Alessandra Nisch
Putin’s Wars: Testing Boyd’s Strategy of ...

President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.

Putin’s Wars: Testing Boyd’s Strategy of Applied Friction

Corbett

Primacy of Maritime Strategy in Naval Shipbuilding? The Case of Imperial Germany

Primacy of Maritime Strategy in Naval Shipbuilding? The Case of Imperial Germany

Beyond strategy, domestic factors in Imperial Germany impacted naval shipbuilding. Domestic factors could strengthen naval expansion or constrain it…It may be inferred, therefore, that the conventional wisdom of the primacy of maritime strategy in naval shipbuilding may also hold true for mature navies. At all times, but especially for rising navies, non-strategic factors such as economic subsidies and technological innovation may exhibit influences that precede or override maritime strategy in naval shipbuilding. Put another way, leaders often exhibit composite thinking in naval shipbuilding decisions, but maritime strategy’s primacy does not always hold.

Corbett’s Relevance to the Modern Strategic Thinker

Corbett’s Relevance to the Modern Strategic Thinker

Although some have asked for renewed interpretation and analysis of the meaning of sea power, maritime strategy, and naval power, they have often ignored that this has often revisited challenges and questions that have been raised before. Many of these questions Corbett, American naval thinker Alfred Mahan, and the founding father of the scientific study of naval history, Prof John Laughton, have tackled repeatedly in the past.

The Myth of Total War

The Myth of Total War

It is not useful to define wars by measures such as size, scale, or commitment because these are subjective and thus cloud analysis. This is particularly true in regard to such things as cost and casualties. How much a war costs, how many people it kills, and what it consumes and destroys are certainly important issues—no one disputes this—but these are not bases for critical analysis because they fail to generate solid, tangible, universal foundations for discussion, which is exactly what writing on such subjects should provide.