TCS Daily October 17, 2006 Next month, the Army and Marine Corps will unveil a revised counterinsurgency manual scheduled which incorporates lessons learned in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Thomas Barnett, author of two best-selling books on military strategy, summarizes its core principles: 1) The more you protect your force, the less secure you are (If military […]
Reason August 16, 2006 Just hours after the cease-fire with Lebanon took effect Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave a speech to the Knesset acknowledging “deficiencies” in the way the war was conducted. Buffeted by critics on the left and right, he added that, “We will have to review ourselves in all the battles” and pledged, […]
TCS Daily August 14, 2006 A front-page story in Monday’s Washington Post declared Hezbollah “The Best Guerrilla Force in the World” and noted that, “As the declared U.N. cease-fire went into effect Monday morning, many Lebanese—particularly among the Shiites who make up an estimated 40 percent of the population—had already assessed Hezbollah’s endurance as a military success […]
TCS Daily June 8, 2006 Editor’s Note: Terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been killed. Images of Zarqawi’s face are making the rounds as you read this, reinforcing many of Dr. Joyner’s assertions below. The war in Iraq has had powerful images from the beginning and public perceptions of the war have shifted along with the prevailing images. The […]
TCS Daily February 27, 2006 Blogger and TCS contributor Stephen Green argues that civil war in Iraq might not be such a bad thing, noting that, “A civil war is the nastiest way to get a good result.” He cites several examples, notably the Thirty Years War, the English Civil War, and the American war between the […]
Tech Central Station December 9, 2005 One of the lessons of Vietnam taught to American officer cadets is that successful prosecution of a long-term war requires support from the people, the government, and the military. It is considered axiomatic that, if any leg of Clausewitz’ Remarkable Trinity[1] falters, a war effort is doomed. This dictum came […]
Tech Central Station December 5, 2005 Some Iraq war critics have lately argued that the American military is not very adept at counterinsurgency. But the reality is a little more complicated than they suggest. Reacting to an article in The New Republic about President Bush’s strategy for defeating insurgents in Iraq by Lawrence Kaplan, The American Propect‘s Matthew Yglesias, observed […]
Phillip Carter and James Joyner Legal Affairs April 18, 2005 “America has a choice,” write Phillip Carter and Paul Glastris in The Washington Monthly. “It can be the world’s superpower, or it can maintain the current all-volunteer military, but it probably can’t do both.” Their solution is a revival of the draft. Glastris and Carter propose that […]
Tech Central Station March 7, 2005 Friday’s shooting incident during which Giuliana Sgrena, a writer for Italy’s communist newspaper Il Manifesto, was wounded and her bodyguard killed by American soldiers has raised serious questions about the way U.S. checkpoints in Iraq are handled. Christian Science Monitor reporter Annia Ciezadlo, in a story published after but written before the incident, describes her own experiences with the checkpoints: It’s […]
Tech Central Station March 3, 2005 Phil Carter and Paul Glastris make “The Case for the Draft” in the current Washington Monthly. “America’s all-volunteer military simply cannot deploy and sustain enough troops to succeed in places like Iraq while still deterring threats elsewhere in the world. Simply adding more soldiers to the active duty force, as some in Washington are […]