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

WWII

#Reviewing Mastering the Art of Command

#Reviewing Mastering the Art of Command

Hone’s study shows Nimitz understood command is an art based on collaboration that relies on effective personal relationships to extract ideas and understand new opportunities. He adopted his subordinates’ ideas and made them part of his own plans. Nimitz never backed away from difficult decisions and when appropriate was as bold as any commander. He relied on unified command with decentralized execution combined with the continual consideration of options; the figures and tables Hone provides show this in operation.

#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.

A Tsunami of Ships and Aircraft: #Reviewing Victory at Sea

A Tsunami of Ships and Aircraft: #Reviewing Victory at Sea

Almost eighty years after that war’s end, it sometimes seems little remains to be written about the war at sea. Is another history needed? Kennedy’s genius has always been his ability to highlight how the shifting tectonic plates of power underlie and help explain the surface history, sometimes represented in a single event. Rather than uncovering new history, Victory at Sea arranges existing history in ways that better reveal the whole.

The Management of Violence: #Reviewing Bomber Mafia

The Management of Violence: #Reviewing Bomber Mafia

Malcolm Gladwell is known for telling stories—stories about success, societal change, underdogs, and how people or groups of people misunderstand each other. In his book, The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World. Gladwell brings to life historical figures who were instrumental in developing the United States’ bombing campaigns during World War II.

#Reviewing The Folly of Generals: How Eisenhower’s Broad Front Strategy Lengthened World War II

#Reviewing The Folly of Generals: How Eisenhower’s Broad Front Strategy Lengthened World War II

Writing counterfactual history is always of tremendous difficulty, reminding me of astronomer Carl Sagan’s quip that history could only be a science if one possessed a time machine with which to run hypothesis-testing experiments. One can neither prove nor falsify the claims on offer here, but only guess at their plausibility. Such analytical exercises are welcome, and occasionally fruitful. The Folly of Generals will and should be welcomed by military enthusiasts, and is worthy of debate in staff colleges and other institutions of military education.

#Reviewing The World at War

#Reviewing The World at War

As the U.S. enters what may well be later regarded as the Second Interwar Period, where discussion of a return to Great Power Competition has intensified, good histories need to make sense of why such wars come about and how they are fought. Furthermore, as the world wars of the Twentieth Century recede, it may make sense to treat them as episodes of a more massive conflagration, much as we tend to see The Thirty Years’ War as a whole, rather than a start-stop-start string of individual battles. Readers looking for such an offering should look elsewhere, for World at War fails to deliver.

Working Backwards from Berlin to the Bocage: Coalescing Airpower Application in the European Theater of Operations in 1944

Working Backwards from Berlin to the Bocage: Coalescing Airpower Application in the European Theater of Operations in 1944

Proponents of strategic airpower argued endlessly with those who trusted in other ways to win. Yet, the resulting application demonstrated a far more complex and unified approach to airpower than envisioned by the inter-war airmen theorizing at the Air Corps Tactical School, who resolutely set out to determine how to bring Germany to its knees.

Teaching Multi-Domain Operations: The Case of British Field Marshal William Slim

Teaching Multi-Domain Operations: The Case of British Field Marshal William Slim

Just as the leaders and thinkers within the joint force are becoming more dedicated to the notion that a “post-joint” understanding of complex future military operations should be framed by the concept of multi- or cross-domain operations, the Joint Warfighting Department at the Air Command and Staff College has similarly altered its instruction of joint capabilities and planning. The department exchanged the traditional service-centric presentations, and discussions of capabilities and employment of forces, for a series of seminars covering military operations within the various domains of battle. So, instead of viewing military operations through the lens of a service structure, the department is emphasizing holistic joint force capabilities; the manner in which these capabilities facilitate access to, and maneuver within, the battlespace; and the various effects they can achieve by combining and synchronizing actions within and through the land, air, maritime, space, and cyber domains.