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

Shakespeare

Beyond the Band of Brothers: Henry V, Moral Agency, and Obedience

Beyond the Band of Brothers: Henry V, Moral Agency, and Obedience

What level of moral agency, judgment, and responsibility do individual members of the military bear in war? In 2006 Lt Ehren Wahtada tried to selectively conscientiously object to deploying to Iraq, while in 2013 service members appeared on social media to proclaim they would not fight in a war in Syria[1] . These are only two examples that illustrate the way in which this debate is live and permeates military culture. On the academic side, Michael Walzer and Jeff McMahan (and their proxies) have been engaged in this debate for quite some time, pitting individualist accounts against the conventional view that soldiers are instruments of the State. I want to examine this debate and put forward an alternative view to those typically espoused, expanding and advancing the ethical discussion in the process.

Knowing and Not Knowing: The Intangible Nature of War

Knowing and Not Knowing: The Intangible Nature of War

The Boy Soldier tells us all we need to know of war. He intrinsically knows, as all soldiers do, exactly what is about to happen. Yet the boy, and every other soldier from time immemorial, could not possibly know what shape their experience would take. How war would change them, and change under them. Horses replaced by machinery. Open trenches rendered useless by artillery. Static defenses circumvented by maneuver warfare. The world’s sole superpower maimed one man at a time by homemade bombs. This is war: universal and unique. This is Dunsinane.