USAWC Crest
  • Slide for More Than a Numbers Game: Comparing US and Chinese Landpower in the Pacific Requires Context

    As the US Army organizes, trains, and equips for an unforeseen future, service decisions should create or amplify relative operational advantages over the US military’s rising foe—the People’s Liberation Army. Discerning critical differences between American and Chinese land forces is a prerequisite for such efforts.

  • Slide for Weaponizing Risk: Recalibrating Western Deterrence

    Can NATO increase the risks and costs of war for an adversary without unduly raising the alliance’s own? Can the alliance strengthen the credibility of NATO’s extended deterrence through a proxy strategy of “waging war without going to war”? 

  • Slide for Integrating Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Technologies into Common Operating Picture and Course of Action Development

    Explore artificial intelligence’s potential for military planning! This study examines how artificial intelligence and machine learning can enhance the US Army’s common operational picture and course of action development. Learn how advanced technologies streamline decision making, improve situational awareness, and tackle resource challenges for the modern battlefield.

  • Slide for the Academic Year 2025–26 Annual Estimate of the Strategic Security Environment

    The United States faces a complex and ever-changing global environment. The Annual Estimate of the Strategic Security Environment is designed to guide the collective defense community to research and write about critical national security challenges to help the Army prepare for a wide range of potential conflicts and threats.

  • Cover for Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine

    Billed by the reviewer as “must-read for military professionals who want to understand how the United States and Russia came to the precipice of war,” this book posits that the Washington bipartisan foreign policy consensus is to blame for the Russia-Ukraine War. Using US diplomats, bureaucrats, defense contractors, and politicians to make his point, Horton uses their work to argue for restraint when dealing with Russia. 

  • Cover for Into the Void: Special Operations Forces after the War on Terror

    Edited by James D. Kiras and Martijn Kitzen, Into the Void: Special Operations Forces after the War on Terror, looks at what is unique about the special operations forces enterprise, explores how the organization must evolve, as well as a range of new operational concepts that could benefit SOF. Contributors include academics and practitioners from several backgrounds and countries.

  • Cover for Origins of the Just War: Military Ethics and Culture in the Ancient Near East

    Origins of Just War: Military Ethics and Culture in the Ancient Near East, by Rory Cox, explores three ancient cultures —Egyptian, Hittite and Israeli—and how they navigated their relationships between ethics and war. Factors central to these civilizations include political authority, divine leadership, justice, and putting down rebellion. The book offers various disciplinary perspectives including philosophy, religion, art, history, sociology, and international relations. The reviewer notes, “This book will be of interest and accessible to academics, practitioners, and general interest readers alike; it reminds us about the value of broadening our philosophical arguments with the influence of history, religion, law, and culture.”

  • Cover for Dr. Seuss and the Art of War: Secret Military Lessons

    Dr. Seuss and the Art of War: Secret Military Lessons is broken into five parts. Part one introduces Theodore Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss). Part two discusses Geisel’s knowledge of strategy, while part three discusses specialty topics. Parts four and five examine luck in war and post-traumatic stress, respectively. The reviewer notes, “because Dr. Seuss used the genre of story as a pedagogical device, he likely made military strategy digestible to a wider audience.” 

  • Cover for How to Fight a War

    Current member of the British Parliament, former British Army officer with Afghanistan experience, and senior visiting research fellow at Kings College London’s War Studies Department Dr. Mike Martin delivers what he terms a “reference guide for the Commander in Chief” in How to Fight a War (3). The result is far more and will serve as an accessible primer for aspiring national security professionals and senior leaders seeking to understand the basic principles of employing violence to prosecute wars successfully.