The ÖMZ Think Tank
The ÖMZ supports interdisciplinary research in military science. Renowned international researchers are encouraged to publish their research in the ÖMZ Think Tank, breaking the language barrier for one united goal: advancing military research across borders.
The articles below complement the ÖMZ and AMJ and are available online only!
Polish perspective on psycho-informational war conducted by Russian Federation
PWSZ University in Suwalki, Poland
Lt Col (r) Piotr PACEK PhD
The primary objective of this paper is to show a Polish view of psych-informational warfare conducted recently by Russian Federation in Europe. It highlights that the information warfare, which includes psychological operations, has lately become the core element of warfare theory and practice. By presenting the effectiveness of Russian actions in Ukraine or Poland, it shows the complexity of modern forms of influencing the enemy and the transformation of international security environment in general. It provides the characteristic and the significance of psychological and informational actions in the modern world, going beyond typical military, diplomatic or propaganda actions.
Author points out that Russian actions are directed not only at Crimea, Donbas or Ukraine but also at US, NATO and EU. Aiming at the position in the world, to remain a powerful international leader and hegemony in the world. Author forms hypothesis that there is a vital need to adjust the security system to new challenges. Moreover it is necessary to make amendments in doctrinal documents and to prepare armed forces to be able to counter new threats.
Can Strategy be taught?
LtGen Robert Schmidle (ret) Ph.D.
The purpose of teaching strategy is to develop designers not craftsman. The craftsman’s skills can be taught like the tactics to which Lawrence referred. The designer, on the other hand requires an interdisciplinary education. That education is a holistic process, which is conducted horizontally, not vertically and begins with incorporating the tenets of design thinking. Among the more relevant of those tenets are: honestly confronting the facts, breaking through the noise to discover what is truly important and scaling for impact at an appropriate time and place.
Swedish and Finnish strategies in a historical context
Karlis Neretnieks
The Art of Strategic Thinking
Dan Schueftan
The MAD Syndrome
(for Mutually Assured Destruction)
Erik Durschmied
Emerging technologies in the field of logistics
Andreas Alexa
This article focuses on the description of emerging technologies in the field of logistics and the implications to the support und the sustainment of military operations in the year 2040.
Although the future is not predictable and it is a view into the glass ball, there will be significant changes in the next 20 years. Some of the new technologies, which are currently only thought by science-fiction authors and forward thinking enterprises, will not be carried out, others however will be implemented in the civil world and therefore will have an impact in the conducting of military operations.
“The Cycles of Navy Strategy”
Donald Abenheim
The long era of expanding U.S. defense-budgets from 2002 until 2010 unfolded with much debate over the best ways to employ Naval forces in the Global War on Terror and in the effort to create stability in Iraq. As the United States emerged from the decade-long campaign to eliminate Osama bin Laden and to crush al-Qaeda, however, Navy leaders discovered that the international and domestic political landscape had changed. Demobilization and austerity, highlighted by sequestration of the Department of Defense budget, now loomed large in American domestic politics.
Strategic Thinking in the Era of Cultural Wars
Dan Schueftan
Modern war presents an embarrassing challenge to modern powers resting on a robust social, economic and military infrastructure. This brings an essentially open society to a profoundly different battlefield that sanctifies human life and is devoted to the promotion of the quality of life on the one hand, with societies that are, to different degrees, tribal, authoritarian and dysfunctional, on the other. The latter very often failed to meet the challenges of the modern era, and are unwilling to pay the cultural price of the transformation required for securing a better future for their children that predominantly is the adoption of pluralistic values and practices, specifically female equality.
High Politics - rule geography, military structure and power structure: an overview of the object area
Clemens Eicher
A problem area may be defined simply as a bundle of several possible design options for a particular slice of reality applicable to contacts with the target systems of States in a diverging mode. A problem thus defined enters the policy area, if governments put it on their agenda and thereby initiate a policy cycle, which entails international decision-making, implementation and revision.
The 2016 EU ‘Global Strategy’: Consequences for European Force Structures
Jan Willem Honig
When one surveys successful grand strategy statements of the not-so-distant past and compares these with the EU’s new ‘Global Strategy’,one basic difference catches the eye. Whether secret –– like the 1950 Report to the US National Security Council known as NSC68, or public –– like NATO’s 1967 ‘Report of the Council on the Future Tasks of the Alliance’, known as the Harmel Report, they either explicitly contained or quickly permitted the central tenet of the proposed strategy to be captured in a catch-phrase: ‘containment’ and ‘defence and détente’.
The European Union – Refugees and the Balkans
Valdon Bytyçi
The European Union is facing the most dangerous challenges since its existence. The war in Syria, terrorism, refugees, the Ukraine crisis and tensions in the Balkan countries have shaken and continue to shake the foundations of this unique organism and if it does not change its policies toward these struggle, it may become an additional page of an imaginary Atlantis. First of all, this union of states is fighting itself, which is bringing it back to the position of the last century. It is the last chance for the “Paper Tiger” to return to an active body and to be a model for others.
The Arctic
a test site for a new, global geopolitical architecture with the focus on China’s role
By Jörg-Dietrich Nackmayr
Why The Arctic Is So Interesting? This text investigates what effect the melting and possible disappearance of the Artic ice shelf during the coming decades will have on the geopolitical balance in the far North and which conflicts could result therefrom. The analysis will focus on China. Up to now, China’s appearance on the Arctic scene has not been adequately reflected in publications.
A Research Note: Counter-Elitist Power Organization - Theoretical Basics and Conception
Clemens Alexander Eicher and Robert Moser
The current third wave of globalization since 1991 ensued with the end of the system-wide pact confrontation. Increasing expansion of production, distribution and finance cycles, beyond national borders, has caused veritable gains in the fields of transport, conveyance and communication. The relative arbitrariness between transnational interactions is not a result of an erosion of regulations, but must be interpreted as outcome of political decision-processes. These developments left their mark on the operational environment of the international state system.
The Benefits of a Definition of the Term Strategy – A Perspective
Wolfgang Peischel
Athena was worshipped as the goddess of wisdom, war, the tactics of war and of strategy, as well as the patroness of the arts and sciences. Legend has it that she sprang, fully grown and accoutred, from Zeus’s forehead after Hephaistos had cloven it at his behest. Hence, the goddess of strategy can also be seen as the embodiment of wisdom and of thought per se. If one regards thought and action as antipodes, the term strategy could be given a faint spin – because Athena jumped from Zeus’s head, and not his arm.
Marc Bloch credited the French officer corps of 1940 with great professional, operational-level and tactical expertise. However, he criticised their approach – mired in their upbringing and training - which betrayed the values of the Enlightenment. According to Bloch, 1940 France was primarily a defeat of the spirit and of thought.
On the Development of a Military and Leadership Science Tandem
Wolfgang Peischel
Currently, there is a manifest general strategic deficiency in the fields of security policy, the identification of national objectives, as well as corporate governance in private industry. This also impacts on the requirements regarding a skills profile for future command and management personnel. Against this backdrop, an attempt is made at finding an answer by accentuating, horizontally expanding or abstracting the contents of military science with a view to fostering a general leadership science. By means of this, and by employing available capabilities and structures, the greatest national benefit is to be achieved regarding scientifically sound command/leadership training schemes for military and civilian clients which is geared towards the long-term accomplishment of strategic objectives.
Especially a small state such as Austria with its focus on a humanities-oriented education and its progressive and systematically updated command/leadership philosophy is well placed to assume a leading role in Europe by further developing military science and by establishing a general leadership science underpinned by the former. This would constitute a contribution, rooted in solidarity, to Europe’s security-related development, which – given the pressing demand for strategic command/leadership expertise – would be eagerly embraced by command/leadership and management personnel from the fields of politics, the military, and private enterprise.
American Civil War an Official History:
The Kansas “Red Legs” as Missouri’s Dark Underbelly
The Kansas-Missouri Border 1861-1862: Guerrilla Warfare
Donald L. Gilmore
The passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was the beginning of constant political debates about the status of a number of new states of the Union, to be split into Proslavery or Free states as demanded by Congress. Slowly the arguments shifted into armed conflict before the Civil War, and became a guerrilla war in Missouri in 1861. In February 1861, Missouri had decided to remain in the Union, but Governor Jackson wanted to join the Confederacy (CSA), creating a split military, part Pro-Union, the rest pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard, now driven into the Southern part of the state.
The necessity of an EU “Grand Strategy” for a Euro-Atlantic Security Alliance of the twenty-first century and its implications on EU Member States
Günter Eisl
This paper does not reflect national political positions on the subject of European Strategy, nor is there any intent to close current “strategy gaps” in the European Union, and it does not describe what is institutionally or politically possible to achieve.
The EUs defence budgets were since 1990 on a permanent decline, and even when now some states begin to spend more money on the military, the defence posture is inadequate and the military of a number of EU Member States is more or less defunct.