Institutionalizing supreme command: explaining political–military integration in the Vietnam War, 1964–1968

Under what conditions can leaders achieve wartime political–military integration? In the Vietnam War, political–military integration exhibited dramatic variation: in the air war, the US was able to tightly integrate its political objectives and military conduct, but in the ground war, the American military prosecuted a strategy that was both divorced from broader political objectives and was immune from Washington's influence. I argue that the nature of information management between the military and civilian leadership explains the pattern of political–military integration in the Vietnam War more completely than do explanations that focus on the organizational cultures of professional militaries.     

Strategic intelligence during coin detention operations – relational data and understanding latent terror networks

One aspect of the global “War on Terror” that has received limited coverage in the academic literature is the problem of detained persons as it relates to intelligence. This is a surprising oversight, given the number of detainees that the USA has been responsible for (over 25,000 were in custody in Iraq alone at one time during its peak). The detention environment offers a prime strategic intelligence opportunity for the US intelligence community to study the tactics and organizations of individuals who have been removed from the overall conflict. In this article an easily implemented collection program is recommended to be deployed in US/coalition detention centers. The primary recommendation is to gather relational data on detainee communication, both authorized and illicit, and to use these data to perform network analyses of terrorist groups and their individual members.