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 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 The Lone Leopard

#Reviewing The Lone Leopard

In his novel The Lone Leopard, Sharifullah Dorani provides a sweeping view of the struggle that Afghans endured under the burden of foreign influence, ethnic and religious seams, and the clash between traditional conservative cultural norms versus more modern liberal western ideals. The book does an excellent job of bringing the reader into the complicated societal mosaic that makes Afghanistan so unique.

#Reviewing Against All Tides

#Reviewing Against All Tides

The “Kitty Hawk Race Riot'” holds an important place in American naval history. An illustration of the deep and unavoidable connections between the sailors and officers of the Navy and the society they served during the Civil Rights era, it is often mentioned in passing but rarely examined in detail. Marv Truhe’s new book sets out to rectify that oversight and to help readers dive deeply into both the details of the history and the important questions it raises about the Navy of the 1970s as well as the Navy of the 21st century.

#Reviewing The Digital Silk Road

#Reviewing The Digital Silk Road

This short, yet comprehensive, and extensively documented examination of the Digital Silk Road and the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to develop world-dominating technology (through collaboration between the military, state-owned enterprises, and closely associated parastatal private companies), will be of interest to policymakers, national security professionals, and hopefully U.S. and Western business leaders.

#Reviewing Backfire

#Reviewing Backfire

In a series of short, engaging, and clearly written chapters, Demarais breaks down why the U.S. found sanctions such an appealing policy instrument; how their widespread use in the 1990s and 2000s triggered changes and upheavals, as countries around the world coped with the issues of challenges of compliance; and, finally, how sanctions implementation has generally backfired, imposing costs on the U.S. and its allies while encouraging targeted states towards policies and strategies designed to insulate their governments and economies from U.S. pressure.

#Reviewing Military Alliances in the Twenty-First Century

#Reviewing Military Alliances in the Twenty-First Century

In this welcome addition to the literature on alliances, international relations scholar Alexander Lanoszka makes an optimistic case for the continued salience of the U.S.-led alliance system. In his two-hundred-page study, he reviews the most common areas that past studies have focused on: alliance formation, fears of entrapment and abandonment, burden-sharing, warfare, and alliance termination.

The Master Negotiator?

The Master Negotiator?

The title of Negroponte’s book nicely sums up her work. Her first four segments explore questions and themes related to James Baker’s overall time as secretary of state. She explores the real goal for the foreign policy review initiated by the National Security Council and how it affected all aspects of President George H.W. Bush’s administration; the challenges of German reunification and Germany’s admission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); the response of the United States to the June 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre; and the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s August 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

#Reviewing Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America's Misguided Wars

#Reviewing Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America's Misguided Wars

Despite its omissions, Paths of Dissent is an exceptionally substantive and moving book for anyone interested in personal accounts at the intersection of ethics and military service…As America exits another costly decades-long counterinsurgency era  into an uncertain future, it  requires courageous dissenters…to avoid national security malpractice. It is only by capturing the perspectives of those who are willing to make personal sacrifices in informing the public’s understanding of war that principled countries can avoid waste and hypocrisy in its conduct.

#Reviewing The American Way of Irregular Warfare

#Reviewing The American Way of Irregular Warfare

While satisfied with the U.S. military’s tactical performance in irregular warfare, Cleveland rejects the argument that special operations can raid their way to victory or capture enough terrain. Cleveland uses the strategic failures of the U.S. in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan to argue the U.S. military must focus on its failure to structurally, doctrinally, and militarily invest in irregular warfare to succeed.

#Reviewing Our Best War Stories

#Reviewing Our Best War Stories

This collection is remarkable because, whether or not everything in each story is strictly speaking factual, everything is true. If you’re interested in military culture, the ongoing cultural change in the armed forces, or just looking for excellent writing from veterans and their families, this is a book that belongs on your shelf.

Aligning Tactics to Strategy: #Reviewing Waging a Good War

Aligning Tactics to Strategy: #Reviewing Waging a Good War

Ninety years after the abolition of slavery in the United States, Blacks faced a dominant caste system in the 1950s that used the violence and power of the state to deny equal treatment or opportunity across the deep south. In more general terms, when confronting an imbalance of power, a subjugated people face a choice between submission or finding a way to alter the nature of the fight. To overcome this disparity, the Civil Rights Movement developed a strategy that aligned their actions to their desired change.

#Reviewing Flying Camelot

#Reviewing Flying Camelot

In Flying Camelot: The F-15, the F-16, and the Weaponization of Fighter Pilot Nostalgia, Michael W. Hankins argues that starting as early as the 1960s, a group of fighter pilots and reformers sought to change the procurement process for aircraft to emphasize the importance of the fighter pilot and air superiority missions. Hankins states that this resulted in the development and acquisition of the F-15 and F-16 fighters by the United States Air Force. Hankins further asserts that these reformers sought to change how fighter pilots were trained to emphasize the importance of dogfighting and air superiority campaigns over other aspects of air combat.

#Reviewing War Transformed

#Reviewing War Transformed

The character of war is rapidly changing. The increasing availability of evolving technology confounds previous frameworks for military operations. Socioeconomic factors and demographic shifts complicate manpower and force generation models for national defense. Ubiquitous connectivity links individuals to global audiences, expanding the reach of influence activities. And a renewed emphasis on strategic competition enhances the scope of military action below the threshold of violence. This is the world that Mick Ryan explores in War Transformed: The Future of Twenty-First-Century Great Power Competition and Conflict.

A Year in #Reviewing

A Year in #Reviewing

Ralph Waldo Emerson is said to have observed, “I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” As we do each year at The Strategy Bridge, we pause to reflect on our #Reviewing series, the books and movies and other work we’ve consumed as a community—the intellectual meal we’ve shared—and consider what they have helped us to make of ourselves, what they’ve helped us become.

#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.

#Reviewing: Patents for Power

#Reviewing: Patents for Power

Robert M. Farley and Davida H. Isaacs’s contribution to both fields of international relations and intellectual property lies in their ability to explain the legal system that results in the diffusion of military technology in some cases. The diffusion of military technology is explained in the book by the difference in political factors, organizational structures, or protective security frameworks. The legal explanation for the commonality of some military technologies is not well understood but is a significant factor for explaining why some military technologies are more accessible and widespread than others. Further, their work is of contemporary importance noting the monolithic nature of the global defense industry, consisting of public and private partnerships as well as collaborative approaches to high end military technologies that require complex legal frameworks.

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.

#Reviewing On Killing Remotely

#Reviewing On Killing Remotely

While the intense psychological burden borne by the soldier engaged in battle is not in doubt, understanding what specific factors exact the greatest toll, or how the willingness to kill relates to battlefield outcomes, remains ripe for exploration…Wayne Phelps’s addition to this literature seems to be a direct continuation of Grossman’s work, and Phelps pushes the same thesis as Grossman—that warriors do not naturally want to kill—into the field of Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPAs).