*Note: This essay was published in the Colorado Springs Gazette print edition on February 19, 2018. It can also be found online here. I love the Olympics, in part because they seem to defy reality as a place where dreams really do come true. But geopolitics doesn’t stop while the Olympics are on – countries always use…
*Note: This essay was originally published on the Modern War Institute’s Commentary & Analysis site. I think a lot about the Korean peninsula. When news emerges from there, I take note. Like recently, when both the commandant of the Marine Corps and the secretary of defense made ominous statements that signal the serious likelihood of…
*Note: This essay was originally published on the Modern War Institute’s Commentary & Analysis site. You know there’s a national security problem brewing when in the space of seven weeks, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs opines on the widespread challenges North Korea presents, followed closely by visits to South Korea from the secretaries of…
*Note: This essay was originally published on the Modern War Institute’s Commentary & Analysis site. North Korea’s aggressively destabilizing behavior has hit the headlines again, this time several unannounced, unsanctioned missile tests—part of a national double-time march to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead capable of striking the United States by 2020.…
*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 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 originally published on the Modern War Institute’s Commentary & Analysis site. Mark my words, it won’t be long until an American soldier is taken hostage on a battlefield. There are a lot of places this might happen, but let’s see how it might play out with one major threat: North Korea.…
*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…
*Note: This essay was published at War on the Rocks on December 7, 2015. It can also be found online here. The Budget Control Act’s (BCA) guillotine is poised to slice off part of America’s ground combat brain with across-the-board 25-percent cuts to Army headquarters. In addition to smaller staffs, active duty billets in those headquarters are…
*Note: This essay was published at War on the Rocks on July 30, 2015. It can also be found online here. My birthday is today, and it hurts. I’m a deployed Army officer, living a half marathon distance from the Demilitarized Zone in Korea and 6,000 miles from home (which may as well read “1,000,000”). Service is…