Colloquium Brief

U.S. Army War College,

Texas Tech University

U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY AND MILITARY STRATEGY:

UNDERSTANDING THE ENVIRONMENT

FOR CONTEMPORARY WARFARE

Compiled by

Dr. Steve Maxner

Director, The Vietnam Center and Archive

Dr. Dennis Patterson

Chair, Political Science

Mr. Dave Lewis

College of Arts and Sciences

KEY INSIGHTS:

•	 Establishing and continuing a collaborative dialogue between traditional academic institutions and disciplines and the nation’s next generation of senior officers is not just beneficial, it is essential to U.S.

national security.

•	 Scholars in universities and the nation’s war colleges possess unique strengths and limitations with

respect to understanding and communicating insights into contemporary warfare and the education of

senior officers.

•	 Quantitative data analysis and qualitative case assessment provide unique insights into the study of

war.

•	 Some bridges between these institutional cultures and research traditions exist; to gain the best understanding of contemporary warfare and facilitate greater collaboration, existing bridges must be maintained while new ones are built.

•	 Researchers from both the quantitative and qualitative traditions must develop strategic communication skills to reach strategic military and policy leaders. Pragmatic constraints on senior leader’s time

demand succinct presentation of “big ideas” and salient context early, leaving the traditional literature

review, data findings, and data analysis for deeper layers of the communication.

•	 New analytic “lenses” for traditional problems in the study of war may shed light on solutions, especially when combined with more traditional strategic scholarship.

•	 The legal context of evolving contemporary operations is essential to understanding and successfully

prosecuting wars.

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Introduction.

	 No problem facing the United States is more

important than national security, particularly in

the context of our contemporary wars. In addition, no institution is more involved and more affected by this problem of protecting national security in the context of contemporary wars than

the U.S. Army (and the U.S. military overall). The

problem of contemporary wars has created numerous challenges for the U.S. Army. Through

an active academic outreach program, of which

this colloquium with Texas Tech University, the

Vietnam Center and Archive, and the Department

of Political Science was part, many perspectives

and methodologies can be brought to bear on

these problems. The purpose of this collaboration is to begin a dialogue that can help bridge

the gap between two worlds, one where senior

U.S. military officers are educated and the other

where scholars work on problems that relate to

the causes and conduct of war.

	 To help bridge this gap, Texas Tech University

proposed to bring together two traditions of research that as a rule do not collaborate. The first

is the case-rich, historical tradition of military

scholarship. This is an important tradition and an

essential part of the academic education of senior

officers. However, because it is case based, it is

limited in terms of generalizability. To address

this limitation, the colloquium proposed to explore how a case-based academic tradition could

be married to a quantitative study of warfare,

which is practiced in several liberal arts political and social science departments. The reference

here is to large-N quantitative studies of interstate conflict, sanctions, and terrorism.

	 Such quantitative studies began in 1963

with the Correlates of War Project (COW) at the

University of Michigan. Since the initial COW

data collection effort began, other data sets were

established that: 1) expanded the definition of interstate conflict from formally declared to all militarized interstate disputes; 2) included all cases

of single and multiple states imposing economic

sanctions on other countries for explicit political

and economic purposes; and 3) initiated efforts to

collect data on instances of terrorism. These data

sets are often used in academic studies of international conflict, but they are rarely used in the

professional military education of senior officers.

The different types of data available, and potential uses of such data were the topic of the colloquium’s second panel. In that session, Dr. Laura

Dugan of the University of Maryland explained

how to access the Terrorism Database and discussed the content of that database so that its

usefulness could be clearly understood. Dr. Kim

Elliot talked about the sanctions database that

she and her colleagues at the Peterson Institute

for International Economics created, and Dr. Paul

Hensel described the availability of three interstate conflict databases, how they are structured,

and how they could be tapped for education and

training purposes.

Day 1.

	 This colloquium’s first panel was intended

to set the stage for the kind of collaboration that

could take place between two institutional cultures, the U.S. military education institutions (the

U.S. Army War College) and civilian academic

institutions (Departments of Political Science).

This first session highlighted and contrasted the

strengths that academics and senior members of

the military bring to the process of educating the

next generation of senior officers and highlighted areas where collaboration could take place. A

discussion followed using an illustrative Middle

East case as an example of how collaboration between the two institutional types might benefit

both. Finally, Dr. Carlton Phillips, a specialist in

bioterrorism at Texas Tech University, discussed

his area of expertise, treating it as an area where

a bridge already exists between academia and the

U.S. military.

	 The discussion prompted by these presentations was a perfect prelude to the afternoon sessions which began with a discussion of the importance of case analysis in military education.

All papers on this panel were quite detailed and

informative and, as such, they made the case that

in-depth analyses are essential if we are to under-
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stand the environment of contemporary warfare.

At the same time, these presentations raised the

issue of generalizability, not so much the criticism

that single cases are not generalizable, but more

importantly that those conducting case analysis

should think about the problems they are investigating in a way that helps one identify potentially

generalizable lessons derived from multiple individual cases.

	 This panel was followed by a session where the

actual benefits of collaboration were addressed by

three speakers who viewed such benefits from different perspectives. The first perspective was that

of a senior military leader’s gatekeeper. This view

emphasized the time constraints facing senior decisionmakers. These constraints require researchers to carefully package and present material in

increasingly detailed layers, if they are to reach

and have an impact on their intended audience.

The first layer must rapidly present the essential ideas, and reinforce their relevance by briefly placing the key points in context. Subsequent

layers can provide traditional data findings and

analysis; but without the relevant content prominently and clearly presented up-front, the rest

will not have purchase. A second perspective

focused on the constraints associated with collaboration. This perspective was informed by an

educator facing the imperative of having to cover

certain cases in-depth, while acknowledging the

potential benefit of being able to generalize across

many cases using large-N data sets. This session

was closed with a talk on the possibilities offered

by using the most cutting edge technology to advance the research and training efforts currently

underway.

Day 2.

	 The second day of the colloquium started

with a panel that examined some new “lenses”

for viewing the challenges of contemporary

warfare. The first presentation focused on the

Clausewitzian notion of means and will in war.

It outlined a framework for comprehending the

complex interactions that exist between means

and will, and it issued a challenge for quantitative

studies with regard to will and war. The second

presentation demonstrated the use of quantitative methodologies for understanding how nonstate actors fight and defeat states in war. Finally,

the last presentation highlighted the need for the

use of strategic communication as a counterterrorist tool.

The subsequent panel was quite unique in that

it viewed the challenges of contemporary warfare

through the lens of international law and associated legal issues involved in conducting today’s

wars. Traditional views of Just War and the Law

of Armed Conflict were reviewed by the first panelist. The second panelist explored some unique

contemporary challenges, introducing the concept of “Lawfare”; specifically, relating the concept to legal challenges associated with captured

personnel and their status. The third panelist examined the legal challenges posed by the use of

drones in prosecuting our current wars.

Conclusion.

The culminating session was designed to pull

together all the ideas and information presented

previously with an eye to continuing the dialogue

and setting the agenda for future collaboration.

We acknowledge that the U.S. Army War College

and Texas Tech University are institutions that

very often speak different languages and that

spanning that discourse gap will take deliberate effort on the part of both parties. This final

session heard opinions that such a gap can be

bridged not only by seeking a common language,

but also by acknowledging that both institutions

are working on a common set of problems; problems associated with the best way to win at war

in the context of the contemporary security environment. Similarly, it is often true that those

who do case-study (qualitative) research do not

speak the same language as those who do large-N

quantitative studies. This does not prevent these

institutional cultures (military/civilian) and research traditions (quantitative/qualitative) from

finding common ground. As long as researchers

from each culture and tradition present their contribution in terms of a common understanding of
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the problem of national security in the context of

contemporary warfare, such an interactive conversation can take place. This mutually beneficial

collaborative prospect can only be achieved when

each stakeholder describes their unique contribution to the broader scope and more robust environment in which problems of contemporary

warfare are understood. Overall, in spite of the

fact that different actors will address this problem through different sets of expertise, the key to

bridging the communication gap is to maintain

focus on the common problem, while providing

insight into how the research approach highlights

a unique aspect of the problem or context within

the broader field of study. The search for greater

understanding through bridging communications makes the continuation of the dialogue initiated at this conference essential.

*****

The views expressed in this brief 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.

*****

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