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

Liddell Hart

#Reviewing The Blind Strategist: John Boyd and the American Way of War

#Reviewing The Blind Strategist: John Boyd and the American Way of War

The book is bold and provocative. Its ideas deserve serious consideration across the services—particularly in the Marine Corps, where maneuver warfare was most fully adopted. It is nonetheless paradoxical: strong in many respects but not in others, beautifully balanced in several key arguments but also weaker in others, ultimately reducing the strength of Robinson’s central argument that Boyd was a blind strategist whose theories did much more harm than good in the American military establishment. Specifically, while Robinson addresses specific weaknesses in Boyd’s theory and approach effectively, he misses or ignores its strengths.

Besieging Wei to Rescue Zhao: Combining the Indirect Approach with the Centre of Gravity

Besieging Wei to Rescue Zhao: Combining the Indirect Approach with the Centre of Gravity

Incorporating the centre of gravity with the indirect approach makes one’s actions more potent, providing an effective focal point that if successfully hit promises high yields for minimal costs. While like any other stratagem it will not always be possible to find the opportunity for both to be applied in conjunction with each other, perhaps because one lacks the options for manoeuvre or the centre of gravity is too well guarded, the yield is exponentially increased when a convergence exists.

The New Era of the Proliferated Proxy War

The New Era of the Proliferated Proxy War

War in the modern world is changing. Since the end of the Cold War inter-state war has declined globally, whilst even civil wars have become a relative rarity. But war is not becoming an obsolete element of human interaction. Governments and militaries around the world are simply changing the way that their strategic objectives are secured. This is the era of indirect war by proxy.