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• Discriminate Power: A Strategy for a Sustainable National Security Posture

  May 21, 2013
  Longtime and now-retired SSP adjunct professor Michael Mazarr (NSSP'89) has published the results of extensive research into "A Strategy for a Sustainable National Security Posture." Members of the Strategy Study Group that helped compose the report include current SSP adjuncts T.X. Hammes and Thomas Lynch, as well as former SSP Associate Director Bernard Finel.
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• Is the War on Terrorism Over? Long Live Unconventional Warfare

  May 21, 2013
  Associate Director David Maxwell, in response to increasingly frequent arguments that the "war on terror" concept is played out or obsolete, suggests a different prism through which to analyze Al Qaeda: unconventional warfare, which the group is waging against the United States and its allies. "In so doing we can then commence on developing a counter-unconventional warfare strategy and with that strategy employ the right means and ways to achieve our ends which must be the defeat of specified threats that are waging unconventional war," argues Maxwell.
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• If All Else Fails: The Challenges of Containing a Nuclear-Armed Iran

  May 13, 2013
  Professor Colin Kahl, together with current SSP student Raj Pattani and CNAS Research Associate Jacob Stokes, has published a report that details a comprehensive strategy for containing a nuclear-armed Iran. Such planning and preparation is needed, they say, "not because the United States wants to take this path, but because it may eventually become the only path left."
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• Mr. Obama, Don’t Draw That Line

  May 4, 2013
  Professor Daniel Byman argues against setting red lines and ultimatums in a cautionary piece in The New York Times. "In practice, red lines often create perverse incentives and encourage the enemy to continue aggression even as it avoids a red line," warns Dr. Byman. He highlights the U.S. response - or lack of response - in the ongoing Syrian conflict as a prime example of the perils of declaring red lines.
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• Civil-military coordination for operational effectiveness: Towards a measured approach

  April 30, 2013
  Director of Teaching Robert Egnell has published his recommendations for reducing the friction between military and civilian authorities overseeing complex operations. Writing in a special issue of the journal Small Wars & Insurgencies, Professor Egnell "seeks to answer more specific questions about when coordination is necessary for effectiveness, what its aims are, what actors need to be involved, and to what extent and at what level of command the actors need to be coordinated."
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