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.
Frontier zones are the most complex and interesting of regions. They have been explored as wild badlands of smuggling and insurgency in the international system in many recent books from Niall Ferguson, George Friedman, Robert Kaplan, and David Kilcullen. In this vein, Scott MacEachern takes a microscopic view of one relatively small frontier area around the Mandara Mountains on the Cameroon-Nigeria border and describe its inhabitants’ cultural evolution over seven millennia.
The widening rift between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley endangers national security in an era when global powers are embracing strategic military-technical competition. As countries race to harness the next potentially offsetting technology, artificial intelligence, the implications of relinquishing their competitive edge could drastically change the landscape of the next conflict. The Pentagon has struggled—and continues to struggle—to make a solid business case for technology vendors to sell their products to the Defense Department. Making the economic case to Silicon Valley requires process improvement, but building a strong relationship will necessitate embracing the ethical questions surrounding the development and employment of artificial intelligence on the battlefield.
The concern here, however, is not that death by robot represents a more horrible outcome than when a human pulls the trigger. Rather it has to do with the nature of morality itself and the central role respect for persons, understood in the Kantian sense as something moral agents owe each other, plays in forming our moral judgments.
The experiences of American soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, sometimes over and over again, are central to this story, including consideration of the lasting impact of their time abroad. American culture is already rife with conversations about post-traumatic stress, veterans’ services, and treatments following deployments. Unfortunately, the voice of the veterans themselves is seldom heard with clarity in these conversations.
The Russian military is developing the doctrine and capabilities for gaining and contesting battlefield awareness that will pose a significant challenge to U.S. forces in any future conflict with Russia. The military’s focus on information dominance extends from a broader belief among Russian leadership that information confrontation is one of the fundamental ways in which states compete. While the Russian military has always been adept at bringing tremendous firepower to bear during combat operations, it has also been a brawler, needing to get in contact with its opponent before being able to fight.
As dramatic changes in society are redefining the role of communication in organizational leadership across civil industry in the democratized world, a similar topic of professionalism is inspiring new conversations among U.S. military leaders. Public affairs officers and military researchers have identified challenges that complicate the best use of communication talent in the military. Insufficient training, how and where many public affairs officers are placed within unit organizational staffs, and unit cultures have historically marginalized the career field, inhibiting the inculcation of a professional ethos across the public affairs community.
No general would ever suggest you read this book, and maybe that is why you should make time to do it. The first person perspective offered by Kassabian is unpolished, irreverent, and told from a soldier’s perspective. In a world full of strategic challenges it is, in my view, a good thing for those making the decisions and grappling with the consequences to get an appreciation for what the greatest of plans looks like when 18-year-old Americans are sent forth to implement them.
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.
The long-serving professionals of the modern U.S. Army may seem worlds apart from their citizen-soldier forebears. Yet, the lessons outlined here have echoes in the present. A growth in military marketing and benefits following the rise of the all-volunteer force in 1973 testifies to the ongoing effort to satisfy the motivations of prospective recruits.
It is questionable whether the UN can really afford to shift political responsibility to local actors while renouncing to vigorous political initiatives as a mediator. To leverage its global legitimacy, the UN will need to take into account the inherently partiality of military tools and to work around its implications, insisting that politics need to come first.
An unparalleled account of the American Battle Monuments Commission. He identifies heretofore nameless staffers of the agency and offers a more informed sketch of its commissioners. This is an incredible contribution to the history of the American Battle Monuments Commission, as no finding aid or guidebook of names to its records exists. However, the reverential and uncritical tone with which Conner treats the American Battle Monuments Commission is at times tiresome, and he offers sparse analysis beyond what the archive demonstrates—even when it reveals obvious prejudice.
Over the last decade, military theorists and authors in the fields of future warfare and strategy have examined in detail the potential impacts of an ongoing revolution in information technology. There has been a particular focus on the impacts of automation and artificial intelligence on military and national security affairs. This attention on silicon-based disruption has nonetheless meant that sufficient attention may not have been paid to other equally profound technological developments. One of those developments is the field of biotechnology.
A kleptocracy and a vast narco-economy rot Mexico’s weak institutions. Continuous gun battles and the failing military and police force raise concerns over Mexico’s stability as a state. The power dynamic continues to shift where the state continues to lose any monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and there's a real possibility that Mexico can fail as a state and one that is on the United States’ border. The United States needs to take a hard look at Mexico and treat it as a growing security threat.
To a woman on active duty, constantly trying to prove her value—or, at the very least, that her mere presence isn’t destructive—the majority of Westley’s behavior is mortifying. I did not enjoy reading this book. But as Westley’s story developed, I stopped cringing as much over her exploits and started wondering more if she ever had much of a chance. Westley’s account reads extreme, but I’ve seen the basics too many times before.
An axiom of political theory is that any stable and sustainable polity must be able to express and renew a cultural and political form with broad legitimacy among its constituent communities. Already impoverished by market fundamentalism, this capacity is further endangered in the digital age by its attack on the cognitive conditions critical to the reproduction of historical memory.
Victory. That is why we are all here. But, does anyone know what victory in war looks like over the next several decades, or how to achieve it? There is no shortage of authors in the ever-growing literature on strategy and national defense telling us both what victory in war will look like and how to get there. Count me a skeptic. I find a whiff of moonshine and snake oil surrounds most in this crowded field, and I struggle to find thoughtful analysis among the raft of novelists selling books, technocrats fighting for budgets, and thought leaders peddling warmed-over and outdated scholarship. In a further turn of the screw, one often encounters real insight and snake oil in the same work.
