*Note: This essay was originally published on the Modern War Institute’s Commentary & Analysis site. Who should we save? That’s the question a Johns Hopkins doctor has been asking, and who was recently profiled in a thought provoking New York Times article. More specifically, “When a surge of patients – from a disaster, disease outbreak,…
*Note: This essay was originally published on the Modern War Institute’s Commentary & Analysis site. Pervasive in academia, the perfection of specialization is the enemy of wisdom – by narrowing our curiosity, we limit our learning. Which is why I was thrilled to have received a new old book (1950), by B.H. Liddell Hart, Defence…
I’ll get to how great the Pikes Peak Ultra was in a minute, but first I have to tell you a story. I knew something wasn’t right when the world seemed like I was staring down into an industrial-strength washing machine. Everything was spinning, and I certainly wasn’t in a laundry room; I was actually 15…
*Note: This essay was originally published on the Modern War Institute’s Commentary & Analysis site. As a policy initiative, Strategic Landpower never really lived. Though a brief topic of interest in 2013, when the service chiefs of the Army, Marine Corps, and US Special Operations Command wrote a combined White Paper (“Winning the Clash of…
*Note: This essay was published at War on the Rocks on July 27, 2016. It can also be found online here. West Point is going to war. There was a time when West Pointers regularly marched the globe, outside American combat, to learn from world military affairs as reconnaissance for our own future fights. In 1919, cadets…
*Note: This essay was originally published on the Modern War Institute’s Commentary & Analysis site. The military loves Gettysburg. But why? Isn’t it strange to fixate on an event in a war that happened over 150 years ago, fought on home soil, in Virginia, New Mexico, Tennessee and more, over slavery, in a society with…
*Note: This essay was published at War on the Rocks on July 15, 2016. It can also be found online here. From preparation, to its conduct, and in its aftermath – war is certain pain for uncertain gain. As I recently returned home from a one-year tour in Korea, I’ve kept asking myself: Why did I go?…
*Note: This essay was originally published on the Modern War Institute’s Commentary & Analysis site. Mother Nature is the world’s greatest murderer – far better than Stalin, Mao, Hitler, and Pol Pot combined – yet the military weirdly refuses to take infectious disease and pandemics seriously. Fact 1: Global deaths caused by infectious diseases are…
*Note: This essay was published in the Minnesota Post online edition on July 1, 2016. It can also be found online here. What the Fourth of July is to Americans, the Second of July should be to Minnesotans. Before the rush to cabin entertainment and celebratory explosions, we ought to mark the day when our people…
*Note: This essay was originally published on the Modern War Institute’s Commentary & Analysis site. War requires ideas. This is how we make them better. Each good idea is adrift on the sea of knowledge. To survive this inhospitable ocean, ideas must first be seaworthy – possessing substance (wood or steel), guidance (rudder or sail),…