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

Navy

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.

#Reviewing Against All Tides

#Reviewing Against All Tides

The “Kitty Hawk Race Riot'” holds an important place in American naval history. An illustration of the deep and unavoidable connections between the sailors and officers of the Navy and the society they served during the Civil Rights era, it is often mentioned in passing but rarely examined in detail. Marv Truhe’s new book sets out to rectify that oversight and to help readers dive deeply into both the details of the history and the important questions it raises about the Navy of the 1970s as well as the Navy of the 21st century.

#Reviewing War of Supply: World War II Allied Logistics in the Mediterranean

#Reviewing War of Supply: World War II Allied Logistics in the Mediterranean

In the historiography of the Second World War, scholars marvel at the wonders of Normandy and D-Day, followed by the famed Red Ball Express on the drive to Paris. Dworak makes the compelling case that the real support and logistics operation came from wartime experience further south. As a reader, it is delightful to see a simple and straightforward narrative play out. Dworak digs into all facets of logistics and stays on task. The author keeps his chapters fast-paced, focused on the big operations of Torch, Husky, Avalanche, Shingle, and Dragoon, while also describing fascinating tidbits along the way.

#Reviewing Battleship Commander: The Life of Vice Admiral Willis A. Lee Jr.

#Reviewing Battleship Commander: The Life of Vice Admiral Willis A. Lee Jr.

Taking over forty years to complete as Stillwell worked on other projects for the United States Naval Institute, the final result was well worth the wait since it not only demonstrates Lee’s importance to American naval professionalism in his own day, but also his legacy of leadership for today’s Navy. The particular goal for Stillwell was to revive the memory of Lee to illustrate these leadership traits. Whether Stillwell succeeds in bringing Lee to our generation of sailors in the United States Navy—much less general American society—remains to be seen, but the biography is top notch.

Fear, Honour, and AUKUS in the Indo-Pacific

Fear, Honour, and AUKUS in the Indo-Pacific

To date, Australia has enjoyed the benefit of a hedging strategy that embraces the economic prosperity of a close trading relationship with China while maintaining a close security alliance with the U.S. This strategy has been tested recently and the tension between values and interests requires focused attention. If there was previously any doubt on where that pendulum would swing, it is now firmly answered in the announcement of AUKUS, an Australian, U.K. and U.S. security partnership.

Threat Under the Radar: The Case for Cruise Missile Control in the Next National Security Strategy

Threat Under the Radar: The Case for Cruise Missile Control in the Next National Security Strategy

As the Biden administration settles into office it faces a number of monumental tasks - dealing with the ongoing global health pandemic, repairing alliances, and preparing the country for the coming great power competition with China, just to name a few. This poses the question regarding which issues in particular should inform the rewriting of the next National Security Strategy. While a number of pressing foreign and security policy issues are high on the agenda, the Biden administration’s National Security Strategy should also make reference to and lay the framework for an active cruise missile counterproliferation and arms control strategy.

Sleepwalking into Risk: Learning from the U.S. Navy Surface Fleet

Sleepwalking into Risk: Learning from the U.S. Navy Surface Fleet

Producing new fighter pilots is not an overnight proposition. Increasing the capacity of production pipelines is a costly and long-term endeavor; as a result, the Air Force has proposed short-term capacity gains by operating the fighter pilot training systems at surge tempo and shortening time in the pipeline through syllabus reductions. Correspondingly, an oversupply of new fighter graduates with less-developed airmanship skills transfers risk to front-line units. Recent incidents within the U.S. Navy’s surface fleet offer a cautionary tale of unacknowledged systemic risks. What can the Air Force learn from the fleet as it attempts to reverse the downward flightpath of the fighter pilot force structure, modernize for peer competition, and continue armed-overwatch in U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility?

#Reviewing Progressives in Navy Blue and #Interviewing Scott Mobley

#Reviewing Progressives in Navy Blue and #Interviewing Scott Mobley

The following interview is a collaboration between Dr. Lori Lyn Bogle and two of her students, Midshipman Lucas Almas and Midshipman Jacob Kinnear, and historian Scott Mobley from the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Dr. Mobley’s recent groundbreaking book, Progressives in Navy Blue: Maritime Strategy, American Empire, and the Transformation of U.S. Naval Identity, 1873-1898 is of special interest to current midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy and illuminates the complicated cultural shift in the officer corps as the service transformed from sail to steam following the Civil War that persists to this day.

#Reviewing Jet Girl

#Reviewing Jet Girl

While Jet Girl illuminates the ways in which that fraternity still works to exclude women in uniform, it does so on an individual rather than collective level. The reason why Johnson’s shift in focus to the problems servicewomen face is jarring is because for so much of the book, it’s not evident that she faced many problems as a result of being a woman. Jet Girl succeeds most when Johnson shares her experiences honestly, and when she rightly celebrates her accomplishments in naval aviation.

#Reviewing Selling Sea Power

#Reviewing Selling Sea Power

The book is probably a cautionary tale as much as an object lesson for those engaged in a similar task, but in any case, Wadle offers a valuable, deeply researched, and multifaceted rendering of the navy’s relationship with the public during this period and a vivid descriptions of the problems it faced as it attempted to control its public image.

#Reviewing Small Boats and Daring Men

#Reviewing Small Boats and Daring Men

Armstrong’s greatest contribution is including irregular warfare, or guerre de razzia, as a legitimate strategy alongside guerre de course commerce destruction and guerre d’escadre fleet action. Irregular warfare is not portrayed only as an incidental strategy that came about as a last resort, but as an accepted form of naval strategy that is part of the more general concept of naval operations and establishes precedent for practicing that strategy in today’s conflicts.

#Reviewing To Master the Boundless Sea

#Reviewing To Master the Boundless Sea

Ultimately, Smith’s book will accommodate both scholars and seekers of American naval heritage. Its reception among historians proves this work as a major contribution to many fields and the broader understanding of the 19th century naval history that led to the American empire. One can appreciate the title To Master the Boundless Sea as an endless endeavor to challenge ourselves to strive and understand the immeasurable depths of the seas and the relationship between knowledge and the environment in which we live.

A Tradition Older

A Tradition Older

Navy culture builds on traditions of the sea and seafaring in a nearly unbroken line from the sailing fleets of the British Empire through today’s modern nuclear-powered ships of steel. One common saying is that the United States Navy is “over 240 years of tradition, unhampered by progress,” a simultaneous indictment of conservatism and a celebration of history and tradition. While the statement is not fully true, however, tradition is such a cornerstone of naval life that tradition is an unofficial fourth core value and the single most common rationale for any action. Sailors cite tradition in many ways and forms, often interchangeably with custom and routine.

I Am the Monarch of the Sea: The 1949 Revolt of the Admirals and Victory at Sea

I Am the Monarch of the Sea: The 1949 Revolt of the Admirals and Victory at Sea

The Revolt of the Admirals was a reaction to a perceived threat to Navy funding and missions. The Trump Administration now seeks to create yet another military service—the U.S. Space Force. In an era of declining defense budgets and falling enlistment rates, a Space Force will be seen as a threat to the resources of the existing military services. There are lessons to be learned by reflecting on what happened the last time America traveled down this road.

#Reviewing Oceans Ventured

#Reviewing Oceans Ventured

Secretary Lehman, awaiting the declassification of several key Cold War documents, recently published Oceans Ventured, meticulously documenting the Navy’s aggressive operations in the 1980s. Secretary Lehman’s readily accessible book tells the story as if you were having a casual conversation at the Black Pearl, listening to the reminiscences and sea stories of a well-traveled naval officer.