Volume 11, Issue 2
Fall 2026
Hammers and Nails: Military Innovation as a Strategic Dead End
Matthew Ford
This article argues that contemporary Western military innovation has become a strategic dead end. Tracing the evolution of military innovation from the Revolution in Military Affairs through counterinsurgency adaptation to today’s emphasis on disruptive innovation, experimentation and artificial intelligence, it shows how technological change has increasingly become an end in itself. This technological determinism encourages governments and armed forces to substitute innovation for difficult choices about political purpose, force structure, industrial capacity and mobilisation. Growing dependence on private technology companies further constrains strategic autonomy. The challenge, therefore, is not whether militaries should innovate, but how innovation can be subordinated to strategy.
ReadOutpacing: A Grand Strategy for Avoiding the Carthaginian Error
Antulio J. Echevarria II
This article warns Western democracies against committing the Carthaginian error, that is, not taking a strategic rival seriously. It argues strategic rivals should be dealt with through a grand strategy of Outpacing, the aim of which is to establish a lead over them severe enough to cause their political and economic collapse, or their forfeiture of the competition.
ReadTropical Bastions: It’s Time for a Pacific Bastion Strategy in the First Island Chain
John T. Kuehn
This article proposes an operational approach to the use of naval forces in the first island chain of the Pacific vis-à-vis the threat of the People’s Liberation Army Navy of China and its attempts to enforce the nine-dash line. It argues that geography, deception, and mobility, particularly in the Philippine Archipelago, offer policy makers and military planners opportunity for the employment of naval forces in natural inland sea bastions. It also affords the opportunity for more security cooperation with the U.S. ally the Republic of the Philippines. Additionally, this approach informs both deterrence and presence in the Western Pacific Area of Operations for Pacific Command (PACOM).
ReadStrategy and Contradiction: Towards a Theory of Strategic Judgement
M.L.R. Smith
Strategy is commonly concerned with relating political purposes to the means available for their achievement. This article asks a prior question: what conditions make strategic judgement necessary in the first place? It argues that strategic problems arise from the contradictory character of political life, in which competing purposes cannot be permanently reconciled, and every decision alters the circumstances confronting those that follow. Strategy therefore requires practical judgement rather than the application of predetermined solutions. Drawing upon Clausewitz and examining deterrence, alliances and insurgency, the article conceives strategy as an inherently recursive practice directed towards accommodating, rather than eliminating, political contradiction.
ReadThe Fortified Disposition, Part I: Strategic Complexes, Historical Attenuation, and the Return of the Guarded City
David Betz
Fortification is better understood as a movement-slowing strategic complex than as a wall that either holds or fails. This paper traces the long attenuation of that disposition in the West, then shows how scarce manpower, costly platforms and persistent surveillance are bringing it back—first of all in the guarded, closable city assembled through dual-use fabric, regulation and urban air defence.
ReadThe Golden Dome, Missile Defenses and Deterrence
Stephen J. Cimbala
This article examines the Trump administration proposal for a Golden Dome missile defense system in terms of its implications for technology, strategy and U.S. national security policy. It also considers whether the proposed missile defense system, once having been deployed, will support deterrence as we now understand it, or require a rethinking of past assumptions about nuclear-strategic stability.
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