*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…
Brigadier Mark Holmes, Australian Army If anyone cared to ask me about my maiden research voyage on behalf the West Point Network Science Center, I think my response would primarily revolve around the words “flight” and “interview,” as that’s about all I remember from the two weeks! Flight-wise, the numbers are astounding, even to me:…
**NOTE: On December 15, 1941, Japan generated a military proposal for it’s Axis partner, that the 70th meridian east longitude (splitting India in half) would form the dividing line between the powers. Hitler signed. What’s even more interesting is that Hitler, not knowing much about the world beyond Europe, in his only known conversation on…
Indonesia’s Tropical Islam P. 244: “With well over 200 million of its 240 million inhabitants Muslim, Indonesia represents one of Islam’s greatest proselytizing success stories. This is particularly remarkable because Islam came to Indonesia not through military conquest as it did almost everywhere else, from Iberia to the Indian Subcontinent, but, starting in Aceh in…
Reading books is a good thing; it is better to study important books. Robert Kaplan’s new book, Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power, (Random House, NY: 2010) about what he perceives as the Indian Ocean’s central role in the future of geopolitics is a book to study. He makes a number…
President Obama has announced that troop drawdown in Afghanistan will be faster than previously envisioned. The New York Times reports, Asserting that the country that served as a base for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks no longer represented a terrorist threat to the United States, Mr. Obama declared that the “tide of war is receding.”…
In a separate post, I’ve outlined the amazing growth of the Chinese economy. In this post, I’ll highlight it’s resultant impact on the region and the world. To the left is a fantastic image pulled, I think, from a Wall Street Journal article from last month. It depicts the relative level of trading between China…
This blog will be about a lot of things: war, politics, geography, military and civilian leaders, national cultures, global and regional institutions (my love for running might just make the cut some days). But, above all, the focus will be on U.S. strategy in the Asia-Pacific region. As a professional strategic practitioner and one who…