This monograph begins with a case study that provides a means for analyzing the complexity of organizational leadership in the contemporary security environment. As such, it presents a high stakes problem-set that required an operational adaptation by a cavalry squadron conducting combat operations in Baghdad. This problematic reality triggered the struggle to find a creative response to a very deadly problem, while cultural norms served as barriers that prevented the rejection of previously accepted solutions that had proven successful in the past, even though those successful solutions no...

Increased reliance on the Internet and other networked systems raise the risks of cyber attacks that could harm our nation's cyber infrastructure. The cyber infrastructure encompasses a number of sectors including: the nation's mass transit and other transportation systems; banking and financial systems; factories; energy systems and the electric power grid; and telecommunications, which increasingly rely on a complex array of computer networks, including the public Internet. However, many of these systems and networks were not built and designed with security in mind. Therefore, our cyber...

At a crucial crossroads between Africa and Europe, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, and the "Arab World" and the West, Morocco has long had a special place in U.S. diplomacy and strategic planning. Since September 11, 2001, Morocco's importance to the United States has only increased, and the more recent uncertainties of the Arab Spring and Islamist extremism have further increased the value of the Moroccan-American alliance. Yet one of the pillars of the legitimacy of the Moroccan monarchy, its claim to the Western Sahara, remains a point of violent contention. Home to the largest...

In recent years, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been widely recognized as a more dangerous regional and international terrorist organization than the original al-Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden until his death in 2011. In 2010-11, AQAP was able to present a strong challenge to Yemen's government by capturing and retaining large areas in the southern part of the country. Yemen's new reform President defeated AQAP and recaptured areas under their control in 2012, but the terrorists remain an extremely dangerous force seeking to reassert themselves at this time of transition in...

The premise of most Western thinking on counterinsurgency is that success depends on establishing a perception of legitimacy among local populations. The path to legitimacy is often seen as the improvement of governance in the form of effective and efficient administration of government and public services. However, good governance is not the only possible basis for claims to legitimacy. The author considers whether, in insurgencies where ethno-religious identities are salient, claims to legitimacy may rest more on the identity of who governs, rather than on how whoever governs governs. This...

For more than 2 decades, Somalia has been the prime example of a collapsed state, resisting multiple attempts to reconstitute a central government, with the current internationally-backed regime of the "Federal Republic of Somalia" struggling just to maintain its hold on the capital and the southeastern littoral-thanks only to the presence of a more than 17,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force. Despite the desultory record, the apparent speedy collapse since late 2011 of the insurgency spearheaded by the Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (Movement of Warrior Youth, al-Shabaab)-a...

Two key long-term energy trends are shifting the strategic balance between the United States and China, the world's superpower rivals in the 21st century: first, a domestic boom in U.S. shale oil and gas is dramatically boosting America's energy security; second, the frenetic and successful search for hydrocarbons in Africa is making it an increasingly crucial element in China's energy diversification strategy. America's increasing energy security and China's increased dependence on energy imports from Africa and the Middle East until well past 2040 despite its own shale discoveries will make...

The Spratly Islands warrant better understanding by U.S. policymakers in order to discuss nuanced responses to the region's challenges. To attain that needed understanding, legal aspects of customary and modern laws are explored to analyze the differences between competing maritime and territorial claims and why and how the parties involved stake rival claims or maritime legal rights. Throughout the monograph, the policies of the United States are examined through its conflicted interests in the region. Recommendations for how the United States should engage these issues, a more appropriate...

As NATO and the United States proceed to withdraw their forces from Afghanistan, the inherent and preexisting geopolitical, security, and strategic challenges in Central Asia become ever more apparent. The rivalry among the great powers: the United States, China, Russia, India, and others to a lesser degree, are all becoming increasingly more visible as a key factor that will shape this region after the allied withdrawal from Afghanistan. The papers collected here, presented at SSI's annual conference on Russia in 2012, go far to explaining what the agenda for that rivalry is and how it is...

In one way or another, the papers included in this monograph, from the Strategic Studies Institute's annual conference on Russia in May 2012, all point to the internal pathologies that render Russian security a precarious affair at the best of times. As the editor suggests, the very fact of this precariousness makes Russia an inherently unpredictable and even potentially dangerous actor, not necessarily because it will actively attack its neighbors, though we certainly cannot exclude that possibility, but rather because Russia may come apart trying to play the role of a great power in Eurasia...