Strategic Thought
What is Strategic theory
It provides the conceptual foundation for understanding war, offering a toolkit of concepts to analyze problems of war and peace and guide further study.
This type of strategy looks beyond narrow military victory to coordinate all of a state's long-term diplomatic, economic, and cultural means to secure its power and prosperity.
What is grand strategy?
While horizontal proliferation refers to the spread of nuclear weapons to additional countries, this term describes an increase in the total number or quality of weapons within an existing arsenal.
What is vertical proliferation?
Coined by French demographer Alfred Sauvy in 1952, this Cold War-era phrase was used to describe nations unaligned with either the US or the Soviet Union before being largely replaced by the term "Global South."
What is the Third World?
While misinformation involves spreading false information unintentionally, this term refers to false information that is deliberately and often covertly spread to influence public opinion or obscure the truth.
What is disinformation?
This 19th-century Prussian officer and philosopher argued that the purpose of strategic theory is to "educate the mind" of a future commander rather than accompany them to the battlefield
Who is Carl von Clausewitz?
First initiated under President Obama, this major strategic shift aimed to contain China's growing assertiveness by renewing US military and diplomatic engagement in East Asia.
What is the Pivot to Asia?
Signed in 1971, this superpower agreement banned comprehensive national missile defenses to preserve the status of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) before the US renounced it in 2002.
What is the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty?
In his classic book Strategy and Ethnocentrism, scholar Ken Booth defines this concept as the inability to put aside one's own cultural attitudes and view the world through the perspective of a different national or ethnic group.
What is ethnocentrism?
While cyber conflict generally involves lower-level disruptions or grey zone activity, this specific term is reserved for hostile actions in cyberspace that produce effects equivalent to major kinetic violence.
What is cyberwar?
In both the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the 9/11 attacks, a major factor in the strategic surprise was that decision-makers received this broad type of alert, but lacked the specific, tactical details needed to take precise action.
What is a strategic warning?
Because Beijing does not publish a single official text like the US National Security Strategy, experts must piece together China's grand strategy using foreign policy behavior and these official declarations.
What are leadership statements?
Unlike disarmament, which seeks the complete reduction or abolition of weapons, this strategic approach focuses on international restraints imposed on how weapons are deployed, characterized, or used.
What is arms control?
While traditional strategic studies prioritizes the security of the state, this newer security paradigm shifts the focus entirely to protecting individuals from both "fear" and "want."
What is human security?
Because digital weaponry is hidden and clandestine, scholars rely on calculating this type of "latent" capability using metrics like technology exports, secure servers, and human capital.
What is latent cyberpower?
Lower entry costs and high stealth make this strategic domain highly asymmetric, causing experts to warn of a potential digital "Pearl Harbor" where attribution is difficult even after an attack.
What is cyberspace? or the cyber domain
This four-word strategy, summarized by the phrase taoguang yanghui, was introduced by Deng Xiaoping to avoid international backlash while China quietly rebuilt its economic and national power.
What is "hide our capacities and bide our time"? or maintain a low profile
To avoid punitive US military strikes in 2013, Syria agreed to destroy its chemical stockpile by officially joining this international treaty framework.
What is the Chemical Weapons Convention? (Acceptable: "CWC")
Traditionalist strategists like Stephen Walt opposed expanding the field to include non-military threats like pollution or disease, arguing that doing so would destroy this quality of the discipline.
What is intellectual coherence?
This paradoxical cognitive phenomenon occurs when an individual's pre-existing beliefs are actually reinforced and strengthened after being presented with direct, conflicting evidence.
What is the backfire effect?
According to the video Crash Course: The nature of War According to Clausewitz. Clausewitz used this physics-inspired term to describe the unexpected difficulties, chaos, and psychological fog that inevitably impede the practical conduct of war.
What is friction?
According to Stefanie Ortmann and Nick Whittaker, which phenomenon highlighted the importance of geographical factors?
What is Imperial expansion
According to the video, "Who has nuclear weapons and how did they get them? - BBC World Service," which country secretly built its own nuclear weapons program and then disarmed on its own accord?
What is South Africa
Moving past traditional multipolarity, Amitav Acharya describes our modern international system by this term, signifying a complex world with multiple layers of governance and diverse state and non-state actors.
What is a multiplex world? (Acceptable: "multiplexity")
According to security analysts, this heavily sanctioned nation has turned to state-sponsored cryptocurrency heists to fund an estimated 10 percent of its entire defense budget.
North Korea