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

#Reviewing

#Reviewing Touching the Dragon

#Reviewing Touching the Dragon

There is an inviting quality to plain-spoken wisdom. We see it these days in succinct and quippy memes and social media posts that distill for us complex personal, national, and global challenges in 280 characters or less. Yet, as satisfying as it may be to blindly accept uncomplicated truths, one of the great dangers in having our biases confirmed is that we stop asking questions of a complicated world, which is how we actually learn, grow, and come to meaningful solutions to problems both simple and complex.

#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 Race and the Cold War in Africa

#Reviewing Race and the Cold War in Africa

America can still be a voice against oppression overseas even as it struggles to become a more perfect union at home. For people striving for freedom and justice abroad—from Zimbabwe to Hong Kong to Belarus—the broad movement for racial equality in America illustrates the aspirational and redemptive qualities that make America’s democracy so exceptional. One hopes that this struggle against structural racism, like the first Civil Rights Movement, will strengthen and inform the future of American statecraft.

#Reviewing Victory

#Reviewing Victory

Cian O’Driscoll has written a thoughtful, erudite book that manages to insightfully explore both just war theory and the nature of war. Across seven pithy chapters plus an introduction and conclusion, O’Driscoll develops an extended argument about why the concept of victory in war is problematic for just war theory and how the integration of victory into just war theory can lead to a more realistic, though tragic, appraisal of just war theory. His conclusions should interest not only just war scholars, but also the broader community of war studies scholars and military practitioners.

#Reviewing U.S. Policy Toward Africa: Eight Decades of Realpolitik

#Reviewing U.S. Policy Toward Africa: Eight Decades of Realpolitik

Ambassador Herman Cohen is one of many career diplomats, along with ambassadors like John Campbell and David Shinn, who devote personal time to researching, understanding, and commenting on African affairs. Cohen’s most recent work traces U.S. foreign policy in Africa from Franklin Roosevelt to Donald Trump, intertwining historical files and personal insights to weave a picture of what the author titles, Eight Decades of Realpolitik.

#Reviewing How the Few Became the Proud

#Reviewing How the Few Became the Proud

Military historians and Marine Corps history buffs will gain much from reading How the Few Became the Proud. Short enough to be finished in several sittings, well-organized to allow for skipping around to focus on one’s individual interests, and useful as a scholarly reference tool for writers and researchers alike, this book will undoubtedly serve the military history community well.

#Reviewing a Review of Kaplan and Another Kaplan: To Kill Nations: American Strategy in the Air-Atomic Age and the Rise of Mutually Assured Destruction

#Reviewing a Review of Kaplan and Another Kaplan: To Kill Nations: American Strategy in the Air-Atomic Age and the Rise of Mutually Assured Destruction

There are so many themes, plots, and subplots within this text that it is difficult to distill the work, but the main argument is that the U.S. Air Force incrementally developed an atomic air strategy from 1945 until the strategy fell apart after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kaplan’s narrative relies heavily on this event to sever the interconnected pieces of atomic strategy and air strategy once the popular imagination began to view atomic weapons as unusable.

#Reviewing Deglobalization and International Security

#Reviewing Deglobalization and International Security

Hammes provides a current long-look ahead with respect to the unfolding fourth industrial revolution and the dramatic and ubiquitous changes it will bring. Published as part of the Cambria Rapid Communications in Conflict and Security series, this work clearly meets the editor’s goal of “providing policy makers, practitioners, analysts, and academics with in-depth analysis of fast-moving topics that require urgent yet informed debate.” Moreover, Hammes brings together the fields of international political economy and security studies in a way that makes important contributions to both areas.

In a Time of Global Crisis, Lessons from an Unhappy Warrior: #Reviewing a Biography of Alanbrooke

In a Time of Global Crisis, Lessons from an Unhappy Warrior: #Reviewing a Biography of Alanbrooke

Alanbrooke’s six years at the apex of the British military, at a time when the nation faced its greatest crisis of modern history, tells a story of the inherent value of deep professional competence, a willingness to register dissent, and a commitment to an ideal greater than any single organization or individual. Alanbrooke proved the criticality of remaining unruffled by those things outside of his control, yet demanding the very best from those within his domain.

#Reviewing Enduring Alliance

#Reviewing Enduring Alliance

Sayle explains how most of NATO’s contemporary challenges are reminiscent of the Cold War. Americans always wanted allies to contribute more, and allies always refused. Competing national interests, an aggressive Russia, and tension between personalities are not new stories. During the Cold War, NATO’s survival was indeed due to the Soviet threat in great measure, but it was also due to the statesmanship of its leaders, including successive U.S. presidents who managed to overcome their disagreements with other NATO allies. Above all, what brought the allies together—liberal democratic values—is itself a threat to NATO due to the election of NATO-skeptic leaders, which the alliance’s leaders had feared in the past.

Up The Emmitsburg Road: #Reviewing Gettysburg's Peach Orchard

Up The Emmitsburg Road: #Reviewing Gettysburg's Peach Orchard

For generations of military historians, the Emmitsburg Road, the highway that runs from Emmitsburg in Maryland into southern Pennsylvania—and that, over the course of a single mile, bisects the Gettysburg battlefield—has served as a kind of festering gash in America’s historiographic landscape. The road’s importance is at the heart of Lee’s attack plan on the battle’s second day, when he directed Longstreet to use it as the geographic centerpiece of his assault. Longstreet, Lee said, was to attack “up the Emmitsburg Road.” The problem is that while Lee had an apparently clear vision of what he meant, at least some of his subordinates, and generations of historians, did not.

#Reviewing Imperfect Patriot

#Reviewing Imperfect Patriot

This is a work that succeeds at examining the broad impacts, both good and bad, of a career public servant with an emphasis more on the latter than the former. The author sheds light and places blame on the central figure, although it can be assumed that blame does not solely rest with Powell alone and also resides with others outside the scope of this work. Matthews provides a warning to all that even those most admired are not infallible. This work should be read by all national security professionals, uniformed service members, or any other governmental agency including the department of state and the intelligence community.

#Reviewing It's My Country Too

#Reviewing It's My Country Too

As two women veterans who have taken on this project to elevate the voices of other women like them, Bell and Crow are taking an active role in shaping and preserving not only their own legacy but also that of the many undercounted women who have joined them in military service. The pages feel alive with agency and pride. This is a volume with more of a mission statement than a thesis statement. The unmistakable message of this book is: we are here, we have been here, and we have a voice. There are a lot of people who need to hear that.

#Reviewing The Bomb

#Reviewing The Bomb

Kaplan does a wonderful job of historically tracing many of the interactions and viewpoints of presidents and key military officers, but he does not make a serious attempt to theorize how certain sets of interactions, personalities, and/or experiences will conditionally affect nuclear deterrence. Still, The Bomb is both timely and classic, a joy to read, and rich in information for students of military history, American political bargaining, and nuclear strategy.

#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 an Incipient Mutiny

#Reviewing an Incipient Mutiny

All of the author’s evidence and contextual explanations surrounding the Goodier court martial make this case clearly and effectively. Messimer’s work also sheds light on why flying training and flight duty pay are so thoroughly regulated in the military today. And over one hundred years later, it reminds us how military organizations in our country must be accountable for their responsibilities to the public, to the Press, and to Congress.

#Reviewing Churchill’s Phoney War

#Reviewing Churchill’s Phoney War

Clews’ book certainly fills a void in the study of Churchill during the Second World War. His analysis does provide a useful study in the difficulty of crafting a strategy that serves multiple constituencies and solves multiple problems. Modern students of strategy should take heart that they are in good company when they seek solutions to no-win scenarios.