Dive into the archives.
- More on military thinking
Lots of activity about military thinking on the blogosphere recently. I have already given my two yen on military thought and ranted about military PowerPoint skillz, or lack thereof. Our good pal the strategist has continued his quest to find the current military thinkers both inside and outside of the military. Military thinker John Robb [...]
- On military thought
Peter the strategist struggles to answer the question Who and Where are Today’s Military Thinkers? He observes that military thinkers with real military experience, practical or otherwise, seem to be losing out to “today’s military thinkers in universities and think tanks (e.g., Martin van Creveld and Willam Lind), in aid agencies and private military companies, [...]
- The effects of dropping the bomb
Chuck Spinney, one of the Boyd Acolytes, discusses the problems of a strategic bombing campaign on Iran.
Though he doesn’t say the words he is criticizing the EBO logic that dates back to Douhet. I think it is a solid point. To get the other side of the argument see John Robb’s year-and-a-half old post Collapsing [...]
- Cooking with what you have
Robert Kaplan follows up his pre-Patraeus report analysis by widening his bottom-up tribalism theory to include Pakistan, Baluchistan and Afghanistan in his latest article in The Atlantic It’s the Tribes, Stupid!:
Where democratic governance does not exist, we must work with the material at hand. ... Throughout the Arab world, old monarchial and authoritarian orders are [...]
- Grand strategy
Is it prescriptive or descriptive?
In other words, is grand strategy a tangible policy developed by nations? Or is it an abstract tool of analysis imposed by observers?
- The strategy pendulum
Lex brought to our attention a couple of criticisms of Kaplan’s latest article in the Atlantic from both the left and the right. I don’t think these criticisms are fair. First of all, I didn’t read the article as a throwback to another era or as the prioritization of the navy over other services. [...]
- Strategy classics
In reading Securing Japan I thought Richard Samuels summed it up quite nicely (pp. 109):
There are few truly new ideas about how nations can protect themselves. Each country is armed with its military, its diplomats, its mix of resources, its ambition, and its wits. The rest is, as ever, derivative. This is why students studying [...]
