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.
Whether its yesterday’s chemical warfare and shell shock, or today’s improvised explosive devices and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, La Motte’s provocative no-nonsense style and clinical approach to medicine combined with her open critique of the military hierarchy’s approach to waging war, lack of forethought in treating casualties, and overall reaction to global conflict and injustices remains pertinent.
Western governments and corporations will seek ways to counter mounting threats related to disinformation, but they cannot eradicate its existence, nor can they dictate how information is processed by its consumers. The fight against disinformation is a generational struggle that will only be won through education and long-term cultural shifts related to the manner in which populations seek, consume, and validate information.
The challenge for the joint force is to enable decisions through the relentless and totally aligned pursuit of knowledge, systems, and procedures. This pursuit must be laser-focused on ensuring commanders have the time, the information, and the context to make linked battle-winning decisions, faster than their adversaries at every level of warfare. In a future conflict, between near-peer states, decisions made at anything less than the speed of relevance will be severely punished by the incisive actions of unforgiving foes.
Ultimately, a Europe that can enhance its own regional security and stability through military, economic, diplomatic, and judicial instruments, while more efficiently developing and procuring its military resources, aligns with U.S. interests. Such a security environment supports NATO’s focus on collective defense, as well as American ability to pursue its interests in other regions.
One critical ingredient may be required to establish a functioning collective security arrangement in the Middle East: the United States. The most important single factor to NATO’s success in the Cold War was the dedication and contributions by the U.S. in political capital, money, technology, military assets, and diplomacy. Canada, the United Kingdom, or any other member of the alliance could not replace the superpower status of America. Washington's goal of stabilizing the Middle East by creating a pro-American security alliance while significantly reducing its commitments presents a grim dilemma. It will likely prove impossible.
NATO is an instrument, one that has shown it can be adapted to different tasks and goals as the strategic setting changes. Those adaptations have not always been swift or graceful, yet the alliance’s endurance speaks to the fact that it eventually does meet its members’ needs. If NATO can reassert itself in the current environment as an engine of stability and not just a provider of military security it has a much stronger chance of persevering, even as its origins in the aftermath of World War II and the early years of the Cold War recede further into history.
Flight Risk briefly illuminates the Afghan Air Force’s historical point of origin and then traces it to the Coalition’s Air Advisory Mission from 2005-2015. As an Afghan logistics air advisor from 2008-2009, the author accurately depicts the complex human dimension of the air advisory mission beyond worn platforms to those who have served in a very costly war.
Despite its shortcomings, this captivating book has far-reaching implications for our future and an urgent message for national security leaders and elected officials. America in 2019 is a place where the value of agreed-upon truth holds fading relevance. Claims on Twitter that have long been conclusively defeated by objective research are often met with the respect generally accustomed to scientific principles. Spending a few hours poking around social media, one may find the Orwellian idea that two plus two can be made to equal five if enough people believe it. This embrace of deceit serves as a present danger for not only the United States but for the world.
Through its very publication Graff’s book joins an already existing body of writing about 9/11, a corpus to which he is already a significant contributor as author of The Threat Matrix and “We’re the Only Plane in the Sky.” Accounts that dig into what came before 9/11, accounts that unfold the events of that day, accounts of what came after, all carry their own unique virtues and drawbacks, but I am grateful for them all and believe we need all of them because they talk over and next to and alongside one another. Graff’s volume is a crucial addition to writing about 9/11 because of its immersive power and its capacity to plunge the reader back into the day itself.
Albertson helps provide more insight into Strategic Air Command leadership during LeMay’s tenure while illustrating the commander’s thought process and quiet, yet aggressive, style of leadership. The author’s excellent use of primary sources adroitly illustrate his thesis and fills a void in the current historiography. The book is a worthy and needed addition to the current historiography regarding the Cold War and strategic nuclear bombardment.
Bold Venture’s presence as a window into a little known air campaign that evolved and grew as fortunes, strategies, and leadership changed, makes it worthwhile for those interested in learning more about how American bomber crews and fighter pilots and their Japanese opponents interacted above the skies of the Pearl River Delta between 1942 and 1945.
This is a serious and effective contribution towards the study of one of the most important figures in British military history. Harris successfully dismantles flawed popular narratives concerning Haig’s generalship while avoiding the clientelism and nationalism that color some other historical reassessments. The Haig that emerges is neither butcher nor genius, but instead a diligent but aloof professional struggling to rise to the immense challenges posed by high command.
The narrative that claims the Battle of Midway served as the turning point in the Pacific Theater relies on the assertion that following the battle, the Japanese military shifted to the strategic defensive, ceding the initiative to the Allies in the Pacific Theater. Although this may seem logical, given that Imperial Japan never experienced a battlefield victory of strategic proportion against the U.S. following Midway, one must carefully examine Imperial Japan’s battlefield actions to determine the validity of this assertion.
The most significant changes to the character of warfare within the last 300 years resulted from the Enlightenment, with its ideas about personal responsibility, professionalism, and governmental control over the military. This was the real military revolution, the one that shaped the understanding and conduct of conflicts by designing the international legal framework within which nations wage war today.
This is the story of not only what war can do to a human brain, but what it specifically did to Brooke King’s brain. War Flower is a story of a child of a broken home going to war, getting spat out broken, and trying to piece her life back together for the sake of her sanity and the well-being of her children. It is a memoir of war.
President Eisenhower believed the National Security Council was the right coordinating body for senior United States policy and military officials to discuss and generate the most practical solutions to America’s most pressing security issues—independent of the department or agency they represent. Given today’s complex operating environment, what is required is an inclusive information warfare directorate, led by the National Security Council that identifies the appropriate means to protect the United States public and allies in an increasingly chaotic and dangerous era.
Former Defense Secretary and retired General James Mattis is said to have told Marines in Iraq that the most important six inches on the battlefield were between their ears. He was referring to the need for calm under fire. Today, his warning is appropriate for everyone, everywhere, because the United States is in an information war—and it is losing.
The book is probably a cautionary tale as much as an object lesson for those engaged in a similar task, but in any case, Wadle offers a valuable, deeply researched, and multifaceted rendering of the navy’s relationship with the public during this period and a vivid descriptions of the problems it faced as it attempted to control its public image.
The Fighter’s should be read, immediately reread, and then read again after a long introspection as readers will find it hauntingly illustrative of the installments in blood, innocence, tears, family heartache, and hardship, as well as time, peace of mind, and family harmony which will also be due in future conventional or in multi-domain conflicts.
