What Critics of the Navy’s Strategy Get Wrong
A series of articles, blog posts, and open letters have bemoaned the lack of a coherent American maritime strategy. Much of this criticism was generated by the difficult gestation of a follow-on...
View ArticleBreaking the (Algorithmic) Black Box in Security Affairs
Algorithms have become a buzzword in policy circles – but in many cases, using the term “algorithm” alone is akin to the common journalist errors of making every armored vehicle a tank or assault rifle...
View ArticleThe Strategy of Savagery: Explaining the Islamic State
Last week saw the Obama Administration playing host to a summit on “Countering Violent Extremism,” held in the wake of the jihadist attacks in Paris and the rise of the brutal theocratic order of the...
View ArticleThe Most Underrated Military Strategist?
Benjamin F. Armstrong, 21st Century Sims: Innovation, Education, and Leadership for the Modern Era (Naval Institute Press, 2015) William Sims is one of the most underrated officers and strategists in...
View ArticleThe New Maritime Strategy: It’s Tricky to Balance Ends, Ways, and Means
Editor’s Note: Bryan McGrath was the primary author of the 2007 maritime strategy that preceded this new work. Bryan Clark previously served as a close adviser to the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral...
View ArticleA “Better” Maritime Strategy
Three years ago, I published an essay on the challenge of crafting a good strategy in the Naval Institute Proceedings. This short research paper was my contribution to an effort to develop an update to...
View ArticleWhat Obama Gets Right and Wrong on Grand Strategy
In recent months, national security experts from Henry Kissinger on down have criticized the Obama administration for lacking a grand strategic plan. The absence of a grand design, however, is not the...
View ArticleMeans Matter: Competent Ground Forces and the Fight Against ISIL
What will it take on the ground to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)? What is the nature of America’s current conflict against ISIL? Can the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), bolstered...
View ArticleA Special Invitation to a Very Special Party on 3/24
You’re invited to the War on the Rocks Fundraising Party! With remarks by: Richard Fontaine, President of the Center for a New American Security Frank Hoffman, Contributing Editor of War on the Rocks...
View ArticleOur Unrealistic Foreign Policy
U.S. foreign policy is crippled by a dramatic disconnect between what Americans expects of it and what the nation’s leaders are giving them. If U.S. policymakers don’t address this gap, they risk...
View ArticleThe Bush Wars: Ellis on America Fighting in the Philippines
Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of three adapted excerpts from 21st Century Ellis: Operational Art and Strategic Prophecy for the Modern Era, published by Naval Institute Press. It...
View ArticleA Better Afghan Strategy: Lose the Timeline
The first official visit to Washington of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and CEO Abdullah Abdullah comes at an opportune time for both countries. The significant drawdown of Western forces at the end of...
View ArticleWhat Comes After Strategic Surprise?
“Welcome to the first day of the end of your life.” – E-mail from Jared Baxter Chris Martin, Engines of Extinction, Episode One: The Ends & The Means (Amazon, 2015) Of all the potential threats...
View ArticleThrough a Broken Window Darkly: A False Vision of Foreign Policy
Bret Stephens, America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder (Sentinel, 2014) American foreign policy has veered wildly between extremes over the last 14 years. We have...
View ArticleThe Strategist’s Ultimate Mission
What is a strategist? We have many definitions for grand or national strategy, but despite having a community in the United States defined as “strategists,” there is little understanding of who our...
View ArticleRethinking Risk in Defense
Admiral William Gortney, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and Northern Command, was recently discussing the threat posed by advanced Russian long-range conventional...
View ArticlePower and the Strategist’s Mission
What is power, and; what force produces the movement of nations? – Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace Two recent pieces by Major Matt Cavanaugh and Frank Hoffman initiated a much-needed discussion on the role...
View ArticleWhy An “Economic” Approach to Foreign Policy Fails
New York University business professor Daniel Altman has a beef with U.S. foreign policy. It’s wasteful, inefficient, and haphazard. But in rushing to find an optimal solution to Washington’s foreign...
View ArticleHistory and America’s Atomic Future: Four Questions on Nuclear Statecraft
Looking back on the soon-to-be 70 year history of America’s experience with nuclear weapons, what did the United States do right? What did it do wrong? And what can it do better in the future? As a...
View ArticleFour Key Leaders in Munich on the State of the World
The Munich Security Conference brings together leaders from all around the world to discuss defense, foreign policy, and strategy – the bread and butter of War on the Rocks. It has been called the...
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