EDIT: see this entry for an apology to the Major. I don’t feel that this was my best hour.

Beyond Maj. Cavanaugh’s distaste for violence and the notion of being seen as a killer and a breaker, he makes another…

I strongly recommend Joshua Foust’s takedown of Putin-as-master-strategist worship.

What to make of Amer­i­can com­men­ta­tors who seem to love Vladimir Putin? From almost any angle…

Strategy as Performance Art

I have seen this excerpt from Ralph Peters’ old Bill O’Reilly interview posted throughout the Internet today…

In the aftermath of the Iraq War, the Powell Doctrine has become — to many — a symbol of lost defense analytical wisdom cast adrift in our current wars. But we ought to resist the temptation to believe Colin Powell’s famous doctrine (not as much a doctrine as a Sun Tzu-like…

In the years since I first got to know him, Kelsey D. Atherton has become not only an excellent defense and technology reporter but also an astute observer of some of the contradictions and paradoxes of our wars. Today, he said something quite…

In the latest MERIP, there is a ridiculous and baseless critique of academic and policy-facing terrorism studies:

In the vacuum left by all of the attempts to distinguish jihadis from other Muslims, the work of explaining and interpreting jihadism is…