Until a few years ago, the relationship between Washington, DC, and Ankara, Turkey, was perennially troubled and occasionally terrible. Turks strongly opposed the U.S. 2003 invasion of Iraq and have subsequently complained that the Pentagon was allowing Iraqi Kurds too much autonomy, leading to deteriorating security along the Iraq-Turkey border. Disagreements over how to respond to Iran's nuclear program, U.S. suspicions regarding Turkey's outreach efforts to Iran and Syria, and differences over Armenia, Palestinians, and the Black Sea further strained ties and contributed to further...

When U.S. President Barack Obama cancelled a scheduled September 2013 summit meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, "lack of progress on issues such as missile defense" was cited as the primary justification. Despite widespread and well founded assumption that the real trigger for the cancellation was the Russian decision to offer temporary asylum to Edward Snowden, the citing of missile defense was indicative. The comment marked one of the periodic plateaus of mutual frustration between the United States and Russia over U.S. attitudes to missile defense capability, stemming...

Over the past 2 decades, the global system has been subject to a range of forces which have reconfigured relationships among individuals, organizations, and nation-states. As an aspect of that changing structure and rising interdependence, many security challenges which confront today's strategic leaders are grounded in concerns about economic, social, and environmental sustainability, and, in turn, about political stability. Furthermore, with increasing frequency, many observers are concluding that those types of challenges cannot be addressed by stakeholders from any single sector. That...

With the assistance of the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, the Army's Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis published a series of monographs that were intended to provide a theoretical and conceptual framework for the development of an Army Officer Corps Strategy. These monographs consider the creation and maintenance of a highly skilled Officer Corps in the context of the nation's continuing commitment to an all-volunteer military, its far flung international interests, and ongoing changes in its domestic labor market. The authors of the various monographs...

The relative rise of China is likely to lead a major shift in the world's strategic architecture, which the United States will need to accommodate. For the outcome to be generally beneficial, China needs to be dissuaded from hegemonic aspirations and retained as a cooperative partner in the world system. This will require a range of potentially conflicting thrusts in U.S. policy. Since the Asia-Pacific Region is primarily a maritime theater, the U.S. Navy, Marines, and Air Force will need to play a leading role. The U.S. Army, nonetheless, will have a substantial supporting and facilitating...

The U.S. Army has made significant investments in its future, especially in its leadership. In particular, the Army has devoted billions of dollars to officer undergraduate-level education, world class training, and developmental experiences. Since the late 1980s, however, prospects for the Officer Corps' future have been darkened by an ever-diminishing return on this investment, as evidenced by plummeting company grade officer retention rates. Significantly, this leakage includes a large share of high-performing officers, many of them developed via a fully-funded undergraduate education. In...

The U.S. Army has always touted itself as a capstone developmental experience and still does so today- You made them strong-we'll make them Army Strong. The Army is almost universally acknowledged as an organization that powerfully develops talent in areas such as leadership, teamwork behavior, work ethics, adaptability, fitness, and many others. Yet despite this well-earned reputation, the Army must remain vigilant. Authorized strength and inventory mismatches, an inverse relationship between responsibility and formal developmental time, and sparse non-operational development opportunities...

Towards a U.S. Army Officer Corps Strategy for Success: Employing Talent is the last of six monographs focused upon officer talent management in the U.S. Army. Here, Colonel Casey Wardynski, Major David Lyle, and Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Michael J. Colarusso argue that the Army's current officer employment paradigm is unequal to the needs of a professional, volunteer Army facing the twin challenges of a competitive labor market and an increasingly complex global operating environment. The authors then explain the ways in which optimal employment theories, information age tools, and...

The Strategic Studies Institute has published a 6-part Officer Corps Strategy Series analyzing the development of an officer corps strategy. This book, the first in the series, highlights the importance of accessing, developing, retaining, and employing talented leaders. Creating and maintaining a highly competent U.S. Army Officer Corps has always been the cornerstone of the nation's defense. Colonel Casey Wardynski, Major David S. Lyle, and Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Michael J. Colarusso consider America's continuing commitment to an all-volunteer military, its global engagement in an era of...

Accessing Talent: The Foundation of a U.S. Army Officer Corps Strategy, is the fourth of six books focused upon officer talent management in the U.S. Army. In it, Colonel Casey Wardynski, Major David S. Lyle, and Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Michael J. Colarusso continue their examination of how the U.S. Army accesses, develops, retains, and employs officer talent. In particular, they focus upon the ways in which dynamic labor market conditions and generational preferences have shaped service propensity among potential officer prospects. As in the previous volumes of this series, the authors...