Introduction Pax Americana (Latin for “American Peace”, modelled after Pax Romana and Pax Britannica; also called the Long Peace) is a term applied to the concept of relative peace in the Western Hemisphere and later in the world after the end of World War II in 1945, when the United States (US) became the world’s… Read More
Introduction “Peace through strength” is a phrase that suggests that military power can help preserve peace. It has been used by many leaders from Roman Emperor Hadrian in the second century AD to former US President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. The concept has long been associated with realpolitik. The idea has critics, with Andrew… Read More
Introduction A caudillo (old Spanish: cabdillo, from Latin capitellum, diminutive of caput “head”) is a type of personalist leader wielding military and political power. There is no precise definition of caudillo, which is often used interchangeably with “warlord” and “strongman”. The term is historically associated with Spain, and with Hispanic America after virtually all of… Read More
Introduction Hard power is the use of military and economic means to influence the behaviour or interests of other political bodies. This form of political power is often aggressive (coercion), and is most immediately effective when imposed by one political body upon another of lesser military and/or economic power. Refer to Power Projection. Hard power… Read More
Introduction In politics (and particularly in international politics), soft power is the ability to attract and co-opt, rather than coerce (contrast hard power). In other words, soft power involves shaping the preferences of others through appeal and attraction. A defining feature of soft power is that it is non-coercive; the currency of soft power includes… Read More
Introduction In the field of military theory, the operational level of war (also called operational art, as derived from Russian: оперативное искусство, or operational warfare) represents the level of command that connects the details of tactics with the goals of strategy. In Joint US military doctrine, operational art is “the cognitive approach by commanders and… Read More
Introduction The Loss of Strength Gradient (LSG) is a military concept devised by Kenneth E. Boulding in his 1962 book Conflict and Defense: A General Theory. He argued that the amount of a nation’s military power that could be brought to bear in any part of the world depended on geographic distance. The Loss of… Read More
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