Like all good things, it started with a threat. In early fall 2013, as a response to Bashar Al Assad’s use of chemical weapons in Syria, President Barack Obama threatened a cruise missile strike to deter the Syrian dictator from future use of such indiscriminate weapons. The cadets wanted to talk about it. So I named (“War Council,” via the…
Image provided by Flikr user US Army. By Major Matt Cavanaugh *Editor’s Note: Those who have followed the WarCouncil site know I’m an assistant professor at West Point, where I teach DS470: Military Strategy. Unfortunately, I find myself at the end of my three year teaching tour, and this summer I will move on to the Korean Peninsula. At the…
Image proudly created by Matt Cavanaugh. *Editor’s Note: A version of this essay will be presented as remarks to the War Council event on May 4, 2015. The panel discussion will be focused on the dominant trend that will shape warfare over the next 20 years. The Continuum of Conflict Why do bad things happen to good people? It’s…
Image courtesy of Matt Cavanaugh. By Major Matt Cavanaugh What are strategists good for? What is our signature contribution to national security? Those familiar to the site know that I’ve been kicking around this idea for awhile, having tried my hand at a “Strategist’s Mission Statement” – which Frank Hoffman critiqued at War on the Rocks…
Image courtesy of War on the Rocks. Frank Hoffman and I are in raging, intense agreement – for the most part. I wrote a short essay this past week describing my thoughts on a “Strategist’s Mission Statement.” This was a return to first principles – what is a strategist and what does one actually do? For example, if military…
As silly and simple as it sounds, it’s hard to explain what a strategist is and does. I run into this definitional problem when I describe my job title: “Army Strategist.” Eyes glaze over as if they’ve heard the word “strategy” and “strategic” so much that it’s lost all meaning. And that overuse is clear in a world…
On March 26, 2015, the University of Utah’s Center for Peace & Conflict Studies and the Hinckley Institute of Politics sponsored three others (listed above) and I to debate this proposition: was the war in Afghanistan worth it? I spoke in support; I made the argument, that, to my mind, the war in Afghanistan was worth the effort.
Image created by Matt Cavanaugh. Where do we direct our blows? How do we most effectively and efficiently achieve victory? What does “victory” even mean anymore? These are hard questions a lot of smart people encounter in the most stressful of human interactions – at war. Yet we often skip straight to these issues before we…
*Note: What follows is the beginning of an essay of mine (“A Very Unequal Dialogue”) on the current state of civil-military relations, which is available in full over at The Best Defense. Tom disagrees with my recent assessment that the recent New America Foundation/Arizona State University Future of War Conference underrepresented the uniformed military, resulting in…
Image created by ML Cavanaugh. There’s only one thing wrong with the New America Foundation’s Future of War Conference – not one participant has skin in the next game. There’s exactly one more NFL player (Donte Stallworth) in attendance than there are likely future combatants. The average audience member is closer to retirement than…