Since Vietnam, the US Army has focused an unprecedented degree of effort on capturing lessons learned in training and on the battlefield and communicating them to other affected units. The Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL), established after Operation URGENT FURY, is the prime example of the Army's efforts to institutionalize the process of learning during the Cold War. CALL continues to function and provide lessons learned in the current Global War on Terror, while other grassroots organizations have sprung up within the Army to target the learning needs of specific segments of the force. One such organization is CompanyCommand.com, an online professional forum of Army leaders dedicated to outstanding leadership at the small-unit level. This talk will discuss the evolution of organizational learning in the Army since Vietnam, and examine how organizations like CALL and CompanyCommand complement one other in the pursuit of excellence.

Captain Raymond A. Kimball is a native of Reading, Pennsylvania, and was commissioned through the United States Military Academy in 1995. After completing initial officer and flight training, he was assigned to the 1st Battalion (Attack), 10th Aviation Regiment, at Fort Drum, New York in November 1996. While assigned to the 10th Mountain Division, he served as an aeroscout platoon leader and logistics and support officer. In those positions, he participated in the full range of Army operations, from home station training to counter-drug operations along the Mexican border to peacekeeping in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In May of 2001, after completing further officer training, he reported to the 3rd Infantry Division, where he was assigned to the 3rd Squadron, 7th U.S. Cavalry. He took command of F Troop, 3-7 Cavalry in July of 2001. The troop consisted of 88 soldiers and $6 million in equipment and was responsible for all aspects of support and maintenance for the squadron's sixteen scout helicopters. In January of 2003, the troop deployed as part of 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry, to Kuwait in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. During combat operations the troop supported 870 flight hours over a period of twenty-one days while moving 700 kilometers through enemy territory without the loss of a single soldier. He gave up command of F Troop in June of 2003 and returned to the United States to begin graduate studies in history at Stanford. In addition to his coursework, he serves as a research assistant to the Preventive Defense Project in CISAC. For the past two years, he has also served as a Topic Lead and advisor to CompanyCommand.com. His next assignment will be as an Associate Professor of History at the United States Military Academy. His awards include the Bronze Star, the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Achievement Medal, and the Humanitarian Service Medal. He is married to the former Mindy Hynds of Vacaville, California; they have one son, Daniel.

The presentation examines the practical problems of reducing the danger of accidental launch and suggests that the current approach to the problem should be reconsidered. First, the U.S. launch-on-warning posture may represent a bigger problem than that of Russia. Second, the efforts to repair or augment the Russian early-warning system should not be pursued as part of the de-alerting agenda, since they probably increase risk of an accidental launch. Finally, the notion of transparency in de-alerting should be reconsidered, for verification prevents de-alerting from being effective. (A short summary of the presentation can be found at russian forces).

Pavel Podvig joined CISAC as a research associate in 2004. Before that he was a researcher at the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). He spent several years as a visiting researcher with the Security Studies Program at MIT and with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, and he taught physics in MIPT's General Physics Department for more than ten years. At the Center for Arms Control Studies, he worked on various technical and political issues of missile defense; U.S.-Russian arms control negotiations, and structure and history of the Russian strategic forces. During that time he was a principal investigator of a Russian Nuclear Forces research project, which produced a book, Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces. Podvig graduated with honors from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1988, with a degree in physics. In 2004 he received a PhD in political science from the Moscow Institute of World Economy and International Relations.

Paul Stockton is Associate Provost at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and is Director of its Center for Homeland Defense and Security. Stockton is the Editor of Homeland Security (forthcoming from Oxford University Press in 2005). His research has appeared in Political Science Quarterly, International Security and Strategic Survey. He is Co-Editor of Reconstituting America's Defense: America's New National Security Strategy (1992). Mr. Stockton has also published an Adelphi Paper and has contributed chapters to a number of books, including James Lindsay and Randall Ripley, Eds., U.S. Foreign Policy After the Cold War (1997).

Mr. Stockton received a B.A. summa cum laude from Dartmouth College in 1976 and a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University in 1986. Dr. Stockton served from 1986-1989 as Legislative Assistant to US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Dr. Stockton was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship for 1989-1990 by the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University. In August 1990, Dr. Stockton joined the faculty of the Naval Postgraduate School. From 1995 until 2000, he served as Director of the NPS Center for Civil-Military Relations. From 2000-2001, Dr. Stockton founded and served as the Acting Dean of the NPS School of International Graduate Studies. He was appointed Associate Provost in 2001.

Ariel (Eli) Levite is the Principal Deputy Director General of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC). Dr. Levite has extensive experience dealing with issues of nuclear proliferation as both a scholar and practitioner. Before that, Dr. Levite was a visiting fellow at CISAC, where he also served as co-leader of the CISAC Discriminate Force Project. His previous jobs include Deputy National Security Advisor (Defense Policy) and Head of the Bureau of International Security at the Israeli Ministry of Defense.

Dr. Levite has written and published extensively on issues of international security, strategy, and Middle East politics. His two most recent publications include "Never Say Never Again: Nuclear Reversal Revisited" in International Security, Winter 2002-03, and, co-authored with Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, "The Case for Discriminate Force" in Survival, Winter 2002-03. He holds a bachelor's degree from Tel-Aviv University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University.

Kimberly Marten is a tenured associate professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University, and also teaches at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).

She earned her Ph.D. at Stanford in 1991, and held both pre-doc and post-doc fellowships at CISAC. She has written three books: Enforcing the Peace: Learning from the Imperial Past (Columbia Univ. Press, 2004), Weapons, Culture, and Self-Interest: Soviet Defense Managers in the New Russia (Columbia University Press, 1997), and Engaging the Enemy: Organization Theory and Soviet Military Innovation (Princeton University Press, 1993), which received the Marshall Shulman Prize. Her numerous book chapters and journal articles include a Washington Quarterly piece in Winter 2002-3, "Defending against Anarchy: From War to Peacekeeping in Afghanistan," as well as op-eds in the New York Times and International Herald Tribune.

In May 2004 she was embedded for a week with the Canadian Forces then leading the ISAF peace mission in Kabul. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Program on New Approaches to Russian Security (PONARS). Her current research asks whether warlords and gangs can be changed from potential spoilers to stakeholders in state-building processes.

Steven Miller is Director of the International Security Program, Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly journal International Security, and co-editor of the International Security Program's book series, BCSIA Studies in International Security (which is published by the MIT Press). Previously, he was Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and taught Defense and Arms Control Studies in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is co-author of the recent monograph, War with Iraq: Costs, Consequences, and Alternatives (2002) and a frequent contributor to Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Miller is editor or co-editor of some two dozen books, including, most recently, Offense, Defense, and War (October 2004), The Russian Military: Power and Policy (September 2004), Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict- Revised Edition (2001), and The Rise of China (2000).

Miller is the co-chair of the U.S. Pugwash Committee and a member of the Committee on International Security Studies (CISS) of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Council of International Pugwash, the Advisory Committee of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), and the Scientific Committee of the Landau Network Centro Volta (Italy). He is a former member of the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). Within Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Miller serves on the steering committees of the Kokkalis Program on Southeastern and East-Central Europe and of the Harvard Ukrainian Project.

Suggested readings for the seminar:

(1) Teresa Johnson, "Writing for International Security: A Contributor's Guide." International Security, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Fall 1991), pp. 171-180.

(2) For a critical view of the journal: Hugh Gusterson, "Missing the End of the Cold War in International Security," in Jutta Weldes, et al., Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities, and the Production of Danger (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), pp. 319-345.

(3) For a survey of the evolution of the journal: Steven Miller, "International Security at 25: From One World to Another," International Security, Vol 26, No. 1 (Summer 2001), pp. 5-39.