*Note: This essay was originally published on the Modern War Institute’s Commentary & Analysis site. Ernie Pyle in England is an old, dusty book, but one that still has a lot to say. Legendary war correspondent Ernie Pyle rushed to London during the Blitz to see the what the war looked like up close. From…
*Note: This essay, co-written with Erica Iverson, was originally published on the Modern War Institute’s Commentary & Analysis site. “She wasn’t looking for a knight, she was looking for a sword,” wrote the poet Atticus, who might have been thinking of Star Wars’ Leia Organa. Over the forty years of the Star Wars franchise, Leia…
*Note: This essay was originally published on the Modern War Institute’s Commentary & Analysis site. “Be strong enough to know when you are weak,” Gen. Douglas MacArthur once advised. But what matters more is to know how and where you’re vulnerable. During the Cold War, the director of the US Office of Net Assessment, Andrew…
*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: what follows is a written reflection (with a few minor modifications) from my experience at an ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) Day Dawn Service at the Wellington (New Zealand) Cenotaph on April 24, 2011. As we pay our respects on Memorial Day, it seemed appropriate to consider how our friends and allies…