Karl Nell

Disengagement of U.S. leadership in recent years has not only emboldened the world’s worst actors, it has enabled the emergence of non-state groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) to threaten a new and ominous trend in international affairs—the pursuit of sovereign authority by transnational violent-extremists. Amending both the Clausewitzian “remarkable trinity” to explicitly encompass non-state actors in war and the balance-of-power praxis of Talleyrand to one favoring… Show more

Disengagement of U.S. leadership in recent years has not only emboldened the world’s worst actors, it has enabled the emergence of non-state groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) to threaten a new and ominous trend in international affairs—the pursuit of sovereign authority by transnational violent-extremists. Amending both the Clausewitzian “remarkable trinity” to explicitly encompass non-state actors in war and the balance-of-power praxis of Talleyrand to one favoring dynamic repair of failed and failing states in diplomacy, the Doctrine of Contingent Sovereignty proposed in this article provides the requisite tools for bolstering legitimacy of weakened states while simultaneously affording the necessary freedom-of-action for the United States to secure its vital national interests. Analogous to the Monroe Doctrine of the nineteenth-century, which put putative expansionist powers on notice, this new doctrine asserts that the privilege of sovereignty remains contingent upon adherence to accepted international norms of behavior. Show less

The efficacy of the hearts-and-minds concept as initially propounded by British Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer in 1952 to address a communist guerrilla insurgency during the Malayan Emergency has subsequently assumed a storied—even jaded—reputation within the Western military establishment not to mention the American psyche. Whether unfairly maligned, inappropriately modified, or simply misunderstood, hearts-and-minds remains at the forefront of today’s counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine. This… Show more

The efficacy of the hearts-and-minds concept as initially propounded by British Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer in 1952 to address a communist guerrilla insurgency during the Malayan Emergency has subsequently assumed a storied—even jaded—reputation within the Western military establishment not to mention the American psyche. Whether unfairly maligned, inappropriately modified, or simply misunderstood, hearts-and-minds remains at the forefront of today’s counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine. This monograph presents an investigation of the concept’s colonial antecedents, inception at the onset of the Cold War, subsequent U.S. interpretation during Vietnam, and modern application to post-9/11 conflict in order to elucidate its true nature. Show less