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

Fiction

#Reviewing Writing Wars

#Reviewing Writing Wars

Simply put, Writing Wars is necessary reading for scholars and writers working at the intersections of literary, military, and American studies. The interdisciplinary nature of the book also makes it well suited for a variety of classes. In addition to American Literature and History courses, select chapters on higher education’s influence on the genre and the ethics of authorship would make for insightful reading in creative writing classes that consider the history of writing programs or how identity politics figures into the ethos of storytelling. This potential widespread readership of Writing Wars is timely. With the ongoing military conflict in Ukraine and the reverberating effects of the U.S. campaigns in the Middle East, there is a need for a new wave of war fiction and, perhaps more importantly, a diverse collection of voices to tell such stories. Eisler’s book emphasizes the critical importance of this need and illuminates how those diverse voices can effectively address it.

#Reviewing Victor in Trouble: The Value of Satire as a Tool of Professional Development

#Reviewing Victor in Trouble: The Value of Satire as a Tool of Professional Development

Finley’s work is part of a long and glorious tradition of satire in the world of military and foreign affairs. Her books are a welcome mental break for modern audiences, but the wellspring of military and diplomatic satire was already deep. For autocratic societies, where censorship is a defining characteristic, satirists walk fine lines to say quiet thoughts out loud.

#Reviewing Our Best War Stories

#Reviewing Our Best War Stories

This collection is remarkable because, whether or not everything in each story is strictly speaking factual, everything is true. If you’re interested in military culture, the ongoing cultural change in the armed forces, or just looking for excellent writing from veterans and their families, this is a book that belongs on your shelf.

That Grenade is a Heart: #Reviewing So Frag & So Bold

That Grenade is a Heart: #Reviewing So Frag & So Bold

The line between poems and jokes runs thin in Randy Brown’s new collection, So Frag and So Bold—but in the best possible way. Brown, in a series of mostly very-short poems, quips, and aphorisms, brings the gallows humor of military life to the stage in a unique, funny, and moving way all at once. These poems feel both very real and also imaginative, almost like a Greek chorus calling out in intervals from stage left, telling you the real thing you need to know.

AI in Fiction and the Future of War

AI in Fiction and the Future of War

Fiction is a great way to explore the possibilities and risks of AI. Done right, fiction serves as a way to guide the decisions that we make. Unfortunately, many portrayals of AI in fiction focus too far into the future, sometimes imputing capabilities that are unlikely to ever exist, and consequently fail to engage with the challenges that we face in the near future. Better examples address issues that we are going to face soon. Understanding which fiction fits which description helps us to adjust our understanding accordingly.

#Reviewing Docu-Fictions of War

#Reviewing Docu-Fictions of War

Docu-Fictions of War is a unique investigation into popular culture’s depictions of war, and how civilian narratives interact with military storylines. A reader might be left wanting more artistic explorations, but its contributions to strategic studies are plentiful. That said, with hundreds of sources and a dense epistemological basis, it is not for the faint of heart. The analysis provided by Dr. Prorokova is thought-provoking, even if one is not inclined to accept certain epistemologies, and asserts a robust argument for America’s humanitarian rationale. Docu-Fictions of War is a seminal piece on war narratives that deserves every policymaker’s attention.

An Alternative/Alternate History of the U.S. Response to COVID-19

An Alternative/Alternate History of the U.S. Response to COVID-19

Still, in our alternate history, Americans and their leaders learned important lessons. First, the cost of letting finance dictate the structure of the U.S. economy was too great, especially for a nation that aspired to play a role of global leadership. Allowing firms to offshore production to exploit low wages for cheaper goods, but unfettered capital mobility was a crippling handicap for a nation beset by a pandemic. Second, skilled labor, particularly in manufacturing and in other industries, takes time to develop—it is not a resource that one can reconstitute with a finger snap or a problem at which one can throw money.

Time Slips By: #Reviewing The Tartar Steppe

Time Slips By: #Reviewing The Tartar Steppe

An unseen, unspecified tension lurks throughout the entire book, leaving the reader with a sense of enduring consternation. For aspiring leaders, this novel presents a complex dilemma about human nature and war—or the blessed lack of it. It provides an opportunity to reflect on the challenge of maintaining a mission-focused mindset in an austere environment where all hope seems lost.

#Reviewing All For You

#Reviewing All For You

All For You satisfies the narrative requirements the Smithton readers demand from romance: it provides escape and a happy ending. But that assessment does not capture the full complexity of a novel that has its characters argue over how to provide for and take care of service members, how to prepare for deployment, and how to deal with its aftermath. And it doesn’t capture the full complexity of a novel that does all of that while pointing to dynamics of race, rank, and gender.

Aces-High Frontier

Aces-High Frontier

You expect an electric crackle, the deep whine of machinery, a bolt of red across a planetary foreground, the roar of rocket engines. Wrong. When the United States Space Force (USSF) is in action, it really couldn’t be less cinematic. Anti-visual even. Yes, the Earth is still an astonishing sight from our perch at the Earth-Moon L4 Lagrange point, but battle itself is rather anticlimactic. No explosions. No starfighters careening this way and that.

Lombardi’s War: Formation Play-Calling and the Intellectual Property Ecology

Lombardi’s War: Formation Play-Calling and the Intellectual Property Ecology

The information age, a phrase famously coined by Berkeley Professor Manuel Castells in the 1990s, described a tectonic shift in our culture and economy which we generally take for granted at present. From our current vantage point, replete with ubiquitous pocket-sized personal computing and communications devices, it is hard to imagine a world where we cannot convert our data or social networks into physical resources and access. We keep our data in the cloud and call upon it when we need it, regardless of where we are. We log into AirBnB, and somehow money we have never seen transfers to someone else who will never see the money, and that becomes a room for an evening. The idea of a brick-and-mortar video store, such as the 1990s-staple Blockbuster Video, is hopelessly anachronistic in the era of Netflix.

Fight, Survive, Win — Imagining Multi-Domain Battle

Fight, Survive, Win — Imagining Multi-Domain Battle

Everything was in place. While the US and allied forces were still struggling to fully defeat enemy denial of service attacks, they had been able to communicate in short bursts with subordinate units. The plan was set. Land-based long-range missiles would initiate the attack by destroying enemy sea based jammers. At the same time, a manned-unmanned teaming attack, combining stealthy Air Force UAVs for targeting and Army long range missiles, would pinpoint and destroy the enemy’s air defense nodes to begin to regain contested airspace. 

Fight, Survive, Win — Imagining Multi-Domain Battle

Fight, Survive, Win — Imagining Multi-Domain Battle

The United States faces a changing and more uncertain military future. The military dominance that the United States easily assumed following the end of the Cold War – and demonstrated in the Gulf War – is no longer so assured. Potential American adversaries are developing capabilities to challenge American strengths. The American military must develop new concepts and capabilities to continue to guarantee the military supremacy Americans expect. Multi-Domain Battle is an effort to develop these necessary concepts and capabilities. It will provide the means to counter adversaries who seek to break the current American military system. Multi-Domain Battle will deepen and expand current joint doctrine. It will allow the services to move beyond synchronization and converge their capabilities in their respective domains to open windows of relative advantage in a domain or several domains to gain the initiative. The concept also specifically challenges land forces to adapt and prepare for situations in which the complete American control of the air, sea, cyberspace and space, formerly a forgone conclusion, is no longer. This fictional depiction describes how the United States military might apply Multi-Domain Battle as a concept to defeat a near peer threat. The story does not describe any real potential adversary. The majority of geographic locations are fictional. All characters are fictional and any resemblance to any real individual is accidental.