The Importance of the Strategic Level: Germany in the Second World War

The Importance of the Strategic Level: Germany in the Second World War

When looking at the different German levels of war, what mostly doomed Germany is its ideology-inspired, apocalyptic, and unrealistic strategy. The Third Reich’s flawed strategy led it to declare war on both the Soviet Union and the United States; fail to recognize that its operational ways were not necessarily appropriate to obtain its strategic ends; stubbornly refuse to capitulate when defeat was most likely; and prefer total destruction over limited defeat.

Command in a Time of COVID

Command in a Time of COVID

Commanders should and will be judged by how they lead their units through this crisis. They can stand on the sidelines and await more complete medical information and higher headquarter guidance, or they can respond proactively to the crisis and develop a local plan to combat the virus. The path the commander takes is likely to leave a lasting mark on their unit.

#Reviewing All For You

#Reviewing All For You

All For You satisfies the narrative requirements the Smithton readers demand from romance: it provides escape and a happy ending. But that assessment does not capture the full complexity of a novel that has its characters argue over how to provide for and take care of service members, how to prepare for deployment, and how to deal with its aftermath. And it doesn’t capture the full complexity of a novel that does all of that while pointing to dynamics of race, rank, and gender.

#Reviewing Killing for the Republic

#Reviewing Killing for the Republic

Killing for the Republic is, for ancient history, fairly accessible, and between that and its celebration of civic virtues and the republican spirit it may garner a significant audience. It does speak to fundamental questions: what made Rome special, and how is Rome relevant today? Republics do need citizens invested in military service and in public life generally. In the military sphere, for example, Eliot Cohen has written frequently and recently about civic virtue and citizen soldiering. While Brand's book asks us to consider the place of civic virtue in modern Republics, its mischaracterizations of Rome's military history and the civic virtues of its citizens make it difficult to recommend.

What Compelled the Roman Way of Warfare? #Reviewing Killing for the Republic

 What Compelled the Roman Way of Warfare? #Reviewing Killing for the Republic

While still a republic, Rome built its empire through the virtues of its agrarian-based citizens and thanks to a political system characterized by the pursuit of liberty through divided sovereignty and participatory citizenship. The foundational element was a valorized civic mindedness, nourished by religious rituals, civic monuments, a commitment to family honor and communal glory, and that agrarian lifestyle. The latter habituated Roman citizens to the essential need of fulfilling their duty. Rome successfully cultivated martial virtues among the populace so that ordinary citizens could pursue their duty toward family and patria while also earning individual glory, but without threatening the delicate balance required to preserve the republican state.

#Reviewing The Russian Understanding of War

#Reviewing The Russian Understanding of War

Jonssan’s thesis is that the Russian government and armed forces believe there has been a change in the nature of war with the advent of the information revolution. Specifically, information warfare is now so potent that it can achieve political goals commensurate with war without recourse to military means. The resulting book offers an efficient overview of trends in Russian military thought since the collapse of the Soviet Union paired with detailed examinations of the two major subjects that have defined those trends: information warfare and color revolutions.

Clausewitzian Deep Tracks: #Reviewing “Guide to Tactics, or the Theory of the Combat”

Clausewitzian Deep Tracks: #Reviewing “Guide to Tactics, or the Theory of the Combat”

This analysis is anything but exhaustive. What separates “Guide to Tactics, or the Theory of the Combat” is how it situates itself in relation to On War. In many ways it serves as its inverse. Given that On War functions to describe the relationship of war to politics, “Guide to Tactics, or the Theory of the Combat” describes the relationship of tactics to war.

#Reviewing Demystifying the American Military

#Reviewing Demystifying the American Military

Paula G. Thornhill has written an easily accessible work explaining the origins and evolution of the United States’ armed forces under the Constitution. She aims to make American military institutions more understandable to readers by discussing their foundations, evolving missions and organizations, how they have functioned in war and peace, and the tradition of civilian control.

The Moonshot Formula: Rediscovering Innovation in the U.S. Air Force

The Moonshot Formula: Rediscovering Innovation in the U.S. Air Force

The United States Air Force is in an arms race. Decades of dominance have allowed the force to slip into complacency, while near-peer adversaries have quietly developed capabilities to contest U.S. power across all domains. To re-assert America’s military primacy, the U.S. Air Force needs to transform vague buzzwords like lethality, agility, and innovation into a focused mission, using the department’s substantial resources to create an Air Force that can and will win.

#Reviewing McCain and the Triumph of Naval Air Power

#Reviewing McCain and the Triumph of Naval Air Power

This is a serious biography of one of the most important task force commanders in American naval history. Trimble dismantles some of the historical and academic criticism concerning McCain’s scouting during Guadalcanal and his handling of the fleet during typhoons while maintaining fair criticism where needed. McCain comes forward as a real human struggling with the immense challenges posed by handling the navy’s air component combined with managing a huge task force operating in a hostile environment.

On American Grand Strategy

On American Grand Strategy

The country should expect its national security establishment and non-government stakeholders to be deep thinkers in America’s strategic vision in addition to being able to respond to crises. Instead, the country continues to have a disjointed, fiscally neglected, highly polarized, and heavily militaristic foreign policy that lacks a view of the important strategic horizon. It is time for the United States to rediscover its national and international grand strategic goals.

Britain and Europe in the Brexit Years

Britain and Europe in the Brexit Years

The complex challenges of the 2020s were always set to be difficult for the European powers to contend with but the Brexit decision—the biggest strategic shift in policy within Europe since the end of the Cold War and one taken as an afterthought by a British electorate with other issues on its mind in the referendum—has increased the risks of strategic policy failure for all European powers.

#Reviewing Incoming: Sex, Drugs, and Copenhagen

Incoming: Sex, Drugs, and Copenhagen. Jennifer Corley, Justin Hudnall, Francisco Martínezcuello, and Tenley Lozano (Eds). San Diego, CA: So Say We All Press, 2019.


Sex, Drugs, and Copenhagen is the latest iteration of the Incoming print and public radio series. Drawing on the work of So Say We All’s Veterans’ Writers Division, the book presents an eclectic collection of stories from veterans, their families, and the surrounding U.S. military community. Consequently, it seems only fitting the volume begins with a dedication to a member of that close-knit circle. A former serviceman, Gary Anderson, participated in writing groups throughout his life as a means of sharing and processing his experiences. Pondering the value of storytelling, his niece Kelly Patterson explains, “[Gary’s] writing gave him a vehicle to express joy, to honor the loves of his life…to show fondness, appreciation and gratitude to his friends and to share things that made him laugh or made him curious.”[1] She goes on to note that it equally provided him “with a place to air his frustrations, vent righteous anger and work through his difficulties.”[2] This is the second such anthology of stories to join the Incoming series and provides a similarly expansive opportunity for its own contributors to reflect on the impact of a life in uniform.

The book is part of a long American tradition of military memoirs and war literature that extends as far back as the War of Independence and can be traced through the nineteenth century to the Civil War.[3] During the first half of the twentieth century, veterans of the First and Second World Wars generated vast numbers of fictional and non-fictional accounts. In keeping with the realism of well-known nineteenth century authors such as Stephan Crane in The Red Badge of Courage, this generation of authors revealed the brutality and sometimes comic surrealism of modern combat in greater detail than ever before.[4] Moreover, their words have become synonymous with contemporary understandings of conflict, from John Dos Passos’ Three Soldiers to Joseph Heller’s Catch 22. American involvement in Vietnam cast a long shadow over the remainder of the century and irreversibly shaped public conceptions about what it meant to be a veteran and the challenges of returning home in the wake of an unpopular war.[5] Since the creation of the all-volunteer force in 1973, several additional generations of American servicemen and women have deployed abroad to places as far flung as Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Each in their turn has continued to shift and shape our collective consciousness of the military experience.

In keeping with this tradition, Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen reflects on combat, an experience that many feel lies at the heart of war. In the opening chapter of the book, contributor Colin D. Halloran vividly and unflinchingly compares the intimacy of killing, to the intimacy of sex. He observes that the:

…images are sharper, you can feel—sense—every bead of sweat…When a drop falls, from a forehead or a breast, and lands on your arm, you feel it shatter, feel it spread its saline shrapnel across every micrometer of your skin. It’s only when it’s over that you realize just how little or how much time has passed, a simultaneous moment and eternity.[6]

Expanding on this theme, Iraq and Afghanistan veteran Dan Lopez describes the hardship and unexpected joy of front line service in, “Smoking Weed with the Taliban.” Retelling his story to one of the book’s editors, Justin Hudnall, Lopez explains that while “Iraq was a bitter, bitter beast for me…I loved my job. I was a squad leader, infantry squad leader dude, how much more could you ask for?”[7] For others though, war is simply about making it through another day. In “Survival,” Dennis Williams focuses on one such harrowing encounter with a member of the Viet Cong, who he discovers is just as reluctant to kill as Williams himself. Ruminating on the life-altering moment, he concludes that “most warriors are not natural killers, but are forced to do so by war.”[8]

While the physical act of fighting remains pivotal for many veterans, it represents only one part of military life. The book deftly draws the reader’s attention beyond the field of battle to life on deployment, with all its associated boredom and absurdity. For example, in “Hurry Up and Wait,” Brooke King remembers the uneasy tension that accompanied troops as they waited to take part in the invasion of Iraq during the First Gulf War.[9] In “Pass the Hot Sauce,” Susanne Aspley evocatively describes her time in Bosnia, recalling that “on deployments, I missed something I never knew could be missed…I missed color…the warmth of red, the calmness of blue, the luxury of purple.”[10] Striking a lighter note, Joshua Callaway entertainingly muses on his efforts to break up the tedium of guard duties in Afghanistan by buying a pet monkey and getting far more than he initially bargained for.[11]

The book expertly weaves in stories that reflect the wide diversity of service life, including events that take place far from a theater of combat but prove no less traumatic or transformative for the authors. This includes Allison Gill’s “Rape Jokes.” One of the first women accepted to the U.S. Navy’s nuclear program in the early 1990s, Gill offers a harrowing account of being raped at a barracks party and the poor response she received from both the armed forces and law enforcement. Equally important and compelling, she describes how she coped over the subsequent years and eventually returned to her roots as a trained musician as a way of healing.[12]

The book strives to incorporate the stories of military families. Often absent from other accounts, this collection rightly recognizes the lasting impact a life in uniform has on both service personnel and the extended network of supporters surrounding them. In “New Traditions,” Delia Knight contemplates the superstitious rituals she adopted to keep her brother safe on deployment, from sitting in the same row at church to taking the same route to work each morning. What is more, she considers the depth of love required to help that same brother move forward on his return home.[13] In “Archaeology,” Wendy Hill offers readers a striking portrayal of what it’s like for the spouse left behind in the aftermath of a death. A deeply personal account, she describes the pain of losing a partner while struggling to help her young children connect with a father they were too small to remember.[14]

Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen is part of a growing body of literature written by and for veterans in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that portrays the joy, despair, boredom, and trauma of military life.[15] The book acknowledges both the ugliness and the beauty of the experience. Since the Vietnam War, popular culture in the United States and other Western countries has overwhelmingly depicted the veteran as a broken, scarred figure. Television shows and movies often portray ex-service personnel teetering on the edge as victims of politically contentious deployments.[16] This book does not shy away from that experience.[17] However, it asks readers to see the writers as multidimensional human beings with agency and a diversity of experience. It also brings together multiple generations of veterans and their families from Vietnam to Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

War Art (Scott Olson/Getty)

In Brandon Lingie’s story “Graffiti,” the Afghanistan veteran describes the stencils and art that adorned the walls of the American-led Kandahar airfield and the wing of Leipzig-Halle’s airport reserved for returning American forces. Depicting the latter, he recounts in detail everything from the unit decals and logos to the names of fallen friends. As he poignantly recalls:

The lives of thousands of young people, in limbo, are condensed on these walls. Their words ambushed me. Mostly, these are walls of bravado. The wall writers’ friends could see them unguarded if they wrote honest. But how does one get more honest than a name and a date to prove your existence?[18]

All human beings are storytellers, and as writers we seek to leave behind a piece of that story for whomever may wish to pick it up. Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen is an important reminder of the therapeutic and communal power of storytelling and its continued centrality to understanding the modern war experience.


Meghan Fitzpatrick received her Ph.D. in War Studies from King’s College London. She is a Strategic Analyst and an Adjunct Professor for the Royal Military College of Canada. Her peer reviewed works can be found in such distinguished journals as War & Society. She has written extensively about operational stress injuries and psychological resilience.


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Header Image: Smoking in Afghanistan (Kabul, City in the Wind)


Notes:

[1] Kelly Patterson, “Dedication to Gary Armstrong,” in Jennifer Corley, Justin Hudnall, Francisco Martínezcuello and Tenley Lozano, Eds. Incoming: Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (US: So Say We All Press, 2019), ix.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Yuval Noah Harari, “Military Memoirs: A Historical Overview of the Genre from the Middle Ages to the Late Modern Era,” War in History 14.3 (2007), pp. 297-298.

[4] David Lundberg, “The American Literature of War: The Civil War, World War I, and World War II,” American Quarterly 36.3 (1984), pp. 376-287.

[5] Frank Usbeck, “Writing Yourself Home: U.S. Veterans, Creative Writing and Social Activism,” European Journal of American Studies 13.2 (2018), p. 2.

[6] Colin D. Halloran, “Tracers,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), p. 1.

[7] Dan Lopez to Justin Hudnall, “Smoking Weed with the Taliban,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), p. 97.

[8] Dennis Williams, “Survival,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), p. 219.

[9] Brooke King, “Hurry Up and Wait,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), pp. 81-82.

[10] Susanne Aspley, “Pass the Hot Sauce,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), pp. 18.

[11] Joshua Callaway, “Monkey Business,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), pp. 6-15.

[12] Allison Gill, “Rape Jokes,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), pp. 177-181.

[13] Delia Knight, “New Traditions,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), pp. 89-94.

[14] Wendy Hill, “Archaeology,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), pp. 232-241.

[15] Examples include: Andrew Carroll, ed. Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families. Updated Edition (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2006);  “UC Student Veterans Writing Workshop.” Interdisciplinary Humanities Center UC Santa Barbara. Accessed 19 December 2019. Web; Veterans Writing Project. “Veterans Writing Project.” Accessed 8 December 2019. Web.

[16] Meghan Fitzpatrick, “Veterans, Victims and the ‘Culture of Trauma.’” Kings of War/Center for Company Leaders West Point Blog (2 March 2015).

[17] Brandon Lingie, “Graffit,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), p. 50.

[18] Brandon Lingie, “Graffit,” in Sex, Drugs and Copenhagen (2019), p. 50.

Establishing an Arctic Security Institution: Essentials from NORAD and NATO

Establishing an Arctic Security Institution: Essentials from NORAD and NATO

The High North is creeping back into the global strategic picture with increasing difficulty in avoiding discussion involving defense issues. Key studies on the question of what defense institutions, especially NATO and NORAD, should—or should not—do in the region have proliferated over the years, particularly following Russia’s 2014 Crimean fait accompli. Akin to the next great game, a final frontier set to host a battle for Arctic riches and unclaimed territory, the High North is a strategic theater devoid of agreed rules.

The 2020 Strategy Bridge Student Writing Competition on Strategy

The 2020 Strategy Bridge Student Writing Competition on Strategy

The Strategy Bridge’s Student Writing Competition is back for 2020! The competition is open to students attending civilian universities and military war or staff colleges at every level, including distance learning, correspondence, and fellowship programs between 1 Jun 2019 and 31 May 2020. The competition deadline is 1 Jun 2020. Winning articles will be announced in July 2020 and published on The Strategy Bridge thereafter.

Four Paths: How Interstate Competition Ends

Four Paths: How Interstate Competition Ends

States, organizations, and individuals engaged in competition must ask themselves: Will I win or lose this competition if I make no changes to systems or policy? Whether they predict a persistent advantage or imminent decline, they must strive to identify the culprit that will lead them to the winner’s circle or cause their failure. Only then should they consider positive action to cement their advantage or prevent its deterioration.