Five Ways to Change the System from Within : Experts’ Corner by Richard Tafel

view original / bigthink.com / Richard Tafel Tafel's five steps for changing the system from within: 1. Find a focus. Tafel is fond of referring to the "trim tab, the little rudder on a boat that when you change it can change a whole system. " The first question activists should ask themselves is, what one rule could we change that would …

Powerless In Kabul? By Robert Haddick

SmallWarsJournal.com May 4, 2012 This Week at War In my Foreign Policy column, I discuss the fragile assumptions behind the new Strategic Partnership Agreement with Afghanistan and explain why U.S. policymakers should have a Plan B ready. President Barack Obama's sudden appearance in Afghanistan on May 1, a calculated attempt to display his administration's foreign-policy expertise and …

How Short-Term Thinking Makes the U.S. Worse at Fighting Wars by Joshua Foust

view original / theatlantic.com From Vietnam to Afghanistan, 12-month deployments and institutional norms have made long-term planning more difficult. In 2010, the U.S. adopted a new tactic in southern Afghanistan: it began to bulldoze entire villages to clear them of IEDs. The policy -- reminiscent of Vietnam, of destroying villages to save them -- spoke to a deeper issue …

Turning Strategic Ambiguity into Strategic Clarity

View original / by Deloitte? By leveraging the planning and performance management cycles as well as analytical capabilities, CFOs can minimize strategic ambiguity and establish strategic clarity for the organization and its stakeholders. In battle, strategic ambiguity can sometimes lead to disastrous results. At Gettysburg, for example, on the first day of the epic Civil …

Military Airships: Hot Air or Soaring Promise? By David Axe

View original / David Axe / defense.aol.com The past decade has seen an unlikely revival of a long-grounded technology. Military airships, last operational with the U.S. Navy in the 1960s, took back to the skies, propelled by soaring demand for long-endurance, low-cost aerial surveillance in Iraq and Afghanistan. Per flight hour, an airship costs a …

Rethinking The Army Rebuilding the Big Green Machine after a decade of war

St. Louis Post-Dispatch April 30, 2012 Pg. 8 Our view . After nearly 10 years of relentless combat, the U.S. Army has begun to catch its breath and think about what's next. Army Chief of Staff Raymond T. Odierno, in an article published last Wednesday in the May/June edition of Foreign Affairs, writes that the …