Soviet Threat Research Articles

Russia and International Law – Welcoming the Great Bear to the WTO Club

In July 2012 – the WTO announced that Russia had ratified legislations clearing the country’s path to become the 156th member of the club of trading nations on August 22, 2012. Russia’s entry into the WTO had been a long and arduous journey that traversed cold war trade legislations legacies such as Jackson-Vanik Agreement, former Soviet state threat of veto, gas supply to Europe, intellectual property rights, among a host of others. Though in retrospect, the accession talks has been unfair to the Russian Federation – it is nevertheless a welcome relief that the world’s largest country is now a member in the club of nations and will effectively shape the current trends in international law in the post war era of 1945.

Disquiet in the House of Gender

When I was a child at the height of the Cold War, the press painted China in vivid primary colors—red menace, yellow peril, blue-clad masses. China was a back-burner story, however, compared to the Soviet threat, and my education through high school never touched upon it. A shift in public attention began with the 1971 China visit of the U.S. ping-pong team and Nixon's state visit in February 1972. Suddenly the mainstream U.S. press discovered beggar-free streets, healthy children, acupuncture anesthesia, and national optimism.

Early stages in the evolution of covert action governance in the United States, 1951–1961

The U.S. government started to establish a formalised covert action capability only in the late 1940s and early 1950s, in response to the perceived Soviet threat. The difficult process of establishing the first inter-agency management organisation for this new activity, the Psychological Strategy Board, and its successor, the Operational Coordination Board, serves to highlight the peculiar characteristics of covert action and its management. Very little current scholarship deals with inter-agency bodies in the U.S. context, and this article aims to fill this void. The article concludes that while covert action itself remains in the shadows, policy coordination for it must be well-managed at the very centre of government to account for strong policy interests in this activity from other agencies, particularly the Departments of State and Defense. This task is complicated by the nature of U.S. national security architecture and U.S. government culture overall, which poses high structural obstacles to inter-agency cooperation.

Cool Hand Nuke: Lessons From the Quiet Diplomacy of the Cienfuegos Non-Crisis

How does presidential framing and signaling of problems affect the potential solutions available to solve those problems? For example, the Cuban Missile Crisis was immediately labeled a crisis and limited alternative solutions. Conversely, the Cienfuegos submarine base dilemma of 1970—despite having graver potential consequences—was never framed as a crisis, was out of the public eye, and was equally successful at repealing a Soviet threat. We offer a Force Dilemma model that suggests the president's problem definition process should produce crisis classifications sparingly, considering and employing less confrontational instruments of power, without prematurely sending unnecessary signals to adversaries, contemporaries, and the public.

Promoting Regional Peacemaking

How can Canada and the United States, as well as the international institutions to which they belong, promote peacemaking between rivals in troubled regions? This task is an important one given the high stakes of key regional conflicts, such as those of the Middle East and south Asia, for western interests. Another war between India and Pakistan, now nuclearweapon states, could conceivably escalate to nuclear war. Further flare-ups in the Arab-Israeli conflict could undermine the global economy and also inspire further nuclear proliferation in the region. Consequently, western states share an interest in using their influence to defuse these conflicts and promote peacemaking between regional rivals.This article summarizes the findings of my current research on successful peace agreements between regional rivals and offers policy recommendations that third-party states and institutions can follow to promote regional peacemaking.1Based on detailed primary and secondary source analysis of three successful peace agreements between regional antagonists - France and Germany after World War II, Egypt and Israel in 1978-79, and Israel and Jordan in 1994 - I concluded that peacemaking is a two-staged process. The first stage, the transition process, is driven by a statist logic. Each of the three settlements resulted from a change in leader/ governmental attitudes of the conflict based on geostrategic calculations and/or a fear that continuation of the conflict would threaten key state objectives, including maintenance of the leadership's power position. Common geostrategic pressures included the emergence of a state posing a greater threat to both regional rivals and American hegemonic pressure to reach a settlement. Other statist motives in these episodes included domestic economic crises that threatened to undermine the leadership's hold on power.In contrast, societal motives played no role in the transition phase of these settlements. Although the states were willing to entertain peacemaking and concessions, public attitudes remained hostile and no significant vested business interests in peacemaking existed. Nor was peacemaking driven by business elites anticipating future gains through peacemaking. In fact, in each of these settlements, state leaderships pursued peacemaking over the objections of societal actors, including parliament, business elites, and the public as a whole. In this regard, I conclude that they were all top-down settlements, rather than bottom-up ones.At the same time, the politics of the post-transition entrenchment phase differed markedly in the three settlements. In western Europe, liberal and constructivist mechanisms, such as the development of high levels of economic interdependence, the entrenchment of democratic regimes in the states of the region, and integration within cooperative regional economic, political, and military institutions helped bring societies on board over time, which cemented the peace settlement and made it rather robust. Consequently, although the realist imperatives that inspired peacemaking declined with the waning Soviet threat, regional cooperation intensified. In contrast, the two Middle Eastern settlements were not followed up with measures to co-opt society. Consequently, they remained top-down, statist settlements without societal buy-in. In these circumstances, given continuing societal hostility toward their regional rivals, the peace agreements may not endure the dramatic regime changes that have been sweeping the Middle East since 2011.My research suggests, therefore, that successful regional peacemaking begins with agreements between states for raisons d'etat, with their societies often kicking and screaming. Nonetheless, society is not irrelevant to peacemaking. Agreements that endure require meaningful efforts to co-opt the rival societies in the aftermath of a peace treaty.2What lessons can we learn from these peace settlements that can be used to foster peacemaking between other regional antagonists? …

Great Britain and the Soviet Threat in Finland, 1944–1951

The publication of a documentary collection on British policy towards the Nordic countries from 1944 to 1951 is a good occasion to ponder how and to what extent history is, or can be, rewritten on the basis of new documentary evidence, and in what directions the historiography of the early Cold War seems to be heading at present. To illustrate these issues, some key aspects of British policy towards Finland are addressed, in particular those connected with the distinct change of attitude from 1944, when Finland was self-evidently left in the Soviet sphere of influence, to the late 1940s, when the British gradually saw the chance and the utility of countering Soviet efforts in Finland. Repetition of every familiar issue along the well-trodden path of scholarship on the late 1940s is not deemed necessary here. Particular attention is paid to the need for multi-archival research. The necessity and the utility of well-informed multi-archival commentary on even the best single-archive documentary examination is demonstrated, and the consequences for future research discussed.

Turkey’s ‘Zero Problems with Neighbours’ Foreign Policy; Relations with Syria

Since the formation of the Turkish Republic, the country isolated itself from Middle East politics, although owing to the Soviet threat, it remained engaged in the region through US-sponsored military pacts. After the end of the cold war, when security relations with the US started to decline, Turkey found itself in an uncertain position in the new emerging international order. To demonstrate its geo political importance to its western partners it joined the western coalition against Iraq in 1990-91, although it had to suffer at the economic level. In recent decades, Turkey has adopted a new foreign policy which it has named ‘zero problems with neighbours’ to develop good relations with its Arab neighbours in the Middle East and in this connection it mended its relations with Syria with whom it had bitter relations since the demise of the Ottoman Empire. Three major issues were involved in this hostile relationship: first, Syria’s territorial claim over the province of Alexandretta (Hatay), second, the water dispute over the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, and third Syrian support to PKK terrorism against Turkey. To improve its relations with Syria, it started to make efforts to resolve these issues peacefully. Ankara also signed many bilateral agreements with Damascus. However the current Syrian uprising against the Basher Al-Asad regime has again posed a dilemma for Turkish foreign policy, especially challenging the principle of ‘zero problems with neighbours’, which cannot be effective until peace and stability is established in the region.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Shift in Japanese Diplomacy at the Beginning of the Second Cold War, 1979: A New Look

Previous studies have proposed two different views as to how the beginning of the Second Cold War shaped Japanese diplomacy. This study demonstrates and reinterprets transformations in Japanese diplomacy experienced at that time, examining in particular the perceptions and behaviors of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, based on primary source materials of both Japan and the United States. Japanese diplomacy was slowly transformed as the international environment became harsher. Indeed, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan made the ministry aware of the Soviet threat, and Japan consequently started to increase its defense spending and make use of strategic foreign aid: these transformations might not have been radical, but were enough to cause the United States to perceive Japan more positively on security issues. However, the ministry’s attitude had been changing even before the beginning of the Second Cold War, inspired by jurisdictional disputes in the context of the diversification of security and the public approval of defense policies. The changes enabled the U.S.-Japan alliance to evolve into a much more complex partnership in the 1980s.

Pacific Realliances and the Future of U.S. Interests in China and Japan

Pacific Realliances and the Future of U.S. Interests in China and Japan Stephen M. Harner (bio) Yabuki Susumu, Chimerica—U.S.-China Collusion and the Way Forward for Japan, Tokyo, Kadensha, 2012, 315 p. In a world experiencing dramatic, epochal changes, few regions are changing more dramatically than East Asia. The past two decades have seen an historic reversal of fortunes between the two dominant economies and societies in the region, China and Japan, the consequences of which are inevitably changing global politics, especially power politics. Japan’s relative fall and China’s not just relative, but absolute rise by every measure of national power, have fundamentally changed the geopolitical and geostrategic positions of both these countries vis-à-vis their principal counterpart, the United States. Most importantly of all, the scale and scope of China’s unprecedented global trade and financial engagement is manifested in its accumulation of over $2 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds and other U.S securities, How have things changed? In a new book, Chimerica—U.S.-China Collusion and the Way Forward for Japan, Susumu Yabuki, professor emeritus of Yokohama City University and one of Japan’s leading China-watchers and analysts of Japan-China relations, posits that the U.S. has inevitably accepted China as its principal geopolitical partner in East Asia, if not globally, and that other regional relationships—not least that with Japan—are going to be subordinated to this partnership in the future. What, then, of the U.S.-Japan security treaty and the rest of the security framework of security constructed during the post-war occupation, the outbreak of the hot war in Korea and the Cold War with the Soviet Union? For Yabuki, the “alliance”lost its justification when the Soviet threat ceased to exist in December 1991. Since then, it has served no purpose and has actually harmed Japan’s security by providing an excuse and impetus for the capture of budgetary resources by the military industrial establishment in China. [End Page 211] Professor Yabuki’s scholarship on China, dating from 1974, is remarkable for its volume and depth. He has published exclusively in Japanese except for a translation and co-authored book (by and with this reviewer), China’s New Political Economy (Westview Press, 1995) and China’s New Political Economy— Revised Edition (Westview Press, 1999). Chimerica is a neologism for the symbiotic financial relationship between China (as producer and lender) and the United States (as consumer and borrower) coined by Professor Niall Ferguson of Harvard. For Yabuki, the defining moment of Chimerica was the Second U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (II U.S.-China S&ED) held in Beijing in May 2010. The 100-strong U.S. delegation, led by U.S. co-chairs Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Geithner, comprised the political leadership of virtually the entire U.S. government, including Federal Reserve chairman Bernanke, with most cabinet departments sending secretaries. The Department of Defense and U.S Pacific Command were represented below the level of Defense Secretary Gates who was scheduled to meet with Chinese counterparts in the Singapore “Shangri-La Dialogue” the following month. The II U.S.-China S&ED established the framework for Gates’ talks. Discussions were not only public, but some were also held in secret. Secretary Clinton and Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo chaired a secret session at which China communicated its “core national interests” and the position that U.S. recognition and non-violation of them as the sine qua non for a positive U.S.-China political and strategic relationship. By many accounts, and according to Yabuki’s understanding, China got everything it wanted, and the U.S. was also well satisfied. In effect, the strategic framework in Asia was “reset.” How, from Japan’s perspective, it was reset was apparent from the fact that while Secretary Clinton spent a total of five days in China, where she had two intensive dialogues with Chinese counterparts, she was able to justify only three hours in Japan to meet with soon-to-resign Prime Minister Hatoyama. In short, in the context of Chimerica and U.S. strategic interests, Japan has been and...

About an ‘All-Weather’ Relationship: security foundations of Sino-Pakistan relations since 9/11

The traditionally close relationship between China and Pakistan cooled off somewhat with the end of the Cold War, mainly due to China's efforts to improve its relations with India and the disappearance of the Soviet threat. While China has continued to pursue its rapprochement with India after 9/11, developments since 9/11 have reinforced the security foundations of Sino-Pak relations and have consequently reversed the downward trend in the relationship leading to enhanced cooperation in a number of areas. US involvement in Central Asia and deepening Indo-US collaboration have further increased Pakistan's strategic importance for China. Islamabad also occupies a prominent position in Beijing's energy security and its efforts to stabilize Xinjiang.

Fear, Loathing, and Cracks in Reagan’s Mirror Images: Able Archer 83 and an American First Step toward Rapprochement in the Cold War

Investigation into an often-overlooked Cold War episode reveals a tipping point in the Reagan administration's approach to the Soviet Union. In November 1983, NATO military exercise “Able Archer 83” reportedly touched off a crisis atmosphere among Soviet officials who feared a surprise nuclear attack. Intelligence reports about the war scare startled US President Ronald Reagan, altering his understanding of Soviet threat perceptions and prompting him to embrace his moderate advisers' recommendations that the administration take a more conciliatory approach toward the country Reagan had earlier labeled the “evil empire.” By highlighting Soviet fears of the United States, intelligence stemming from Able Archer 83 cracked Reagan's mirror images and catalyzed a policy shift from hostile confrontation toward cautious cooperation. The case study identifies facilitating conditions for the shift and yields counterintuitive insights relating to international crises, perception and misperception, and the domestic politics of rivalry.

SASAKI Takuya, The Eisenhower Administration's Containment Policy: The Soviet Threat, the Missile Gap Controuersy, and East-West Exchanges

SASAKI Takuya, The Eisenhower Administration's Containment Policy: The Soviet Threat, the Missile Gap Controuersy, and East-West Exchanges

Grappling with Peace

I do not really think that we will get closer to by multiplying the number of technicians working in laboratories on scientific lines. We have to grapple with the untidy problems of the real world rather than retreat into an atmosphere where it is all too easy to construct solutions.John W Holmes, 1961'There is a view in some parts of the Canadian foreign policy establishment - mirrored more broadly in the populace as a whole - that international brokerage politics, with professional Canadian diplomats punching above our weight as a middle power in the world, is the most important instrument by which global might be sustained and secured.While such a perspective stems from the best of intentions, peace is not uniquely the product of diplomatic consensus, the engineering of treaties, or the intervention of honest brokers and well-intentioned or trusted intermediaries with inspired wordsmithing - the theoretical solutions to which John Holmes referred. On the contrary: comes only when combatants, actual or potential, believe that will bring more general benefits than war, insurgency, or terrorism.The hard reality is that the so-called golden age of Canadian diplomacy that we commonly associate with Lester B. Pearson was only possible because Canada had been part of an alliance that stopped the Axis powers, albeit with devastating if unavoidable destruction of Japanese and German military and civilian targets, after a war initiated by fascists that claimed 60 million lives worldwide. And in that conflict, Canadians played more than our fair military role, on the land, in the air, on the high seas. In the process, we lost, on a per capita basis, a tremendous amount of blood and treasure.But this commitment did earn us a place at the tables where the instruments of like the United Nations, NATO, and the international declaration of human rights were negotiated. Canadian diplomats of Pearson's generation, John Holmes included, performed above and beyond in so many forums to bring great credit to Canada and meaningful benefit to the world. But those points of constructive leverage were available to Canada because they were earned. They were earned by members of the Canadian armed forces at Hong Kong, Dieppe, Juno, Montecassino; on the transatlantic convoy routes and in the resupply of Russia at Murmansk; and by those on the home front producing munitions, ships, aircraft, and other materiel for the war effort. They were earned on the battlefields of Korea. And they were earned because the courtly and decent Louis St. Laurent, Pearson's prime minister through the early 1950s, not only maintained a huge Canadian military presence in Germany with other allies against the Soviet threat, but did so with jet fighters in the Royal Canadian Air Force armed with nuclear weapons long before the debate over the Bomarc missile that plagued the Conservative government of John Diefenbaker, first elected in 1957.Importantly, Pearson's superb initiative during the Suez crisis in 1956, one to which John Holmes was a significant contributor, was driven as much by our pivotal position as a self-reliant and deployment-capable NATO partner, trusted by allies like the US, Britain, and France, and understood by the Israelis to be both safe and trustworthy, as it was by a Canadian desire for peace. For Canada, the stakes were high. The western alliance was deeply fractured. With Nikita Khrushchev and the Soviet Union threatening to bomb London, there was a serious escalation of the thermonuclear threat. Israel, whose birth and very borders had been designed by Canadians like General E.LM. Burns, was facing Gamal Abdel Nasser, an Egyptian leader who was both a keen Soviet client and, in the context of dictatorships ofthat era, a popular Arab leader throughout the Middle East.But Pearson's initiative was underwritten by both real capacity and widespread trust. …

‘Doing’ ethos—A discursive approach to the strategic deployment and negotiation of identities in meetings

Rhetoric is classically divided into three notions: ethos, pathos, and logos. Taking a discursive approach to the construction of identity as a turn-by-turn members’ achievement, we hope to add fresh insights to the rhetorical notion of ethos. More specifically, using a transcript of one of President Kennedy's meetings about the space race, we examine how Kennedy and his advisors ‘do’ identity to strategic effect. Findings indicate how Kennedy initiates the topic of geo-politics which (1) makes relevant his identity as president and evokes a domain of practice in which his voice counts and (2) evokes the ‘them and us’ polarity of the Soviet threat which allows Kennedy to speak as ‘us’, and thus with the authority of the American people. Conversely, his main advisor orients to Kennedy's identity as president, but he subverts the predicates linked with this identity to his own ends. He refers to another predicate of president, namely political vulnerability and argues that Kennedy should therefore not stake everything on getting a man on the moon before the Soviets. To increase his ‘good sense’ and counter Kennedy's deployment of political responsibilities linked to the identity of president, his advisor evokes an expert identity based on superior access to scientific knowledge.

Powerplay: Origins of the U.S. Alliance System in Asia

In East Asia the United States cultivated a “hub and spokes” system of discrete, exclusive alliances with the Republic of Korea, the Republic of China, and Japan, a system that was distinct from the multilateral security alliances it preferred in Europe. Bilateralism emerged in East Asia as the dominant security structure because of the “powerplay” rationale behind U.S. postwar planning in the region. “Powerplay” refers to the construction of an asymmetric alliance designed to exert maximum control over the smaller ally's actions. The United States created a series of bilateral alliances in East Asia to contain the Soviet threat, but a congruent rationale was to constrain “rogue allies”—that is, rabidly anticommunist dictators who might start wars for reasons of domestic legitimacy and entrap the United States in an unwanted larger war. Underscoring the U.S. desire to avoid such an outcome was a belief in the domino theory, which held that the fall of one small country in Asia could trigger a chain of countries falling to communism. The administrations of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower calculated that they could best restrain East Asia's pro-West dictators through tight bilateral alliances rather than through a regionwide multilateral mechanism. East Asia's security bilateralism today is therefore a historical artifact of this choice.

Deterrence by Presence to Effective Response: Japan's Shift Southward

Over the past fifteen years, a quiet strategic shift has occurred in Japan. During the cold war era, Japan's defense was oriented towards the Soviet threat north of Hokkaido. However, under the very real threat of North Korean aggression, the less tangible threat of terrorism, and the perceived need to participate more fully in international peacekeeping activities, Japan has changed the characteristics of its armed forces. Additionally, an increasingly self-confident China is testing Japan's resolve in the waters surrounding Japan, simultaneously speaking of cooperative development while laying claim to a swathe of Japanese territory and waters. An apparently ambivalent United States, in relative decline, watches these proceedings. Japan has reoriented its defense posture to face south, towards the East China Sea, trying to shape Chinese behavior and hedge against future Chinese adventurism. However, with a tangible recommitment of American attention to East Asia and a firm, public, American stand on behalf of Japan's territorial integrity, future conflict can be deterred.

Review: Growing Apart? America and Europe in the Twenty-First Century

GROWING APART? AMERICA AND EUROPE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Jeffrey Kopstein and Sven Steinmo, editors Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xiv, 237PP, US$24.99 paper ISBN 978-0-521-70491-5How much America and its friends and allies in Europe have in common? And regardless of how that first question is to be answered, can it be said that those trends that separate them - culturally, economically, even militarily - are growing more pronounced? Are the two sides of the transatlantic relationship showing evidence of divergence in this first decade of the 21st century? In pursuit of answers to these and other questions of relevance to US-European relations, editors Jeffrey Kopstein, of the University of Toronto, and Sven Steinmo, of the European University Institute in Florence, have assembled a top-notch team of scholars drawn from a variety of disciplines, who turn out - not surprisingly - to have a variety of ways of addressing the query posed in the book's title.It is far from a novel undertaking, this business of trying to detect evidence of a widening ofthe Atlantic: many scholars and policy analysts applied themselves regularly to the task even during the decades ofthe Cold War. During those long decades, and notwithstanding that they faced a common Soviet foe, it seemed to more than a few observers that the Western allies must eventually succumb to the forces of divisi venes s, so that although one might have thought convergence should have been in all of their interests, its evil twin, divergence, always managed to lurk just around the corner. And should we take the longer view, and contemplate the state of transatlantic comity prior to America's becoming very much a European strategic entity during and following the Second War, then it is obvious that discussions between Americans and Europeans could and did easily, and regularly, degenerate into what Antonello Gerbi so suggestively labelled the of the New World - a dispute in which, or so it seemed to this Italian intellectual upon arriving in Paris in 1938, comparisons were compulsively being drawn between a debased New and a virtuous Old one (!), with the leitmotif being the inferiority of American civilization when contrasted with that of Europe.What the disappearance ofthe Soviet threat did was to tilt the tables once again more sharply in favour ofthe divergence thesis, and during the George W Bush years it was not uncommon to hear the strains of the familiar polemics that had so characterized the earlier dispute ofthe New World. It is precisely with the Bush administration as the backdrop that this set of chapters saw the light of day, as a result of a pair of meetings, first in Colorado, then in Toronto, held around the midpoint of the second Bush term. Obviously, none of the contributors could have foreseen the rise to power of the very Euro-friendly Barack Obama at the time they were meeting, and it might be tempting simply to say of this collection that it has been victimized by timing, as its problematique vanished virtually overnight a result of the November 2008 American election. What else might one conclude, when the most recent Pew survey, released in July 2009, shows Europeans - including and especially those living in France and Germany, the countries that made up the much-maligned axis of weasels during the Iraq crisis of 2003 - to be convinced by overwhelming majorities that they can trust the American president to do the right thing? To conclude thus, however, would be wrong, and this for a couple of reasons.First, and somewhat surprisingly, one could claim, based on the most recent elections for the European parliament, that in fact the two sides of the Atlantic remain on the path of divergence - save that this time it might be argued that it is the Europeans who comprise the retrograde element, choosing as they did in June 2009 to send to their legislative assembly in Strasbourg what some have termed the angry bloc, a large and motley crew of right-wing misfits and malcontents whose counterparts in America are generally confined to the sidelines of AM radio talk shows, and not welcomed into the corridors of power - at the taxpayers' expense, no less. …

Perception and Politics in Intelligence Assessment: U.S. Estimates of the Soviet and “Rogue-State” Nuclear Threats

United States estimates of Soviet nuclear goals and capabilities and the current “rogue-state” nuclear threat reflected prevailing beliefs about threat within the U.S. government and the relative influence of agencies charged with threat assessment. This article establishes that the patterns in formal Soviet threat assessment: (i) did not reflect a uniform response to “external threat,” (ii) were inevitably tied to underlying assumptions about adversary intent, and (iii) were susceptible then to perceptual, organizational, and/or political influences within government. Thus, threat assessments reflected the optimism and pessimism—and political interests and ideologies—of those who participated in the estimating process. The article concludes by examining these lessons in light of the experiences and challenges of assessing threat from small states harboring nuclear ambitions.

What’s the Matter with Being a Strategist (Now)?

American strategic competence is in decline. Twenty years after victory in the Cold War, a victory brought about by the shrewd use of state power and alliances while ably balancing international and domestic pressures, the United States now is struggling to find the right balance of military force and other forms of power in its current wars, while peering into an uncertain future. Commenting on American strategic competence, noted defense analyst Barry D. Watts argues, performance in Iraq provides ample evidence that it has been declining for some time.l This line of thought typically asserts that American strategic competence reached its apex between the victory in World War II; implementation of ASC 68, a 1950 report advocating ends, ways, and means of countering communism; and President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Solarium project, a 1953 evaluation of national security policy regarding the Soviet Union. Somewhere between the death of Josef Stalin and the rise of an era of limited war, the United States lost its strategic way. Given the diverse nature of today's threats, many observers look back with nostalgia on the clarity of the Soviet threat and the quality of the strategic thinking and planning that countered it. Rash comparisons between Cold War challenges--remembered as clearly identified, existential, and countered with bipartisan political support--and today's stew of pandemics, loose nuclear weapons, hackers, and undergoverned territories deserve closer scrutiny. Despite stark differences between the eras, there may be merit to the rising claim of strategic incompetence. From the Bay of Pigs to Vietnam to the inconclusive ceasefire terms at the end of the 1991 Gulf War, there is evidence that the strategic skill of the United States has been found wanting. If Watts is correct, that it is America's strategic competence that demands repair, then perhaps the effort to slow the erosion has already begun. A reversal of that trend is taking place, one that has gone unnoticed and will likely remain underappreciated for years to come--the return of the Army strategist. It would be ideal if this progress could be announced with the flamboyancy of a John Williams score in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, but in reality this reversal is subtle, bureaucratic, and over a decade old. The US Army currently has more than 400 military strategists serving in the grades of captain to colonel, diligently assisting commanders from division to combatant command level. Strategists occupy key positions within the broader defense community, serving on the National Security Council, Joint Staff, Army Staff, Office of the Secretary of Defense, and recently at the Treasury and State Departments. In a number of ways, these strategists owe their development, education, and assignments to a vision articulated more than 20 years ago. In 1989, General John R. Galvin, the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe and Commander-in-Chief, US European Command at the time, argued for the return of uniformed strategists in his article, What's the Matter with Being a Strategist? After succinctly defining the attributes of military strategists, General Galvin suggested that key elements of their development included advanced schooling, operational experience, and lifelong development. (2) His influential and timely argument helped stimulate a review of the requirement for military strategists conducted by the Army's Officer Personnel Management System Task Force XXI/3 in the late 1990s. This review resulted in the creation of the functional specialty supporting Army strategists, technically recognized as Functional Area (FA) 59, Strategic Plans and Policy officers. Despite the number of strategists and the breadth of their assignments, this functional specialty is still a relatively recent development. Since 1999, the Army has gradually formalized the development of the specialty and expanded the number of strategists. …

‘The Soviets were just an excuse’: why Israel did not destroy the Egyptian Third Army

On 23 October 1973, the third week of the Yom Kippur War, the Israeli army cut off all supply routes to the 20,000 strong Egyptian Third Army on the east bank of the Suez Canal. Five days later, however, Israel partly lifted the siege and allowed the first convoy of non-military supplies to reach the Third Army. This decision was explained in Israel as deriving from American pressure, the source of which, according to the Americans, was the threat of Soviet intervention. This paper argues that a Soviet threat was not the main reason for the United States' pressure, but that it derived from an array of American interests in the region. The Israeli leadership, in turn, used American pressure to publicly justify its decision to spare the Third Army, though it had its own reasons for doing so.