American Power
A while back I was interviewed about one of my books. At some point, the discussion took a bad turn when my interviewer violently objected to my stating that America ...
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The QDR — Good for Nothing
It is time to kill the congressionally mandated Quadrennial Defense Review — or radically revamp it.
Congress’s original intent, in the National Defense Authorization Act of 1997, was wise: to initiate ...
Budgets and Strategy
Earlier this month, the Defense Department released its budget priorities and choices for the next year in an attempt to align America’s strategy with its means — always a noble ...
Soft Power, Smart Power
During World War II, Stalin’s advisers encouraged him to seek the favor of the pope. He famously replied: “How many divisions does the pope have?” Decades later, the Soviets came ...
America’s Global Retreat
Selecting strategic options for the United States is a parlor game that thousands of people are always playing. And nothing gets these deep strategic thinkers more excited than a new ...
Why Armies Matter
Around the Pentagon, the budget cutters have put away their knives and are reaching for axes. In times like these, every service naturally circles the wagons around its share of ...
Firing Generals
To paraphrase Shakespeare: “The first thing we do, let’s fire all the generals.”
This is the basic prescription of military journalist and writer Tom Ricks, who, in his new book, The ...
Gutting the Defense Budget
In 2010, Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, waded into a domestic political debate he would have been well advised to avoid. By declaring ...
Iran’s Hormuz Threat
For the past two weeks Iran has committed a sizable portion of its military to rehearsing how it would go about closing the Hormuz Strait. For the most part, strategic ...
The Army We Need
Last week, former Army chief of staff Gen. Gordon Sullivan editorialized that the Army is repeating the mistakes of the post-Vietnam era, when it turned away from a decade’s experience ...