This study is on Religious-Based Violence and National Security in Nigeria: Nigeria is a multi-religious and multi-ethnic society with enormous potential for economic, social, and democratic development. However, intense conflicts and violence that...
Up until the 1960s the grip and influence of colonial Europe all but covered the continent of Africa. One by one African countries began the long, difficult struggle of breaking this grip and moved, often violently, toward independence....
The U.S. Armed Forces has a long and rich history of expeditionary operations followed by military disengagements. A historically small U.S. military is repeating this history today in two wars that are stretching it to the limits of its personnel...
In 1969, President Nixon started the now well-known "War on Drugs." The reason behind his "declaration" of war was the increasing national security threat posed by the transnational drug trafficking organizations. With the aim of making as much...
Drug trafficking has been a menace in most Latin American countries for many decades. We know enough about how the phenomenon works as an economic and social problem and how it affects the continent, but in the last decade, with the attention of...
The purpose of this monograph is to explore the operational impacts of differentiating between an insurgency and a civil war. At first glance, the distinction between the two is just a matter of scale, but there are other differences as well....
Since Mexican President Felipe Calderón declared war on the drug cartels in December 2006, more than 35,000 Mexicans have died due to narco-violence. This monograph examines whether the various Mexican drug trafficking organizations are insurgents...
The drug war in Mexico is entering its fourth year as of 2011. The level of violence has spread throughout Mexico raising doubts as to Mexico's ability to win and assert its State authority. The violence in the Northern part of Mexico causes...
The 1975 Lebanese Civil War was one of the most disastrous and costly civil wars in modern history. The human toll of the "First Phase" of the war was immense, with estimates of 40,000 dead, 60,000 wounded and 600,000 Lebanese civilians displaced...
This paper argues that to counter border spillover violence, America must control the border with Mexico and generate the public and political commitment to do so. This study applies a military problem solving methodology to identify how best to...
While in the past two decades, the region of West Africa has experienced various armed conflicts, a new security threat that has emerged is the growing threat of violence by radical Islamist groups. This phenomenon has assumed prominence in the...
The purpose of this monograph is to determine the applicability of the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) COMPSTAT crime control model to restoring order in Iraq. The Iraqi Police Service (IPS) performs similar police functions to those executed...
The security of the U.S.-Mexican border is an issue of considerable interest for both countries. The North American Free Trade Agreement has created a web of symbiotic links between the two countries. Unfortunately, this has also presented...
Throughout its military history, the United States has demonstrated poor institutional memory resulting in a tendency to reinvent the wheel. The development of counterinsurgency doctrine in Vietnam, for instance, yielded valuable knowledge about...
This monograph examines the theoretical linkages between Clausewitz's trinity and the spectrum of conflict, the effect of change on the interpretation of each, and the resultant impact on the concept of operational art. It identifies the common...
Ethnic and sectarian conflict is a prevalent form of conflict today. Most of the conflicts on-going today and in occurring the past twenty years have been internal wars between rival groups with ethnic or sectarian identities. Though its causes...
Criticism and condemnation of al-Qaeda that originate from the worldwide Muslim community present the most formidable challenge to its existence and legitimacy as an organization and movement. There is ample literature that questions whether or not...
As the year 2000 begins, the disintegration of Colombia in a situation of violence, political unrest, and economic upheaval is a very real threat to the national interests of the United States. It is critical that Washington’s concern for failed...
The current French doctrine envisions two overarching operational modes, the coercion mode and violence-mastering mode. The concept of violence mastering has been developed to deal with the post-Cold War environment.
Since 2006, more than 30,000 Mexican citizens have died in drug-related violence. With the threat of this violence escalating and spilling across the border into the United States, it is necessary to employ the full range of assets and options...