By Matthew F. Ferraro, RealClearDefense: “In the face of a resurgent present-day isolationism that repudiates the post-war international order that has advanced human dignity, prosperity, and peace, McCain’s revival of Kissinger’s campaign is a venerable act of public service. And it is an effort that bears expanding by others inspired by his example at this seminal moment.”
By Steven Metz, Strategic Studies Institute: “Clausewitz famously observed that war has an enduring nature and a changing character that evolves over time as technology, society, economics, and politics shift. This observation also applies to strategic leadership: it too has an enduring nature and a changing character.”
By Willis Krumholz, RealClearDefense: “How did we get to the point where we have so many troops in so many places that not even members of Congress, let alone average Americans, can keep track of it all?”
By Joshua Pollack, War on the Rocks: “So what do we mean by “classical deterrence theory”? Definitions vary, but there are two essential ideas: one that arose in the aftermath of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and a second, complementary idea that took form over a decade later as the Soviet Union tested its first intercontinental ballistic missiles. Viewed against the background of established military thinking, each idea was revolutionary in its own right.”
By Zack Cooper & Thomas G. Roberts, War on the Rocks: ““The U.S. built a glass house before the invention of stones… The shifting of space [from] being a benign environment to being a warfighting environment requires different capabilities.””
By Octavian Manea, Small Wars Journal “ ... technological offset strategies played an important role during the Cold War. The thinking about offset strategies can actually be traced to WW2. When the United States entered the war, planners concluded that the U.S. would need over 200 infantry divisions and about 280 air combat groups to ultimately defeat the Axis powers.”
Analytic Criteria for Making Strategic Choices
By Barry Watts, CSBA: “Choosing analytic criteria for making strategic choices or judging historical outcomes is a recurring, if not universal, problem. It recurs because no general method for choosing appropriate criteria is known to exist despite the early hopes for methodological innovations ranging from macroeconomic models to operations research, systems analysis, and game theory.”
By Franz-Stefan Gady, The Diplomat: “Stanley Kubrick’s iconic dark comedy continues to highlight the importance of nuclear command-and-control safety mechanisms.”