by Miles Maochun Yu via Military History in the News
The most consequential military engagement in Southeast Asia in the 20th century is the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu. It was fought ostensibly between the French and the communist-led Vietmin at Dien Bien Phu, an obscure valley bordering China, in the remote northwestern part of what was then French Indochina. The battle ended with a humiliating defeat for the French, which brought down the French government, ended French colonial rule in Asia, ushered in America’s epic military involvement in the region for decades to come, and fundamentally changed the global geostrategic landscape.
By Paul S. Giarra, Proceedings Magazine: “Since the closing of the American frontier, U.S. Navy strategy has been both instrument and guide for U.S. national power, international engagement, opposition to hegemony and totalitarian regimes, and the global assertion of U.S. interests and values. Today presents one of those junctures when the Navy should step up again to lead the thinking, strategies, plans, and capability development necessary in a challenging and competitive world. But first there must be a viable Navy narrative.”
The Strategist Top Picks for 2017:
The Strategic Role of Submarines in the 21st Century
By Andrew Davies, The Strategist (ASPI): “Submarines might be obsolete by the middle of the century. It’s possible that advances in artificial intelligence (AI), detection systems and signal processing, combined with swarming autonomous unmanned systems, could make it effectively impossible for submarines to maintain their stealth.”
By Allan Behm, The Strategist (ASPI): “But if one is to coin a term like ‘Thucydides Trap’, declaring that war between Athens and Sparta was ‘inevitable’, and blame Thucydides for the invention, one should surely check the original text to confirm that ‘inevitability’ is what Thucydides wrote and meant.”