National Will to Fight Amid 2020s/30s Technologies

Speakers: Mike McNerney (Senior Researcher, RAND); Maj Gen (Rtd) Andrew Sharpe (Director, Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research); and Alyssa Demus (Associate International/Defense Researcher, RAND) 

Date: 13 September 2022

Speaker Session Summary

SMA hosted a speaker session with Mr. Mike McNerney (Senior Researcher, RAND), Maj Gen (Rtd) Andrew Sharpe (Director, Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research [CHACR]), and Ms. Alyssa Demus (Associate International/Defense Researcher, RAND) as part of its SMA Mind-tech Nexus Speaker Series.

Military and state leaders have tried to understand and predict nations’ will to preserve and fight through adversity. Mr. McNerney argued that it is possible to predict a nation’s will to fight an invading force; however, conflicts throughout history—such as Vietnam and Afghanistan—demonstrate that the understanding of individual nation’s will at a national level is poor. The question of will itself is large and difficult to scope, commented Maj Gen (Rtd) Sharpe. The speakers all mentioned areas of focus, factors, mechanisms, and contextual information that they believed influence a nation’s will to fight. Several factors include, but are not limited to, civilian-military relations, popular support, governmental cohesion, and economic leverage. Technology is a tool that can help explain a country’s will to fight.

Technology can be used to bolster or undermine a nation’s will to fight. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a good example of the role that technology can play. Both Russia and Ukraine are blending persuasion tactics with technical tools. Both make emotional appeals to their target audience, use symbols, and make their messaging repetitive and at a high volume. Ms. Demus stated that several tools used to build emotional connections include social media, legacy media (television and radio), and technical tools designed to reroute mobile and internet data. Ukraine has developed apps that capture and share information, causing emotional responses in both Ukraine and Russia. This media has proven to be a factor in building resilience among Ukrainians to fight against the Russian invasion. 

Speaker Session Recording

Briefing Materials

Biographies:

Mr. Michael McNerney is a senior researcher at the RAND Corporation and an affiliate faculty member at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. His research focuses on political-military strategy, defense planning, civil–military coordination, and international relations. He has published over two dozen reports analyzing human behavior and decision making in conflict, U.S. security cooperation, military roles in disaster response, civilian casualties, and other topics. Until April 2011, Mr. McNerney was principal director for plans in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. He and his staff supported the Secretary of Defense in providing strategic guidance on U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and interagency plans, force management, and overseas basing. He was a civil servant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) for 17 years and a member of the Senior Executive Service. His earlier assignments in the Office of the Secretary of Defense included policy support for security cooperation programs worldwide, U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, humanitarian assistance and disaster response, international environmental issues, nuclear arms control, and defense budgeting. He spent the 2004–05 academic year on the faculty of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. Prior to working in OSD, Mr. McNerney worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He received his M.A. in international relations from the University of Maryland and B.A. in government and German from the University of Notre Dame.

Maj Gen (Rtd) Andrew Sharpe, during 34 years of military service and nine operational tours, commanded on operations in all ranks from second-lieutenant to brigadier. He left the British Army as a Major General, completing his military career as the Director of the UK MoD’s independent thinktank: the DCDC. For three years he ran the UK Chief of Defence Staff’s Strategic Advisory Panel. Doctor Sharpe is the Director of the Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research. In addition, as an independent consultant, he partners with governments, international organisations and businesses to provide strategic, operational and leadership advice, support and mentoring. He is a senior mentor on the Army’s Generalship programme; a Visiting Senior Research Fellow of King’s College London; an Honorary Fellow of the Strategic Studies Institute of the University of Exeter; a Founding Associate Fellow of the Cambridge Security Analysis Institute; an Expert Panel member of the Cambridge Governance Labs; and he lectures and advises widely and internationally on strategy, leadership, risk and operational art. He is the Chairman of The Poppy Factory and has an MA in International Studies from King’s College London, and a PhD in the Strategic Leadership of International Intervention from Trinity College Cambridge.

Ms. Alyssa Demus is an associate international/defense researcher at the RAND Corporation. Her research examines Eurasian political and security issues; information warfare and influence campaigns; efforts to counter adversary influence efforts; and perceptions and decision making. Ms. Demus is fluent in Ukrainian—a skill she has employed in her research to include interviewing key government, military, security service, and civil society sector interlocutors. She earned an M.A. in foreign policy and national security from American University’s School of International Service, and a B.A. in international relations with a concentration in Russian and Eurasian affairs and B.A. in political science from the University of Southern California.

The SMA Mind-Tech Nexus Speaker Series description and list of the other sessions in this series can be downloaded here.