Information has always been the lifeblood of strategic analysis. Once it was difficult to acquire enough information to assess the security environment, monitor changing events (especially those far from the major media centers), and draw reasonable conclusions. Today, technology has changed things--analysts now have access to a virtual torrent of information. But while the quantity of information is no longer a problem, assuring its timeliness and quality can be. For strategic analysts, the ability to collect information rapidly and to evaluate its relevance and validity is now a crucial skill. To a large extent, the computer has become the tool of choice for strategic research. By allowing the nearly instantaneous transfer of information, computers certainly help assure it is timely. But computer-based research has its own set of problems. Analysts trained in library, archive, and word-of-mouth research must learn where to look for salient electronic information. The Internet offers a partial solution to this problem. Through the Internet, nearly everyone with a microcomputer and a modem can easily access millions of documents and files on a vast range of topics. But the Internet is not a panacea for the problems of strategic analysis. To make maximum use of it, researchers must understand its strengths and weaknesses. An Internet Primer The Internet is a network of millions of linked computers around the world. These can range from the simplest PC to supercomputers owned by universities and governments. The Internet is not centrally managed or controlled. No one establishes rules for the type of material it contains. Anyone with a computer and some relatively simple software can establish a site, a location of information that other Internet users can examine, download, or print. A few sites are "pay for use" or require a password, but the vast majority are open. This anarchy and fluidity leads to great variation in the quality of information on the Internet, ranging from the useless and the banal to the indispensable and the astute. It takes some skill to distinguish quickly the two, particularly since many of the most visually appealing and interesting sites are intellectually shallow while some of the most important sources of information are, to put it bluntly, rather boring to look at. Style presently has the edge over substance--the Internet contains many glossy magazines and slick brochures, but only a few weighty tomes. In addition, the Internet is an extraordinarily fluid medium, literally changing by the minute. New sites appear at a breathtaking rate--one of the major on-line Internet catalogs receives 22,000 new listings every day. At the same time, many sites go away. Because it only takes a few minutes at a computer to change a site, they change regularly. This means that mastery of Internet information is extremely perishable. A researcher away for a few months will find a massive amount of new information during his next visit, but may also find that older data is no longer available. The Internet is less like a library where the holdings remain relatively constant than a public bulletin board whose information has a brief lifespan. On top of the vast amount of new material entering the Internet, its structure and essence are also changing. The Internet was initially built by governments and universities as a research tool to allow the rapid exchange of data among scientists. Today, most of its phenomenal expansion is fueled by commercial firms selling on-line access or marketing goods and services. Advertising and "pay for use" sites have appeared. The look of the Internet also has changed dramatically. Text-only gopher sites are being replaced by graphics-laden and sometimes beautiful web pages. This transformation will continue for some time. The Internet of the year 2000 will be as different from the Internet of 1996 as Disney World is from a scientific conference. This is a mixed blessing. More of value is available on the Internet every day, but there are also more distractions to wade through while getting to it. Three Internet features are most relevant for strategic analysts: the world-wide web, news groups, and electronic mail (email). Email is a means of interpersonal communication that falls somewhere between the immediacy of a phone conversation and the more thoughtful but slower exchange of ideas previously done by writing letters and memos. The specifics of using it vary greatly according to the mail software being used. News groups are collections of individuals interested in a particular topic who post messages, questions, problems, or issues on the Internet and reply to those left by others. The messages can be stored at an Internet site that participants access using web browser software like Netscape, or they can be distributed by email. News groups are, in effect, electronic discussions and debates. While there are thousands of them dealing with every conceivable topic, most of those focusing on strategic, political, and military issues are relatively unsophisticated, making them of limited value for serious research. There is great potential, though, for limited-access news groups restricted to true experts. This is probably one wave of the future. The world-wide web (also known simply as "the web"), which is based on home pages combining text, graphics, links to related sites, and, increasingly, audio and video, has become the most popular and rapidly expanding element of the Internet. In a sense, the world-wide web is the Internet's library and can be a powerful source of timely information. But there are no librarians monitoring either the categories or the quality of information available on the world-wide web. More than any other part of the Internet, the world-wide web requires researchers to develop effective, personalized techniques for rapidly finding appropriate data and assessing its quality. This is not an easy task for busy national security specialists and strategic analysts. To guide the way, the rest of this essay will offer an introductory roadmap of the web, suggesting sites of current value and noting others with the potential to become important resources. Catalogs and Search Engines Since one of the major challenges for users of the world-wide web is locating appropriate material, many of the most useful sites do not provide actual data but instead offer ways to find and connect to other sites. These are the Internet's catalogs or gateways. Their greatest value is that they provide collections of links. Links are pictures or special text (usually colored differently from the rest of the text and underlined) which automatically transfer the user to another Internet site when they are clicked with a mouse. For instance, while connected to computers in Switzerland or Australia, clicking on a link to the Strategic Studies Institute will temporarily disconnect the user from the overseas computer and connect him to the one at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, where the Strategic Studies Institute home page is kept. Among the most extensive and powerful catalogs is Yahoo. (The names of specific Internet sites are shown in italics. The Internet address--or URL, which stands for "uniform resource locator"--used to access each site is listed at the end of the article.) Originally the project of computer scientists at Stanford University, Yahoo is now a commercial firm and is a well-maintained site. Yahoo provides a brief description of and electronic link to thousands of Internet sites on every conceivable topic, including many political, economic, and military ones. It also offers links to news groups and has recently added the Reuters news wire service. EiNet Galaxy is an equally slick and powerful general gateway to Internet sites. While Yahoo has its own search tool, some of the dedicated Internet search engines are even more powerful and flexible. Most will scour the web using parameters provided by the user and then identify sites that meet the stated conditions. The user can access the sites located through the search by clicking on them in the report provided by the search engine. InfoSeek is an example of a search engine for finding web sites and news groups. While it offers limited (but still valuable) free access, a subscription is inexpensive and includes many useful features, such as the ability to construct a personal news wire. WebCrawler, Inktomi, Magellan, Excite, Alta Vista, Open Text, and Lycos provide similar functions. Increasingly, "meta search" services like Starting Point can be used to connect to all the major search engines, thus making it unnecessary to access each one individually. Some other sites, such as the Internet Sleuth, search on-line databases. Many of the catalogs, including Yahoo, provide a list of new Internet sites. Net Scout Services offers even better ways to do this. It includes a weekly newsletter called the Scout Report that summarizes new Internet resources, and a daily service called Net Happenings that routinely identifies about 30 new sites. Both of these applications can be accessed directly over the world-wide web or received by email. Information on email subscriptions is available at the web sites. Netsurfer Digest is a similar weekly compilation of new sites delivered by email. Internet Resources Newsletter is not distributed by email and must be accessed at its web site, but it provides a wealth of information aimed at serious researchers rather than those seeking mostly entertainment on the Internet. This means that substance counts more than glitz. It is a British site, so British resources dominate the listings, but those from many other countries are also listed and assessed. Some other Internet sites such as USA Today and Cable News Network provide short lists of new sites, but their focus is more on home pages that are entertaining or popular than on those that provide research resources. US Department of Defense Sites Department of Defense organizations are extensively represented on the Internet, which is not surprising since the Internet can trace its evolution to the government's "survivable communications system" initiative. But despite the numbers and logical structures of most Department of Defense web sites, they tend to be simply electronic brochures offering a basic description of the organization, its mission, and location that offer no usable information for researchers. Examples include TRADOC (the US Army Training and Doctrine Command), the Defense Intelligence Agency, and US Military Academy. Only a few Department of Defense sites offer research material on national security strategy or policy or on military strategy. DefenseLink is an entry point to Internet sites operated by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the armed services, and related defense agencies. More important, DefenseLink provides a means to search and download Department of Defense directives, obtain transcripts of important speeches, and connect to other sites dealing with specific military operations (for example, BosniaLink). And, via DefenseLink Locator, it provides a rudimentary but usable database of other defense information sources. DefenseLink is hindered by the absence of a directory of key personnel in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Two related sites, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Unified Commands, are not particularly useful, providing only biographical information and fact sheets on their organizations. All three have the potential to grow into key resources. Each of the military services has a centralized directory of its Internet sites. Army Link, as its name suggests, is a hotlist, a listing of links, to the more than 400 Army home pages. Most of these are of little interest to a strategic analyst. The sites are indexed alphabetically and by subject area. One must be careful, however, when using the subject index. For example, the Strategic Studies Institute is the only entry under "strategic planning," but at the same time it is not listed under "studies." AirForceLink provides a searchable index to more than 170 Air Force sites. While some include a list of contacts, few of them offer email addresses or information for strategic research. NavyOnLine provides links to more than 80 Navy organizations. It is possible to look at recent Navy press releases on-line but, short of manipulating the page's computer source code, an entire document must be printed to obtain any part of it. Entering "strategy" into the NavyOnLine search index resulted in only one hit (which is to say, it located only one source), and this was the long-range plan for the development of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center. Finally, MarineLink, the revised US Marine Corps home page, offers public relations material, access to Marine-related publications, and a hotlist to more than 50 other USMC sites. Unfortunately for the strategic analyst, its most valuable resource--a "concepts and issues" document--is not particularly "user-friendly." The Defense Technical Information Web is an alternative starting point for Department of Defense Internet sources and has a useful link locator page. The Army Knowledge Network, intended eventually to be a conduit of all Army electronic information, thus far merely identifies those developing the structure. One of its subordinates, the Automated Historical Archives System, "develops, maintains, and distributes on-line the Army's electronic, multimedia archives for post-Vietnam contingency operations and the peacetime preparation for war and planning for the future." This would appear to be an ideal source for the strategic analyst. Unfortunately, it currently includes very little information. At that, it is better than the Battle Labs site, which was last updated in April 1995, contains a "we're working on this database" message dated November 1994, and at present simply provides statistics on the number of individuals who have accessed it. The Marshall Center, which is the Internet site of the United States European Command's George C. Marshall Center for Security Studies, is a state-of-the-art page that is well-organized and provides useful information about the center's staff. It also offers on-line access to some publications, documents, and conference reports dealing with European security. The Army's Foreign Military Studies Office, which is charged with assessing regional military and security issues through open-source media and direct contact with foreign military and security specialists, provides on-line access to its publications on geostrategic issues and military operations other than war, including a few translations of foreign publications. The Army Research Laboratory site has one worthwhile document, a "Strategic Plan" which outlines the Army's near-, mid-, and long-term technology goals. The page, however, contains lots of graphic "buttons," which makes it slow to load. And tapping its "phone book" link resulted only in "file not found" responses. The Center For Army Lessons Learned furnishes an index to some Army branch publications. These, while of only limited interest to the strategist, might be valuable for those more interested in the operational or tactical levels of warfare. Though its name might not initially attract a strategic researcher's attention, Force XXI deserves a visit. It includes a searchable version of FM 525-5: Force XXI Operations, the Army's "conceptual foundations of War and Operations Other Than War in the early decades of the 21st Century." The search engine identified 19 references to "strategy." The site also includes a Campaign Plan for revising the Army's structure, Commander's Conference pages providing current and projected budget, personnel, and logistics information, and on-line access to numerous Articles relating to the future operational environment and changing the Army. And, although showy, the Force XXI pages seem well-designed and for the most part relatively quick to load. Finally, one might expect the Internet sites of the high-level military colleges--the Department of Defense's academics--to prove more useful for research. This is not entirely true. The National Defense University (NDU) does provide a well-organized link page to its affiliated colleges and organizations. It is, though, a classic case of an Internet site whose developers were seduced by the temptation of elaborate graphics. These do not augment the value of the site, and they make it excruciatingly slow to load. This tendency to add glitz at the expense of usability is a recurring one on the Internet, especially in sites designed by commercial firms. The home pages of NDU's subordinate colleges and organizations vary in quality. The only items of use to researchers on the Armed Forces Staff College site are bibliographic listings from its library links. The rest is the sort of descriptive information on courses and departments found in any college catalog. Both the National War College and the Armed Forces Staff College have recently added faculty directories, including members' research expertise and contact information. Unfortunately, the NWC directory's font size is so small that the information is nearly unreadable. The Industrial College of the Armed Forces directory is organized alphabetically by department, but provides neither expertise nor contact information. It evidently intends to provide eventual access on-line to publications, since links are already included but are "under construction." The most valuable link from the National Defense University is to its Institute for National Strategic Studies. This well-organized page includes a searchable index (which provided 21 references to "roles and missions"), the ability to view the full text of published studies on-line, conference and symposia information, and a staff directory including biographical data and contact information. Air University, while its graphics make it slow to load, is a major innovator in at least one area: it provides an interactive opportunity, via its link to 2025, to share and explore ideas on air and space capabilities for the future. Any individual can participate in this Air Force study by submitting thoughts on the entry forms provided. Air University is also valuable for its book and publications listings of airpower-related material. Currently the listings provide summary and bibliographic information only; there is no capability to obtain full text on-line, although hard-copy ordering information is supplied. There is also both an author and title index to recent airpower publications. Air University also links to Air Chronicles. The graphics make this slow to load but the site does provide access to essays and articles via its "Contributor's Corner," including some with strategic relevance. The more recent, however, cannot be viewed with a normal browser but only with "Adobe Reader" software--which Air Chronicles provides via a downlink if you have sufficient free disk space. Others are very large, up to 1MB, so be prepared to wait for them to load. Air Chronicles also links to Airpower Journal. At this site, some recent articles and short essays can be viewed on-line and all can be downloaded. Although expansion is under way, the existing Internet site of the US Army War College is limited. Its Center for Strategic Leadership and Peacekeeping Institute home pages, while well laid out, provide only organizational, biographical, and contact information. Its Military History Institute offers several photographic archives and some bibliographic material, but unfortunately there is not yet on-line access to even a small portion of the Institute's holdings. The Strategic Studies Institute does offer some research material. Modeled on the Institute for National Strategic Studies site, the Strategic Studies Institute site has the usual organizational material and publication catalog, but also provides full text of many of its analytical studies, conference and symposia information, a staff directory with biographical data, phone numbers, and email addresses, and a collection of links to other Internet sites of value for strategic research. Its major shortcoming is lack of a searchable index to its publications. A recent addition to the USAWC pages is Parameters, the Army's senior professional journal. This site provides a complete index of past articles (searchable if you are using Netscape), full text of selected articles and review essays from recent issues, and information on subscribing or submitting manuscripts for possible publication. As yet, the US Naval War College has no presence on the net. The Naval Postgraduate School does have a site, but its focus is on the technological aspects of operations research and systems analysis. The school's Department of National Security Affairs is listed, but cannot be accessed. And the Naval Postgraduate School site suffers from the all-too-common lack of a faculty email directory. Other US Government Information Sources Many executive branch agencies have established world-wide web home pages with basic, brochure-level information about their organization and function, but as with the Department of Defense, few of these can serve as a resource for analysts or researchers. The National Security Agency and Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) are typical, although the ARPA site does offer some press releases and testimony. Similarly, the National Technical Information Service site is a catalog of the agency's vast holdings of scientific, technical, and business-related information, but little of it can be read on-line, downloaded, or printed. If it were, researchers would gain greatly. The White House site is one of the most popular on the world-wide web. It is glitzy and fun, but offers no material of value to strategic analysts. A few other executive branch sites do include important research material. The World News Connection, which provides news stories from around the world, is exceptionally valuable to regionalists dealing with areas overlooked by the mainstream media. Essentially it is an on-line version of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) reports. The downside is that users--even government ones--must pay for the service. However, the subscriptions are flexible, offering both short-time access for researchers involved in a single project and longer terms for individuals or organizations with a recurring need. The Voice of America site is especially frustrating. It is a potential gold mine, but its developers cannot seem to make the site work correctly. For a long time, it was a gopher site with broadcasts categorized only by date rather than topic and without a search engine; users had to know in advance precisely what they were looking for. Recently, Voice of America converted to a web site with a search engine. This seemed to be a tremendous step forward, but at the time this article was written, none of the links to sources found by the search engine worked. And, since the list did not provide broadcast dates, it was impossible to find any information. The Department of State is one of the more frustrating locations on the web. For a strategic analyst dealing with US foreign policy, this site, which provides foreign policy news, speeches, statements, and reports, could be an extraordinarily useful tool for keeping abreast of official policy. But while it has been improved recently by the introduction of a web home page and a search engine, it remains awkward to use and difficult to access. To get a printed copy of a one-page story from the Department of State Dispatch, for instance, users must print the whole document, which sometimes contains more than 50 pages. The Library of Congress web page also combines tremendous potential and serious shortcomings. It may eventually be the premier site on the Internet for researchers, but now it offers mostly basic information about the Library, a few links to other sites, and searchable catalogs. Once an analyst finds a citation from the catalogs, he or she must then go to a library to retrieve the material rather than having on-line access to it. The United States Congress has both good and mediocre Internet sites. The Senate Armed Services Committee and the House National Security Committee sites simply list members and provide contact information. The Congressional Email Directory is a good, searchable resource. The general US Congress site--named "Thomas" after President Jefferson--is one of the most important pages on the Internet for Americans interested in political affairs. It provides full text of legislation, a searchable transcript of the Congressional Record, bill summaries and status reports, information on hot legislation organized by topic, a copy of the US Constitution, and a useful primer on the lawmaking process. It also includes links to other congressional sources, including senators and representatives with email or home pages. With improvements in its search engine, Thomas could move from a very good site to a truly superb one. In addition, GPO Access is an extremely well-designed site providing a powerful search tool for legislation and other congressional documents. Public access to documents is either from a Federal Depository Library or directly from the Government Printing Office. CapWeb, which is not affiliated with the government, is another source of congressional information. Think-Tanks and Professional Journals There are several gateways dealing specifically with think-tanks and research organizations focusing on world politics and security policy. International Security Network and IANWeb are good examples. In fact, the Swiss-based International Security Network is currently the single most useful site on the world-wide web for national security analysts and researchers. Its list of links to think-tanks, universities, government organizations, and news groups is as exhaustive as possible in such a fluid medium. It also provides a wealth of other information on the structure and lexicon of the Internet and a few documents that can be downloaded. The Electronic Headquarters for the Acquisition of War Knowledge (EHAWK) is an excellent gateway to Internet locations dealing with military history and news. It also includes links to military-oriented news groups and email discussion groups. Bombs and Bullets is a more limited attempt to do the same; this page needs renovation, however, as many of its links are invalid. SACIS is a truly outstanding site with links to the United Nations, various UN agencies, a range of other international organizations, databases of international law documents, and a few other international affairs pages. With the United Nations Scholars' Workstation, the SACIS site offers better ways to access United Nations material than the UN's own home page. Some useful links are also found in the Stanford Center (for International Security and Arms Control). Another type of gateway is found in the American Universities and the Colleges and Universities sites, which provide links to many universities around the world. Most of these, in turn, have faculty email directories which can be used to contact experts in a variety of fields. The university home pages vary greatly in quality. Some, like Columbia University, make it easy to identify faculty experts in specific fields and send them email. Others, like the University of California at Berkeley, are difficult or impossible to use, either failing to list faculty expertise and email addresses, or requiring the user to go to two or three separate sections of the site to locate and contact experts. As should be expected, many major think-tanks and organizations dealing with security and military issues approach the Internet as a marketing device rather than a research resource. Their sites are primarily on-line catalogs, offering a basic description of the organization and information on ordering and purchasing their products. An example is the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), publisher of vital documents like The Military Balance, Strategic Survey, Survival, and the Adelphi Papers. Similar sites are the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Jane's Information Store, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), and Association of the United States Army. A few others such as RAND, Brookings Institution, Stimson Center, and the Hoover Institution (on War, Revolution, and Peace) offer a little more, including detailed information on their research programs and some archives. The RAND page also offers a basic information sheet on the Arroyo Center, its Army research division, and some other elements like the Center for Asia-Pacific Policy. Unfortunately, the site doesn't make it easy to contact specific researchers. The user who knows whom he or she is looking for from the start will do well. Others, however, must wade through the RAND pages to find the name of a specific researcher, and then go back to the beginning to search an email directory. More advanced Internet pages provide a direct mail link from their directory of experts. In this regard, the Brookings site is even worse: it fails to provide an email directory for its analysts (or even a phone listing). In contrast to sites like RAND and those maintained by CSIS and IISS that require Internet users to order their publications using email or other means, some University-affiliated think-tanks, such as the Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies and the New Zealand-based Centre for Strategic Studies, do offer actual on-line reports and studies. Unfortunately, there tends to be an inverse relationship between the influence of an organization and the amount of material it is willing to provide on-line. The more prestigious and important think-tanks like CSIS, RAND, Brookings, IISS, and SIPRI offer little usable material over the Internet, while less influential think-tanks often give more. In an attempt to counterbalance the "military-industrial complex," some defense spending watchdog groups have established well-designed Internet sites. These include the Center for Defense Spending (which also offers the latest issue of their publication Defense Monitor) and the Military Spending Working Group. While these can be unabashedly critical of the defense establishment, they provide useful alternative perspectives from which a strategic analyst can gain a balanced understanding of the defense budget debates. Other Internet sites provide information on a specific national security topic. These include MILNET, with open-source data on worldwide military and intelligence structures, weapons, and force strengths; the Program on Peacekeeping Policy, which includes news, reports, and links on peacekeeping; and the Carter Center, with information about the organization founded by the President Carter, and the involvement of the center in Third World democratization and development. Similarly, IntelWeb offers valuable descriptions of the intelligence communities of most nations; the Center for Nonproliferation Studies provides material on the spread of weapons of mass destruction and their associated technologies; Democracy Net covers the work done around the world by the National Endowment for Democracy; and the United States Institute of Peace gives a collection of links to sites, news groups, and other resources concerned with conflict resolution. Among the "single issue" sites, the Joint Services Conference on Professional Ethics stands out. It provides a forum for military officers and academics to discuss ethical issues relevant to the military and includes a posting of a monthly ethical problem with comments and discussion from other participants. It also offers papers from an annual conference. This is not truly a strategic site--its greatest use is probably for cadets and junior officers still constructing a professional persona--but it is so well done that it vividly illustrates the potential of the Internet. On a different issue, the Institute for the Advanced Study of Information Warfare is a valuable attempt to provide basic information and links on a subject of rapidly increasing importance. The Internet also provides strategic analysts a way to keep up with key academic journals covering world politics and security issues. A number of them have home pages providing subscription information, the contents of the most recent issue, and usually a few articles that can be read, downloaded, or printed. Examples include Washington Quarterly, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Journal of Democracy, International Security, International Organizations, Political Science Quarterly, Fletcher Forum, and World Politics. Some important journals of opinion which cover world politics and national security, such as Atlantic Monthly, National Review, and the New Republic, also provide on-line versions of the current issue and sometimes recent back issues as well. International Organizations and Foreign Government Sites A few foreign governments are moving rapidly to provide Internet access to information on their foreign and defense policies. There are virtually no government web sites of value in Latin America or the Middle East. Some governments in Eastern Europe appear interested in establishing Internet sites, but their pages are often difficult or impossible to access. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the African National Congress site is very good and provides South African news as well as policy statements, but is the sole representative from the region. Somewhat more surprisingly, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs page is one of the few official sites in the Asia-Pacific region that offers much for researchers. It includes summaries of current issues, press conferences, major speeches and articles, and the diplomatic blue book. Elsewhere, the Australian Defence and the Canadian Department of National Defence pages are good, but deal more with recent reorganizations than with strategy or world affairs. The Canadian Forces College provides a solid collection of military links on its Peace and Security page. Western European governments have established some very useful web sites, including the German Foreign Office's Auswärtiges Amt (which also includes a link to the English-language German Information Center), the Swiss Zentralstelle für Gesamtverteidigung, and the France Defence site. The British Ministry of Defence home page shows the potential of these types of resources. It contains a summary of the 1995 United Kingdom "White Paper," and the full text of the 1994 paper. In addition, this page contains comprehensive press release information, including access to the UK "Central Office of Information Internet Services," which provides a searchable listing of all press releases by all UK government organizations. UK CALS NEWS, another link on the Ministry of Defence page, provides information on the UK defense acquisition process and the current status of some materiel programs. The Conflict Studies Research Centre of the Royal Military Academy (formerly the Soviet Studies Research Centre) is an old-fashioned gopher site, but it provides access to a large number of excellent studies on military and security issues in the former Soviet Union. A number of important international organizations also have Internet sites. The World Bank includes useful reports and documents on Third World development. The United Nations gopher is potentially invaluable but extraordinarily difficult to use. For example, Security Council or General Assembly resolutions are listed only by number and date rather than by subject, and the site has no search engine. Here again, a researcher must know in advance precisely what he or she is looking for. With the addition of a search engine and some other updating, this could be one of the most useful locations on the Internet for strategic analysts. As it stands, the UN's Internet site is like the organization itself: persistently struggling to keep pace with global change but never quite succeeding. The text of many treaties signed under the aegis of the United Nations can be found more easily at the Multilateral Treaties gopher of Cornell University. Many regional and specialized organizations, such as the Organization of American States and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, have built web sites, most of which provide only basic information about the organization's structure and mission rather than the text of resolutions and other material of interest to an analyst. Europa, the web site of the European Union, provides by far the most useful collection of information of any regional organization. It includes policies and agendas as well as basic organizational information. The newly opened NATO site is an absolute treasure trove, with texts of basic documents, communiqués, press releases, speeches, and studies. It also offers information on seminars and workshops, and has a large collection of documents on the Yugoslavia crisis, both from NATO itself and from the United Nations. News and Regional Information The availability of world news on the Internet is expanding. The Reuters news wire service is now provided in a number of spots including Yahoo, Excite, and commercial service providers such as America Online (AOL). AOL is particularly valuable because it gives the full Reuters wire rather than the selections offered by Yahoo and Excite. AOL provides information for research on areas of the world like Africa that do not receive much attention from the mainstream media. Using America Online for research, though, brings new headaches since, in the experience of one of the authors, on-line sessions frequently entail technical problems. The Associated Press is also available, but stories stay on line for only a short time and there is no archive. While coverage of world events is less comprehensive than on the full Reuters wire, it is comparable to the shortened version of Reuters found on Yahoo and Excite. The Cable News Network posts transcripts of many of its broadcasts as well as audio and video clips. The material covers many topics, but not in much depth. National Public Radio also provides transcripts of newscasts and some feature stories. The USA Today page provides a truncated version of the paper. The New York Times site includes the full newspaper. Coverage of specific parts of the world varies by region. There is much material on Europe, including the excellent OMRI (Open Media Research Institute) Daily Digest, which covers the former Soviet Union, and there are some good Asian news sites. In Sub-Saharan Africa only the Republic of South Africa is well-covered on the Internet. News Briefings from the ANC publishes nearly a hundred news stories a day from the South African press. Coverage of Latin America and the Middle East is thin. The best way to find specific regional news sources is through the outstanding collection of links on the World News Index. Yahoo and the International Security Network also offer links to some regional news providers. Conclusions Is access to the world-wide web a necessity for contemporary strategic analysts? Probably not. The web is still in its infancy. The bulk of information remains brochure-level and most web sites are marketing devices rather than sources of data. Analysts wading into the Internet for the first time will find it a jungle. Not only is a small proportion of the available information truly useful, but that tends to be badly organized and difficult to use. Nearly all relevant information of value can be found elsewhere in printed form. In many ways, the web is for a national security professional as a microwave oven is for a cook. A cook with plenty of time and a well-stocked kitchen doesn't need a microwave; without them, a microwave may be essential. So too with the web. A strategist with few time pressures and access to a well-stocked library doesn't need the web. Strategists facing time pressure or who don't have a well-stocked library available will find it more useful. Yet even this condition is changing rapidly. With the exception of a handful of electronic magazines ("e-zines" or "cyberzines"), contemporary providers of information see the web as a supplement to conventional publishing and distribution rather than a substitute for it. Eventually there may be information on the web that is not available in any other medium; today, however, the Internet is far from a mature resource. Users and information providers are still experimenting to find out what works and what doesn't. Change is extensive and rapid; new resources and methods appear and others fade away daily. Within a few years, though, an analyst's collection of Internet bookmarks will be as valuable as a Rolodex of personal contacts is now. The astute analyst will prepare for this opportunity. By exploring the web today and developing effective methods for finding and using electronic information, he or she will be ready when the Internet finally does make the leap from luxury to necessity. Paper References "How to Get There from Here: The Best, The Easiest, and the Cheapest Ways to Get on the Internet." Fast Forward (magazine insert), The Washington Post, February 1996, pp. 6-11. Tittle, Ed, and Steve James. HTML For Dummies. Foster City, Calif.: IDG Books Worldwide, 1995. Ignore the title, enjoy, and be enlightened by "Part I: Welcome to the World Wide Web," pp. 3-43. On-Line References Hauben, Michael and Ronda. Netizens: On the History and Impact of the Net. April 1995. http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/ Zakon, Robert H. Hobbes' Internet Timeline. 1993-96. http://info.isoc.org/guest/zakon/Internet/History/HIT.html INTERNET SITES The method for accessing the Internet sites listed here will vary according to the web browser used. To open a site with Netscape, the most popular browser, either click on the "Open" button, pull down the "file" menu and select "open location," or hit control-O, and then type in the URL. One can also type the address in the "Location" window and then hit "enter" on the keyboard. The following URLs were valid at the time of review. URLs may change, however. For any that have changed, one hopes that the site manager will have left a forwarding address. Of course, a site's inclusion on the following list or in this article does not imply our endorsement of any commercial products or services. 2025 http://www.au.af.mil/2025/2025home.html Advanced Research Projects Agency http://www.arpa.mil/ African National Congress http://www.anc.org.za/ Air Chronicles http://www.cdsar.af.mil/ AirForceLink http://www.dtic.dla.mil/airforcelink/ Airpower Journal http://www.cdsar.af.mil/apje.html Air University http://www.au.af.mil/ Alta Vista http://altavista.digital.com/ American Universities http://www.clas.ufl.edu/CLAS/american-universities.html Armed Forces Staff College http://www.ndu.edu/ndu/afsc/afsctop.html Army Knowledge Network http://leav-www.army.mil:80/akn/ ArmyLink http://www.army.mil/ Army Research Laboratory http://infor.arl.mil/ Articles http://204.7.227.67/force21/articles/art-toc.html Associated Press http://www1.trib.com/NEWS/f_listintro.html Association of the United States Army http://www.ausa.org/ Atlantic Monthly http://www2.theAtlantic.com/atlantic/ Australian Defence http://www.adfa.oz.au/DOD/dodhmpgn.html Auswärtiges Amt http://www.auswaertiges-amt.government.de/ Automated Historical Archives System http://leav-www.army.mil/akn/ahas.htm Battle Labs (TRADOC) http://157.185.5.3/DefaultBL.html Bombs & Bullets http://www.aber.ac.uk/~ctj94/index.html Bosnia Link http://www.dtic.dla.mil/bosnia/ Brookings Institution http://www.brook.edu/ Cable News Network http://www.cnn.com/ Campaign Plan http://204.7.227.67/f21camp.html CapWeb http://policy.net/capweb/congress.html Carter Center http://www.emory.edu/ Center for Army Lessons Learned http://call.army.mil:1100/call.html Center for Defense Information http://www.cdi.org/ Center for Nonproliferation Studies http://cns.miis.edu/ Center for Strategic and International Studies http://www.csis.org/ Center for Strategic Leadership http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usacsl/ Central Intelligence Agency http://www.odci.gov/ Centre for Strategic Studies http://www.vuw.ac.nz/css/ College and University Home Pages http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/cdemello/univ.html Commander's Conference http://204.7.227.67/force21/confrnce/conf-toc.html Conflict Studies Research Centre gopher://marvin.stc.nato.int:70/00/secdef/csrc/csrcmain.txt Congressional Email Directory http://www.webslingerz.com:80/jhoffman/congress-email.html Defense Intelligence Agency http://www.dia.mil/ Defense Link http://www.dtic.dla.mil:80/defenselink/ Defense Technical Information Web http://www.dtic.dla.mil/dtiw/ Democracy Net http://www.ned.org/ Department of National Defence http://ww.dnd.ca/dnd.htm Department of State http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu:80/dosfan.html EiNet Galaxy http://www.einet.net/ Electronic Headquarters for the Acquisition of War Knowledge (EHAWK) http://www.olcommerce.com/cadre/index.html Europa http://www.cec.lu/ Excite http://www.excite.com/ Fletcher Forum http://www.tufts.edu/fletcher/forum.html FM525-5 http://204.7.227.67/force21/tradoc525/525-5toc.html Force XXI http://204.7.227.67/f21home.html Foreign Affairs http://www.enews.com:80/magazines/foreign_affairs/ Foreign Military Studies Office http://leav-www.army.mil/fmso/fmso.htm Foreign Policy http://www.enews.com:80/magazines/foreign_policy/ France Defence http://www.ensmp.fr/~scherer/adminet/min/def/ German Information Center http://langlab.uta.edu/langpages/GIC.html GPO (Government Printing Office) Access http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/aaces001.html Hoover Institution http://hoover.stanford.edu/ House National Security Committee http://policy.net/capweb/House/HComm/hns.html IANWeb http://www.pitt.edu/~ian/ Industrial College of the Armed Forces http://www.ndu.edu/ndu/icaf/icafhp.html InfoSeek Net Search http://www2.infoseek.com/ Inktomi http://inktomi.berkeley.edu/ Institute for National Strategic Studies http://www.ndu.edu/ndu/inss/insshp.html Institute for the Advanced Study of Information Warfare http://www.psycom.net/iwar.1.html IntelWeb http://www.awpi.com/IntelWeb/ International Institute for Strategic Studies http://www.fsk.ethz.ch/d-reok/fsk/iiss/iisshome.html International Organizations gopher://gopher.enews.com/11/magazines/alphabet ic/all/iorg International Security gopher://gopher.enews.com/11/magazines/alphabet ic/all/int_security International Security Network http://www.fsk.ethz.ch/d-reok/fsk/defs_hom.html Internet Resources Newsletter http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/irn.html Internet Sleuth http://www.intbc.com/sleuth/ Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies http://www.tau.ac.il/jcss/ Jane's Information Store http://www.janes.com/janes.html Joint Chiefs of Staff http://www.dtic.dla.mil:80/defenselink/jcs/ Joint Services Conference on Professional Ethics http://www.duke.edu/jscope/ Journal of Democracy gopher://gopher.enews.com/11/magazines/alphabetic/all/democracy Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/ Lycos http://www.lycos.com/ Magellan http://mckinley.netcom.com/ MarineLink http://www.usmc.mil/ Marshall Center http://www.marshall.adsn.int/marshall.html Military Spending Working Group http://www.clark.net/pub/gen/mswg/ MILNET http://www.onestep.com/milnet/ Ministry of Defence http://www.mod.uk/ Ministry of Foreign Affairs http://www.nttls.co.jp/infomofa/ Multilateral Treaties gopher://gopher.law.cornell.edu/11/foreign/fletcher National Defense University http://www.ndu.edu National Public Radio http://www.npr.org/ National Security Agency http://www.fas.org/pub/gen/fas/irp/nsa/ National Technical Information Service http://www.fedworld.gov/ntis/ntishome.html National Review gopher://gopher.enews.com/11/magazines/alphabetic/all/Rnational_review National War College http://www.ndu.edu/ndu/nwc/nwchp.html NATO http://www.nato.int/ NavyOnLine http://www.ncts.navy.mil/ Naval Postgraduate School http://www.nps.navy.mil/ Net Happenings http://www.mid.net:80/NET/ Net Scout Services http://rs.internic.net/scout/ Net Surfer Digest http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/ New Republic http://www.dc.enews.com/magazines/tnr/ New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/ News Briefings from the ANC http://pantheon.cis.yale.edu/~jadwat/anc/ OMRI (Open Media Research Institute) Daily Digest http://www.omri.cz/Publications/Digests/ DigestIndex.html Open Text http://www.opentext.com/omw/f-omw.html Organization of American States http://www.oas.org/ Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development http://cs1-hq.oecd.org/ Parameters http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/ Peace and Security http://www.cfcsc.dnd.ca/welcome.html Peacekeeping Institute http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usacsl/pki/ Political Science Quarterly http://www.enews.com:80/magazines/polisci_quarterly/ Program on Peacekeeping Policy http://ralph.gmu.edu/cfpa/peace/peace.html RAND Corporation http://www.rand.org/ SACIS http://www.cam.org/~sac/SACIS.html Scout Report http://rs.internic.net/scout/report/ Senate Armed Services Committee http://policy.net/capweb/Senate/SenateCom/ARMED.html Stanford Center http://www-leland.stanford.edu/group/CISAC/ Starting Point http://www.stpt.com/ Stimson Center http://www.stimson.org/pub/stimson/index.htm Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) http://www.sipri.se/ Strategic Studies Institute http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usassi/ TRADOC http://www-tradoc.army.mil/ UK CALS News http://www.mod.uk/pe/cals/home.htm Unified Commands http://www.dtic.dla.mil:80/defenselink/unified.html United Nations gopher://nywork1.undp.org:70/1 United Nations Scholars' Workstation http://www.library.yale.edu/un/unhome.htm United States Institute of Peace http://witloof.sjsu.edu/peace/usip.html United States Military Academy http://www.usma.edu/ US Army Command and General Staff College http://leav-www.army.mil/ US Army War College and Carlisle Barracks http://carlisle-www.army.mil/ US Congress (Thomas) http://thomas.loc.gov/ USA Today http://www.usatoday.com/ Voice of America http://www.niss.ac.uk/news/voiceofam.html Washington Quarterly http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/jrnls-catalog/washington.html Web Crawler http://webcrawler.com/ White House http://www.whitehouse.gov/ World Bank http://www.worldbank.org/html/Welcome.html World News Connection http://wnc.fedworld.gov/ World News Index http://toad.stack.urc.tue.nl/~haroldkl/index.html World Politics http://www.dc.enews.com/magazines/world_politics/ Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com/ Zentralstelle für Gesamtverteidigung http://sipo2.ethz.ch/zgv/index.htm The Authors: Lieutenant Colonel James Kievit is a strategic research analyst at the US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute (SSI). He previously served on the faculty of the US Military Academy. Dr. Steven Metz is the Henry L. Stimson Professor of Military Studies at the US Army War College and an analyst at the Strategic Studies Institute. He has also served on the faculty of the Air War College, the US Army Command and General Staff College, and several universities, and is the author of more than 50 articles and monographs on world politics and national security affairs. Lieutenant Colonel Kievit and Dr. Metz have collaborated on five SSI studies dealing with the revolution in military affairs and future warfare. They also have coauthored articles for Joint Force Quarterly and Special Warfare. The authors thank Tim Green, Dave Tyner, and John Auger for astute comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this essay. They also thank Rachel Metz for editorial assistance. [This article is reprinted from Parameters, Summer 1996. [An updated version of this essay is maintained at the Internet site of the US Army Strategic Studies Institute.]] Back to Cry Havoc #25 Table of Contents Back to Cry Havoc List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by David W. Tschanz. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com