In the early hours of 18 April, Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) launched a military operation inside Northern Iraq dubbed Claw-Lock. Simultaneously, Turkey intensified its military activities in Syria. Furthermore, on 23 May, President Tayyip Erdoğan announced that Turkey will soon start a new military operation in Syria. These moves reflect Turkey’s new military strategy, based on area control, against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). So far, this new approach has yielded military success. However, it is precisely military success that is reinforcing the tendency to deal with the Kurdish problem only in terms of security and military solutions and to rule out any long-term political solution to the problem. Europe should continue to support efforts towards seeking a solution that also addresses the political dimensions of the problem.
The 2023 SDG Summit will be held on September 18/19, as part of the opening week of the UN General Assembly. It will operate at the highest political level, with primarily heads of state and government speaking. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called it the “centrepiece” of the UN’s work this year
In Syria, the immediate effects of the war in Ukraine have made an already difficult humanitarian situation even worse. Protracted violence in Ukraine or an expansion of the Ukraine war into a larger NATO-Russia confrontation would endanger multilateral cooperation on conflict management, conflict resolution and humanitarian issues in Syria. Protracted conflict in Ukraine could also disrupt the volatile status quo in Syria, potentially endangering ceasefire agreements, tilting the power balance in favour of Iran and thereby increasing the risk of military escalation between Iran and its antagonists, complicating the fight against ISIS, and endangering cross-border humanitarian aid deliveries. Europeans should attempt to insulate the war in Ukraine from Syria as much as possible, double down on efforts to renew the UN Security Council resolution that allows for humanitarian access to northwest Syria and contribute to the long-term objective of an inclusive regional security architecture.
The countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are mapping out agendas to kickstart a hydrogen economy. Especially Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are pursuing ambitious plans to supply Europe and Asia-Pacific with the carbon-friendly fuel. Numerous declarations of intent have been signed, and the first large-scale projects are under way. For the Gulf countries, hydrogen is not only a means of diversification. Since the hydrogen economy blends into the institutional and fiscal framework of the petroleum industry, it is primarily a chance for the GCC economies to maintain current economic and political power structures. While hydrogen from the Gulf is an effective tool for climate change mitigation, Germany and Europe are faced with trade-offs and open questions.
A succession of disruptions to world trade have put the reorganisation of international supply chains high on the political agenda. The difficulties began with the trade war between the United States and China, deepened with the Covid-19 pandemic and culminated in the sanctions and export controls imposed by Western countries after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The increased risk of interruption of supplies forces businesses today to price in political factors and respond to political demands. However, realistic timeframes for reconfiguring supply chains are largely incompatible with the rapid responses expected by political decision-makers, especially where chains are long and complex. A process needs to be developed for dealing more effectively with political supply chains risks. It should be transparent for all involved.
Emerging military technologies are already impacting South Korea’s national security and defense policies, with a quiet revolution currently underway. The ROK-US global comprehensive strategic alliance is no longer focused entirely on combating the North Korean threat: following the BidenMoon Summit of April 2021 in Washington DC it is now looking beyond the Korean Peninsula to the wider Indo-Pacific region. In line with this broader vision, South Korea is recapitalizing its defense budget, and its five-year defense acquisition plan for 2023-27, published January 21, 2023, includes R&D into various disruptive military technologies intended to increase preparedness for a future war
This volume of edited papers is intended to help inform decision-makers so they better understand the critical features of, and differences among, the various cyber threats we face. Threat actors are increasingly seeking to destabilise the Alliance through the cyber domain by employing malicious cyber activities and campaigns below the threshold of an armed attack. Early in the decade of the 2000s, NATO developed its cyber capabilities as a purely technical issue. Cyber defence first became part of NATO’s core task of collective defence in 2014. Allied heads of state and government endorsed NATO’s Comprehensive Cyber Defence Policy in June 2021, further incorporating cyber defence into NATO’s broader approach of deterrence and defence. These changes build upon the important understanding that the cyber domain must properly align with NATO strategic decision-making.
Information is the foundation of all human interaction. It is the basis for how we sense, make sense of, and interact with our environments and each other. Rapidly evolving modern technologies have accelerated and expanded our ability to process, store, and communicate information with a tempo and scale previously unimaginable. Our globally interconnected world has deepened our collective dependence on information to the extent that the slightest vulnerability in how we handle, store, or transmit information could endanger Marines, their families, and all that we have sworn to defend. In a contest between hostile and irreconcilable wills, information is as powerful a tool as any weapon system in our military arsenal. Therefore, it is vital to the future of our Corps.
The purpose of this publication is to describe the Marine Corps’ learning philosophy and explain why learning is critically important to the profession of arms. While many of the concepts in this publication have been passed on by Marine leaders throughout our history, this publication seeks to formalize them and provide aspirational goals. Learning is an institutional priority and a professional expectation for all Marines. This mentality is key to the Marine Corps becoming a more effective learning organization.
Since our 30th Commandant, General Carl E. Mundy, first published Leading Marines in 1995, it’s had a positive impact throughout our Marine Corps. It’s generated spirited discussions about what it means to be a Marine, and how to lead Marines, and it is the base document for the leadership curriculum in all our resident schools. Our philosophy of leadership, as described in this publication, is in consonance with our rich and storied past.
This doctrinal publication describes a theory and philosophy of command and control for the U.S. Marine Corps. Put very simply, the intent is to describe how we can reach effective military decisions and implement effective military actions faster than an adversary in any conflict setting on any scale. In so doing, this publication provides a framework for all Marines for the development and exercise of effective command and control in peace, in crisis, or in war. This publication represents a firm commitment by the Marine Corps to a bold, even fundamental shift in the way we will view and deal with the dynamic challenges of command and control in the information age
Marine Corps Warfighting Publication (MCWP) 5-10, Marine Corps Planning Process, was first published in January 2000 as MCWP 5-1. Since that time, Marine Corps forces at all echelons of command have used the Marine Corps Planning Process (MCPP) to conduct the range of military operations. The use of design over the last decade suggests that design is more than conceptual planning which establishes aims, objectives, and intentions.
This doctrinal publication focuses on logistics. It describes the theory and philosophy of military logistics as practiced by the United States Marine Corps. It provides Marines a conceptual framework for understanding how logistics is an essential aspect of every military operation. The Marine Corps’ view of logistics is based on our common understanding of the nature of war, our role in the joint force, and our warfighting philosophy as described in Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication (MCDP) 1, Warfighting.
Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication (MCDP) 3, Expeditionary Operations, establishes doctrine for the conduct of military operations by the U.S. Marine Corps. It describes the Marine Corps as an expeditionary force-in-readiness that is manned, trained, and equipped specifically to respond quickly to a broad variety of crises and conflicts across the full range of military operations anywhere in the world. It emphasizes the naval character of Marine Corps forces. This naval expeditionary character provides capabilities both to forward-deploy forces near the scene of potential crises as well as to deploy sustainable, combined arms teams rapidly by sea and air. With reduced overseas presence in terms of force levels and bases, these capabilities have become essential elements of our national military strategy. This publication also underscores the value of Marine Corps forces as a highly cost-effective option in a wide range of situations, including crises requiring forcible entry. Importantly, this publication establishes versatility and adaptability as critical capabilities in a broad range of circumstances for expeditionary forces in an uncertain world. Finally, this publication describes the Marine Corps’ key expeditionary concepts.
