LTS Book Reviews

Question 1

Answer 1

Three Threats: AQI, Nuke nations, rise of China.

Decreased resources demands comprehensive LTS’s for each threat; demands partners. Rise of China is the big one and US has been slow to pull its head out regional allies have noticed and are taking action

Concept of Competitive Strategies as a Planning Method

Focuses on peacetime use of latent military power- development, acquisition, deployment, and exercising of forces- to shape a competitor’s choices in a ways that favor our objectives. (pg 7)

Five Features of this Planning Method

1. Assumes a concrete, sophisticated opponent who has strategic aims (and presumably, a strategy)
2. Assumes interaction between the competitors which can influence (at least in part) strategic choices made the other
3. Acknowledging constraints on a competitor’s choices ($, pax, tech, culture, etc.), this approach seeks to identify, understand, and exploit them.
4. Competition may take decades so seeks to influences latent power factors over time.
5. Assumes an understanding of the competitors decision-making process and doctrine so the what and why can be understood.