A collection of analyses on the concept and application of center of gravity. As military professionals set out to do their work, the planning done prior to beginning operations is crucial; and, if that planning hinges on identifying the center of gravity, how the concept is used, or not, could be paramount.

Dr. Joe Strange, Prof. of Military Strategy at the U.S. Marine Corps University, has written this monograph on centers of gravity in an attempt to clarify one of the most fundamental & frequently misunderstood concepts of campaign planning. He contends that doctrine should retain the current concept of critical vulnerabilities, but should return to the original Clausewitzian concept of centers of gravity. His construct linking Centers of Gravity, Critical Capabilities, Critical Requirements & Critical Vulnerabilities (i.e. vulnerable Critical Requirements) provides Service & Joint Planners a logical & useful aid in designing plans to protect friendly sources of power while facilitating the defeat of the enemy's sources of strength.

Many of war's lethal failures are attributable to ignorance caused by a dearth of contemporary, accessible theory to inform warfighting, strategy, and policy. To remedy this problem, Colonel Geoffrey F. Weiss offers an ambitious new survey of war's nature, character, and future in the tradition of Sun Tzu and Clausewitz. He begins by melding philosophical and military concepts to reveal war's origins and to analyze war theory's foundational ideas. Then, leveraging science, philosophy, and the wisdom of war's master theorists, Colonel Weiss presents a genuinely original framework and lexicon that characterizes and clarifies the relationships between humanity, politics, strategy, and combat; explains how and why war changes form; offers a methodology for forecasting future war; and ponders the permanence of war as a human activity. The New Art of War is an indispensable guide for understanding human conflict that will change how we think and communicate about war.

Includes a foreword by Major General David A. Rubenstein. From the editor: "71F, or "71 Foxtrot," is the AOC (area of concentration) code assigned by the U.S. Army to the specialty of Research Psychology. Qualifying as an Army research psychologist requires, first of all, a Ph.D. from a research (not clinical) intensive graduate psychology program. Due to their advanced education, research psychologists receive a direct commission as Army officers in the Medical Service Corps at the rank of captain. In terms of numbers, the 71F AOC is a small one, with only 25 to 30 officers serving in any given year. However, the 71F impact is much bigger than this small cadre suggests. Army research psychologists apply their extensive training and expertise in the science of psychology and social behavior toward understanding, preserving, and enhancing the health, well being, morale, and performance of Soldiers and military families. As is clear throughout the pages of this book, they do this in many ways and in many areas, but always with a scientific approach. This is the 71F advantage: applying the science of psychology to understand the human dimension, and developing programs, policies, and products to benefit the person in military operations. This book grew out of the April 2008 biennial conference of U.S. Army Research Psychologists, held in Bethesda, Maryland. This meeting was to be my last as Consultant to the Surgeon General for Research Psychology, and I thought it would be a good idea to publish proceedings, which had not been done before. As Consultant, I'd often wished for such a document to help explain to people what it is that Army Research Psychologists "do for a living." In addition to our core group of 71Fs, at the Bethesda 2008 meeting we had several brand-new members, and a number of distinguished retirees, the "grey-beards" of the 71F clan. Together with longtime 71F colleagues Ross Pastel and Mark Vaitkus, I also saw an unusual opportunity to capture some of the history of the Army Research Psychology specialty while providing a representative sample of current 71F research and activities. It seemed to us especially important to do this at a time when the operational demands on the Army and the total force were reaching unprecedented levels, with no sign of easing, and with the Army in turn relying more heavily on research psychology to inform its programs for protecting the health, well being, and performance of Soldiers and their families."

A selective review of modern decision science and implications for decision-support systems. The study suggests ways to synthesize lessons from research on heuristics and biases with those from "naturalistic research." It also discusses modern tools, such as increasingly realistic simulations, multiresolution modeling, and exploratory analysis, which can assist decisionmakers in choosing strategies that are flexible, adaptive, and robust.

Nearly 40 years after the concept of finite deterrence was popularized by the Johnson administration, nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) thinking appears to be in decline. The United States has rejected the notion that threatening population centers with nuclear attacks is a legitimate way to assure deterrence. Most recently, it withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, an agreement based on MAD. American opposition to MAD also is reflected in the Bush administration's desire to develop smaller, more accurate nuclear weapons that would reduce the number of innocent civilians killed in a nuclear strike. Still, MAD is influential in a number of ways. First, other countries, like China, have not abandoned the idea that holding their adversaries' cities at risk is necessary to assure their own strategic security. Nor have U.S. and allied security officials and experts fully abandoned the idea. At a minimum, acquiring nuclear weapons is still viewed as being sensible to face off a hostile neighbor that might strike one's own cities. Thus, our diplomats have been warning China that Japan would be under tremendous pressure to go nuclear if North Korea persisted in acquiring a few crude weapons of its own. Similarly, Israeli officials have long argued, without criticism, that they would not be second in acquiring nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Indeed, given that Israelis surrounded by enemies that would not hesitate to destroy its population if they could, Washington finds Israel's retention of a significant nuclear capability totally "understandable."