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

Mattis

#Reviewing No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy

#Reviewing No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy

Proser sets out at the beginning of the Trump administration to uncover the “qualities of character…[and] personal magnetism” that accounted for the acclaim then greeting the Mattis appointment, culminating in his confirmation by the Senate in a vote of 98 to 1. Despite obvious admiration, the author only partially succeeds. Examples that display martial virtues abound, but readers looking for insights into the personality or inner life of Jim Mattis will struggle not only with making political connections to recent events, but also with what might come next in his public life.

The Voice of Chaos: A Conversation with Secretary Mattis’s Chief Speechwriter

The Voice of Chaos: A Conversation with Secretary Mattis’s Chief Speechwriter

Christopher Nelson spoke with Guy “Bus” Snodgrass about his new book Holding the Line: Inside Trump's Pentagon With Secretary Mattis. Snodgrass was Secretary Mattis’s chief speechwriter and later communications director. In this detailed and extensive interview, Snodgrass explains why he doesn’t believe he betrayed Mattis’s trust, the mechanics of speechwriting for Department of Defense seniors, the creation of the National Defense Strategy, and his thoughts on the challenges and opportunities the Navy has with retention and talent management today.

We Want It, What Is It? Unpacking Civilian Control of the Military

We Want It, What Is It? Unpacking Civilian Control of the Military

The nomination of James Mattis as Secretary of Defense briefly brought the often overlooked concept of civilian control of the military to public attention. Commentators debated whether Mattis’ qualifications, personality, and presumed influence on the administration justified an exception to the law prohibiting recently retired generals from serving in that post. Reassuringly, in that discussion as well as in the larger conversation about the unusual number of retired and acting general officers now serving in traditionally civilian posts, there has been no discernible challenge to the notion of civilian control of the military. Yet underneath this consensus as to the desirability of civilian control, hide differences in understanding about what it actually entails. In short, we want civilian control but do not precisely know what it is.

#Essays on War: Mattis

#Essays on War: Mattis

Those of us who served with him know that he is a caring, erudite, warfighting general. And we know that there is a reason he uses the callsign Chaos:  he is a lifelong student of his profession, a devotee of maneuver warfare and Sun Tzu, the sort of guy who wants to win without fighting—to cause chaos among those he would oppose. To Marines, he is the finest of our tribal elders. The rest of the world, very soon, will know how truly gifted he is. Our friends and allies will be happy he is our new Secretary of War; our enemies will soon wish he weren’t. I worked for General James Mattis three times: when he was a Colonel, a Major General, and a Lieutenant General.

Down the Rabbit Hole: Alice and the Experience of Clausewitzian Genius

Down the Rabbit Hole: Alice and the Experience of Clausewitzian Genius

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland can help us better understand the experience of Clausewitzian genius. Now, this sounds about as illogical as Lewis Carroll’s famous riddle, uttered by the Mad Hatter: “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” But unlike the riddle, which was initially constructed without an answer, the concept of genius links Clausewitz and Alice without artifice. While Clausewitz’s “field of genius...raises itself above rules,” Wonderland is a fantastical space that enables Alice to raise herself not only above rules, but also sense. To see how this is so, we can appeal to Alice and her encounters in Wonderland to highlight the complexity found within military genius. But first we must locate genius in the space where theory fails to map onto reality.