: Military

US ARMY COMMAND AND GENERAL STAFF COLLEGE

Advanced Distributive Learning (ADL)

US Army Command and General Staff School

Command and General Staff Officer Course (CGSOC) Common Core

C200 Strategic Context of Operational Art

 

STRATEGIC ESTIMATE POINT PAPER

 

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS

 

1. The C299 Strategic Estimate Point Paper is worth 30% of the C200 block grade. This assignment is due at the end of the C200 block, after you have completed all of the online C200 lessons.

 

2. Understand that writing clearly and concisely is the basis for good staff work, but as a General Staff officer on higher level staffs it also involves selecting only the most critical information for the (experienced but multitasking and time pressed) senior leader in a confined format. This paper replicates a typical action officer dilemma of having too much information to fit into the confines of the required format. Focus on the key topic as indicated in the instructions below. Writing clearly, and very concisely, is a critical staff skill that is often more difficult than writing a longer paper. Different commands will have different formats (OSD, Joint Staff, Army Staff, EUCOM, etc.). Failure to follow the local format will either result in your work being wasted or having to redo it to fit the format. Headings, numbering, and spacing are part of the format provided. The focus on citations is to get you in the (good) staff officer habit of providing to your boss where information (like assumptions, directives, facts, etc.) is coming from so it can both be verified, greater context obtained if needed, or the work can be updated by you or your staff officer replacement weeks or months or years after you are gone. Finally, remember that as a General Staff officer the purpose and audience for the product you are producing must always be kept in mind as you write.

 

3. You must type your answers, using the format provided in this document. DO NOT USE ANY OTHER FORMAT. The format you must follow is described below. The text in the example below provides guidance on the use of the format and preparation of the paper, and also depicts the physical layout of the paper (single line spacing, indentation, numbering and lettering – 12 font Arial per AR 25-50). The subject of the Congressional Background Paper (Kaliningrad) has been provided to you in the C299 Strategic Estimate Slides. Use the Army Writing Style mandated by AR 25-50 which involves starting with the Bottom Line Up Front – BLUF (i.e. thesis in the introduction). Cite sources IAW ST22-2, Appendix A, example #7. (Also see “Example Note Formats” located in the C200 folder). To cite Power Point slides, use the slide number instead of a page number. The correct use of citations is to treat the subparagraphs in the Background Discussion section (a – f) as paraphrases of the C299 Strategic Estimate Slides. If you use a direct quote, cite it correctly. The paper consists of two parts:

 

1. Two-page (limit) Background/Discussion; and
2. One-page (limit) Conclusion and Recommendations.

 

You MUST also submit CGSC Form 1009W with your Point Paper. In the 1009W, complete the header on page 1 and the left side on page 2.

 

Note: Save your Point Paper and 1009W using the following file naming convention per ST 22-2 (p. 18):

 

4. You may refer to the online C200 lessons, readings, and references if you need to review key concepts of the strategic environment block. Review C299 Reading A; “Guide to Strategic Estimate Development” to review what information is in each section. You may not discuss the content of this assignment with anyone other than a DDE faculty member. You may have help with proofreading, but cite that help in the first footnote/endnote.

 

5. This writing requirement is worth a total of 100 points. Your grade will be based on four criteria:
6. Substance (accurate depiction of information, ideas, analysis from Strategic Estimate): 75 points
7. Organization (adherence to prescribed format and guidelines): 5 points
8. Style (tone, precision): 10 points
9. Correctness (spelling, punctuation, grammar): 10 points

 

SCENARIO AND SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS

 

It is December 2021. You are an Action Officer (AO) and a member of a EUCOM J5 (ECJ5) Joint Planning Group (JPG). As directed by the Chief of Staff through the J5, your JPG has completed an update of the Strategic Estimate (see C299 slides provided) for the Baltic Region to get the Commander up to speed on the situation in the region regarding Kaliningrad and provide the basis for a commander’s estimate and, if necessary, development of plans.

Following the successful briefing of the Strategic Estimate (where it was approved), the Combatant Commander learned that he would have to travel to Washington to join the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at congressional hearings on the situation in the Baltic region regarding Kaliningrad. The Combatant Commander will depart for Washington sometime in the next few days.

You have been tasked to prepare a paper for the Combatant Commander to use in testimony before congressional committees and in meetings in Washington regarding Kaliningrad. The intent is to provide analysis of the Strategic Estimate regarding Kaliningrad, not to regurgitate content.

 

Use the format provided below the line

———————————————————————————————————

ECJ5                                                                         Action Officer’s GRADE, NAME

APPROVED BY: ____________                          DATE

 

STRATEGIC ESTIMATE OF THE BALTIC REGION

1. BACKGROUND/DISCUSSION. Include the heading above with your name. The paper will not exceed three pages. The focus is Kaliningrad and is designed to provide maximum information in a manner that is easily absorbed. The format is appropriate for use whenever the need for presenting summarized information arises. You will use no more than two pages to summarize the Strategic Estimate that you were provided. This is a narrative summary, not a cut and paste. Within this paper, you must include key points from each section of the Strategic Estimate: Introduction, Strategic Environment, Strategic Direction, Strategic and Operational Challenges, Potential Opportunities, and Assessment of Risks. Use complete, concise sentences and cover sub-points clearly and concisely. Use the headings below to delineate each section of the paper. Cite your source. Start with a. Introduction.

 

1. Introduction (including key topic and thesis)
2. Strategic Environment
3. Strategic Direction
4. Strategic and Operational Challenges
5. Potential Opportunities (Follow this paragraph format and explain – provide an example- each option from the Strategic Estimate using DIME)

Option 1: Diplomatic, Information, Military, Economic

Option 2: Diplomatic, Information, Military, Economic

Option 3: Diplomatic, Information, Military, Economic

1. Assessment of Risks & Mitigation (from the Strategic Estimate)

 

2. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS. You will use no more than one page for your Conclusion and Recommendation.

 

1. Recommendation. This sub-paragraph is the opportunity for the Action Officer (you) to apply your judgment, weigh the alternatives, and recommend one of the options presented in the approved Strategic Estimate – Up Front (BLUF).
2. Validity assessment. A short paragraph covering the validity assessment of the recommendation and any issues the other two options may have had because of validity. Ensure you address the Validity criteria of Feasible, Acceptable, and Suitable.
3. Risks and mitigation. Identify potential risks and mitigation for your recommendation using the Ends-Ways-Means-Risk construct.
4. Justification. Ensure you justify your recommendation by explaining why it is superior in comparison to the other possible options. You may use (optional) the evaluation criteria derived from the Strategic Direction found on the last slide. You may use the decision matrix slide as a tool (optional) to help you determine the superior option. If you include the chart / matrix as an appendix, ensure you explain what it means.
5. Conclusion. A conclusion restates the thesis and argues why the author’s position is correct without adding new information

ANSWER

Point Paper

 

Background/Discussion

Introduction

Kaliningrad is a city located in Northwest Russia and the center of Kaliningrad Oblast. Kaliningrad is unique and does not contain any common borders with other Russian regions. For the longest time, Kaliningrad was part of Germany. After the Russian Soviet Union, the Russian city when World War II in some German Lands was transferred to the Soviet Union. Through their leadership, the Russian Soviet Union gazetted Kaliningrad as one of their cities, offering it military protection from possible attacks from rivals like the United States. Kaliningrad serves as an army base and is the home to the Baltic Sea Fleet of Russia and has high technology weapons such as the anti-ship missiles and Iskander SSM, which makes it challenging to access the area (Coffey and Kochis, 2015). Kaliningrad has been a strategic part of Russian territory that the nation relies on as a military base. The territory is important to Russia since it stores high-tech weapons and Baltic Sea Fleet that help in protecting Russia. Lately, Russia has been making naval and air military activities that have led to concerns for the United States and its allies. There have been major issues in relations between Russia and European Union member countries surrounding Oblast. Increasing the U.S. military presence will boost overall readiness and the European Deterrence initiative through countering hybrid threats and promoting stability in the Baltic region.

Strategic Environment

Considerably, Russia has militarized Kaliningrad to the point that the members of NATO are feeling threatened. The region has been an opposing force to countries in the European Union and the Northern Atlantic Treaty Organization since they are considered a threat to the economic and political growth of the European Union members surrounding the region. Therefore, in this case, the strategic environment is the areas or countries that have been influenced directly or indirectly by the actions of Russia across the Baltic Sea and the Kaliningrad Region (Richard, Sebentsov, and Zotova, 2015). The strategic environment can be considered as the USEUCOM territory. The environment is encountering rival forces that have been led by the collective security treaty organization members, Russia and Belarus. All the rival forces are viewing European Union and NATO as threats to their economic and political growth. European Union members such as Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have supported the E.U. and NATO initiatives and security programs in the Northern Atlantic Belt.

Strategic Direction

USEUCOM has played a significant role in fostering a global security environment. It helps partners and allies to improve their military capabilities and skills. They have worked with several regional partners to carry out Defense Planning Exchanges and in-depth Defense Assessment. These exchanges and assessments have assisted partners in developing a coherent national defense strategy that is compatible with the E.U. and NATO members. These include the infrastructure, personnel, and structural systems necessary for supporting the strategy and a realistic time-phased approach to achieve their objectives. Considerably, the United States’ main plan is the protection of American citizens and E.U. members from the Russian threats. This has included eliminating firearms, illicit drug trades, human trafficking, and domestic terrorism. Another major objective of the United States has been to support the empowerment of NATO members and promote economic growth. Considerably, improving the political and economic relationships with close allies ensures that they adopt and embrace the United States’ policies to preserve the European state of security. Therefore, the U.S. has made vital steps in Europe to ensure its preparedness to eliminate any threat from Russia. Additionally, it has supported the European Deterrence initiative that focuses on boosting security among the NATO allies.

Strategic and Operational Challenge

Ideally, Kaliningrad is under the Russian territory, which is being used by the Russian military to conduct military experiments and training activities that are a great threat to the Baltic region. Russia has been installing weapons such as Iskandar M missiles that are very dangerous. However, despite the continued call by their neighbors to stop their military expeditions, Russia has continued to use the region as a military base. Therefore, the Russian naval forces’ careless use of the region has remained a big threat to security in the Baltic Sea region, which has fueled Russia’s disagreement with the E.U. and NATO states. For instance, Russia has been arguing that they have a right to protect their citizens according to the Russia World Moscow Strategy 2016. The efforts of Moscow to strengthen its impact in Eurasia have continued to increase anxiety in the United States, Europe, and the E.U. States that are neighboring Russia. Relatively, the Russian leadership fears that there is a potential that agreements on Kaliningrad can lead to territorial collapse since it’s surrounded by NATO and E.U. territory, which makes it prone for it to be separated from the federation.

Potential Opportunities

Option 1: Diplomatic, Military, and Economic

Improve the security in Europe through accepting Poland’s offer to support the permanent station of the American military. This will play a great role in increasing the military exercises conducted by the Poland military (Vershbow and Breedlove, 2019). Relatively, this will improve the overall readiness and response of the deployed troops. Poland has focused on NATO and U.S. efforts to prevent potential Russian aggression in Europe.

Option 2: Diplomatic Military and Economic

Enhance partnerships in Northern Europe that aim at cooperative security, building a strong economy and healthy community. Most European Union nations were seeking independence and boosted their security allocations. Therefore, enhancing partnerships will allow the U.S. to supply military technologies and skills, which will boost the revenue of the United States. The partnerships will also help expand the multilateral network and ties in the region. Northern Europe is a significant part of Europe and gives continued opportunities for United States investment. Northern Europe gives a better opportunity to continue to implement the vision of the United States, which is to have a prosperous, secure, and stable Europe. The United States enhanced partnership in Northern Europe has offered an operational and conceptual framework for U.S. Policy in the region focused on promoting vibrant economies, cooperative security, and healthy societies within Northern Europe.

Option 3: Diplomatic, Information, and Military

Exchange information with allies, initiate a division headquarters and increase the ground force with partners of NATO. One of the essential initiatives is to increase technological cooperation among the allies of NATO. Exchanging information with the NATO allies will reinforce the military presence of the United States in Kaliningrad and responses to the Russian actions. This will be a diplomatic engagement with allies which the partner countries will also use for response exercises. Developing infrastructure for importing U.S. and E.U. energy resources will lower Russian reactions.

Assessment of Risks and Mitigations

The greatest risk possibility is that the Russians continue rebelling and are careless of their actions. Russia has engaged in actions that are dangerous and reckless. Negotiations will be more effective to mitigate and help reduce the risk of terrorism and political pressure which impact their operations. If members of NATO become reluctant to address Russia’s carelessness and threats, this will lead to another risk. U.S. Forces can mitigate this by advising the allies to keep track of the destructive operations. This will play a big role in addressing the Russian threats since the NATO members are more aware.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Recommendations

Accept the offer made by Poland to pay support to the United States to increase the presence of the American military. Considerably, relationship building is important in the region since it increases U.S. support. The permanent USA army presence will increase the number of militants. Over the last few years, Russia has significantly raised the number of nuclear and conventional weapons in the Kaliningrad exclave. Therefore, a permanent American presence in Poland will increase allied security in three ways.

First, it will clearly show adversaries and allies that territorial integrity and sovereignty are an important interest to the United States. Secondly, this will be used to fill the security gaps and defense capabilities today. Thirdly, this will enable investment in more advanced information operations, electronic warfare, and offensive cyber better enabling response to likely attacks from Russia.

Validity assessment

Increasing the presence of the U.S. military in Poland will deter Russia’s aggression, foster strategic partnerships with the United States, and strengthen the NATO and E.U. alliance. Relatively, this will ensure that there are ready forces to respond to Russian reactions. Poland has been a strong ally of NATO since the inception of the NATO alliance. Poland has remained committed to sharing the burden and meeting its Wales commitment. Poland is dedicated to defending the people since it spends two percent of the GDP and has invested 20 percent on defense equipment. Therefore, partnering with Poland to increase the presence of the U.S. military will promote security and stability in the region as well as counter the hybrid threats and enhance the resilience of major infrastructure and vital sectors is a top priority for the region.

Risk Mitigation

The plan to increase the presence of the U.S. military in Poland will prevent Russia’s aggression. The greatest risk is whereby Russia might continue rebelling negotiations to end the conflict. The involvement of the American Army might increase tensions and lead to violations. However, there is a need to increase the American Military presence to stimulate counterattack in Europe.

Justification

The recommendation to increase the footprint of the American military will increase security in Europe the readiness of troops through training and measures that will eliminate Russian aggression. Relatively, having the U.S. military presence in the Baltic area will increase intelligence and boost regional security.

Conclusion

The aggressive behavior and scale of activity by the Russian military in the Baltic region have increased the risk of serious incidents and miscalculations. Attempting to eliminate the reckless behavior of Russia has a greater risk to the Baltic area and increased tension. With the high probability of risk, there is a need for readiness to enhance regional security. Increasing the permanent presence of the U.S. military and partnering with Poland will encourage joint activities aimed at increasing the readiness to deal with enemies.

 

 

References

Coffey, L., & Kochis, D. (2015). The Baltic states: The United States must be prepared to fulfill its NATO treaty obligations (Vol. 29). Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation.

Richard, Y., Sebentsov, A., & Zotova, M. (2015). The Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. Challenges and limits of its integration in the Baltic region. Cybergeo: European Journal of Geography.

Vershbow, A. R., & Breedlove, P. M. (2019). II. Permanent Deterrence and the U.S. Military Presence in Europe. Whitehall Papers, 95(1), 26-41.