*Note: This essay was published at War on the Rocks on November 27, 2017. It can be found online here. Recently, Dan Helmer, a West Point graduate running for a U.S. House of Representatives seat in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District, released a list of eight retired generals and admirals he calls his “National Security Advisory Committee.” At…
*Note: This essay was originally published at War on the Rocks on March 16, 2017 and is available online here. When twelve stars tell you to knock it off, there’s a problem. At several points throughout this past presidential campaign, Lt. Gen. (ret.) Michael Flynn’s partisan political behavior, while legal, was so out-of-line for a…
*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 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 published at War on the Rocks on June 24, 2016. It can also be found online here. “You had better get back to Korea,” the messenger whispered in U.S. Army Colonel W.H.S. Wright’s ear. Wright sat on a Tokyo church pew on Sunday, June 25, 1950, about to put his family on a…
*Note: This essay was published at War on the Rocks on April 28, 2016. It can also be found online here. Mea culpa. In my last essay, “A Neflix Assessment of China’s Rise and America’s Advantage,” I used the word “never” to express a conviction — as in, China “will never dominate” the Indo-Asia Pacific “for one…
*Note: This essay was published at War on the Rocks on April 20, 2016. It can also be found online here. In a smartphone world it’s easy to see China rise, but have we forgotten our other senses? This exercise in think tank voyeurism has become a distracting mirage, from CSIS’s aerial photos of the Great Wall…
Note: This essay was published at War on the Rocks on March 29, 2016. It can also be found online here. Bringing death to 11 percent of the known world (and terrifying the other 89 percent) is apparently thirsty work, so the Mongols brought booze. Top shelf, at that, all the way from Persia to Korea circa…
*Note: This essay was published at War on the Rocks on February 11, 2016. It can also be found online here. Something is revealing in Denmark; Hamlet would be proud. In this case, it is the third film from writer/director Tobias Lindholm (English title: A War, Danish: Krigen — Danish with English subtitles). This Academy Award-nominated Best…
*Note: This essay was published at War on the Rocks on December 9, 2015. It can also be found online here. The Forgotten War has become the Forgotten Threat. The Korean Peninsula is a strategic orphan, “usually considered background noise” compared to media darlings like Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Islamic State (ISIL), Russia, and even Cuba. The…