A Model for Future Military Operations - The Effect of State Security and Human Security on Strategy (Paperback)

This study proposes a model for developing military strategy to achieve political objectives framed in state and/or human security principles. The author first identifies the need for analysis of state and human security due to the increasingly diverse nature of military operations since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The author then categorizes state security political objectives as issues of state sovereignty and vital national interests while human security objectives derive from individual issues of life, liberty, and freedom of person. The author concludes that the binary nature of these security paradigms will affect development of military strategy. Next, the author presents a methodology for assessing the impact of state and human security on strategy. Three case studies examine the impact of the security paradigms on military strategy. By coupling the theoretical development of a strategy model with the methodological examination of the case studies, the author finds a positive linkage between state and human security objectives and the development of military strategy. The findings suggest military strategy for state security utilizes a prescriptive use of offensive force at a national level of engagement for a vital purpose. Conversely, a military strategy driven by human security objectives produces a defensive force structure and restrictive rules of engagement for a peripheral purpose at the sub-national level of engagement. Political objectives framed in both state and human security require military strategists to understand the interrelationship between the security paradigms in order to develop an appropriate military strategy.