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

Samuel P. Huntington

Change and Continuity? #Reviewing Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations

Change and Continuity? #Reviewing Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations

Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations shows how the various views of civil-military relations have transformed in a dramatic fashion, but also how much we rely on old conceptual tools to study new phenomena. It definitely shifts existing conversations about civil-military relations, allowing us to imagine that it is possible to move beyond Huntington…Moving past Huntington's model means recognizing complication and fluid boundaries. This departure from Huntington could also build better military and civilian expertise to understand and navigate civil-military relations, rather than dangerously assuming superiority in a military class that is isolated from democratic society.

#Reviewing Four Guardians

#Reviewing Four Guardians

Scholars of civil-military relations sometimes have a bad habit of grounding their debates in the theories of the past instead of revising those theories or developing more appropriate frameworks that could inform our understanding of the recent past and prepare us for the future. In his recent book, Four Guardians: A Principled Agent View of American Civil-Military Relations, however, Jeff Donnithorne attempts to buck that trend.

#Reviewing Emory Upton: Misunderstood Reformer

#Reviewing Emory Upton: Misunderstood Reformer

The heart of this biography is the account of Upton’s career as a military reformer. Here, David Fitzpatrick has succeeded. Too often we are ignorant of the origins and take for granted many aspects of military training, education, doctrine, leadership, and organization. By understanding the hard-experience that gave rise to these foundational aspects of the military profession, there is still plenty of opportunity to continue Upton’s work in improving it.