or to one of the dedicated Internet server companies

located in most cities.

URL (uniform resource locator). The electronic "address" of

an Internet site. world-wide web URLs tend to begin "http://www

. . . " The first part of a URL indicates the type of access, the

second part the name of the computer where the resource resides,

and subsequent parts the actual document. Every character on a

URL must be entered correctly to access a site. An American URL

with an extension of ".edu" is an educational site, ".mil" is

military, ".gov" is government, ".org" is a nonprofit

organization, and ".com" is a commercial site. Outside of the

United States, the extension usually indicates the country. For

instance, ".uk" is the United Kingdom and ".za" is South Africa.

Most of the country extensions are fairly easy to figure out. For

those that aren't, the International Security Network provides a

full list.

Web Browser. A software program to access web sites.

Netscape is the most popular; Mosaic is also widely used. The

commercial online service providers such as America Online,

Compuserve, and Prodigy have developed their own web browsers.

Most browsers look similar and are easy to use without training

or tutorials.

World-Wide Web (also "WWW" or "the web"). The fastest

growing element of the Internet. Offers graphics, easy
connections to related sites ("links"), and, increasingly, video

and audio.
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General Richard A. Chilcoat

Commandant

*****

STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

Director

Colonel Richard H. Witherspoon

Director of Research

Dr. Earl H. Tilford, Jr.

Authors

Lieutenant Colonel James Kievit (USA, Ret)

Dr. Steven Metz

Director of Publications and Production

Ms. Marianne P. Cowling

Secretary

Ms. Rita A. Rummel

*****

Composition

Mrs. Mary Jane Semple

Cover Artist

Mr. James E. Kistler