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Russia Increases Troop Numbers in Georgia
Russia has announced that it will be reinforcing its military presence in two break-away regions of the Republic of Georgia, Reuters reports. Russia claims these soldiers (pictured left) are...
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Human Terrain System Loses Its First
Last November we had the pleasure of telling you about the Army's Human Terrain System (HTS), teams of anthropologists who work with our soldiers to provide cultural support in the battle for hearts...
View ArticleAl-Qaeda on the Defensive
Today the Financial Times has an excellent article titled "Down but dangerous: How al-Qaeda has been pushed on to the defensive." The FT provides some encouraging evidence that the terrorist...
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Dune: A Model of Political Warfare
If you're looking for some good fiction to read - and you should be, since varied reading greatly increases intellectual dexterity - might I recommend Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune? Though written...
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Mountain Runner's Reading List
If you have any interest at all in public diplomacy, you need to be reading Matt Armstrong, known to the blogosphere as Mountain Runner. He's recently come out with a public diplomacy reading list,...
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Air Surperiority: Yesterday's Problem, or Tomorrow's?
John Gapper of the Financial Times has written an excellent piece on the F-22, the question of air superiority and the economics of the procurement process:America’s air force misses the targetBy John...
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Russia Launches Cyber War To Match Conventional Offensive
While Russian regular forces are engaging Georgian troops inside of Georgian territory, Russian cyberwarriors are busy doing their part to fight the tiny republic. As of this posting the Georgian...
View ArticleClear Political Messages - For Once
America frequently has a problem getting its message out. We do a better job with domestic audiences than foreign ones, but even domestic messaging can be confused and ineffective. As a conservative,...
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An Ancient Approach to Political Warfare - Part I
In his work Propaganda and Subversion in the Old Testament, Rex Mason makes regular reference to ‘prophecies after the event,’ (vaticinia ex eventu). Mason’s reading of these accounts is rather...
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An Ancient Approach to Political Warfare - Part II
Continued from Part I.Aristotle, in his Rhetoric, contends that “since the objective of rhetoric is judgment… we must have regard not only to the speech’s being demonstrative and persuasive, but also...
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Anti-Western League Holds Maneuvers
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), an organization for military cooperation which includes Russia, China and all the former Soviet republics in Central Asia except Turkmenistan, are currently...
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The Irrelevance of Political Science
In a piece he wrote back in April, FT columnist Gideon Rachman wrote that "it is no longer fashionable to pick political scientists for the top positions making US foreign policy." The reason why is...
View ArticleDifficult Choices in an Era of Deficits: The British Military Budget
My beloved Financial Times carries four pieces on its daily Comment page. Always. In all the years I have subscribed I do not recall ever seeing it otherwise.So when I saw this morning that there were...
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Remembering the July 20 Plot - Again
Two years ago I wrote a post about the July 20 plot. This year, commemorating those who attempted to overthrow Hitler in 1944 is even more important to me.This past semester, as part of my duties as a...
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On the Failure of Population Schemes
This blog usually discusses matters of security, but statecraft has other aspects as well. An article which caught my attention this morning underlined that point: "Shanghai calls on chosen couples to...
View ArticleStrategic Communication & Smarter Interrogation
I recently came across two interesting bits of national security information on the internet. The first was this interesting website on strategic communication. “Now what,” you rightly ask, “is that?”...
View ArticleThe Security-Development Nexus
The new issue of Security Dialogue, a journal which "seeks to combine contemporary theoretical analysis with challenges to public policy across a wide ranging field of security studies" is now...
View ArticleAfghanistan: 1946
If you'd like to take a trip down memory lane, check out this pamphlet put out by the State Department in 1946. Much has changed, of course, but much has not, like the comment from the first page that...
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Turkey's New Role in the World
An excellent article in today's FT raises a question which has been on the minds of many analysts of international affairs: Turkey's evolving role on the global stage.The basic conundrum is this: is...
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Leave Out the "China"
Those who have been following the news, not only in the last few weeks but for the last few years, know that Beijing has been doing a considerable amount of saber rattling at sea. In fact, China claims...
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