Realism and Restraint
I’ve taken a close interest in civil‐military relations for decades. I was taught the importance of civilian control over the U.S. military as a young NROTC midshipman....
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In 1986 the Air Force planned to buy 750 F-22s. It built 187. Only 184 remain in the inventory today, and one currently flying...
Trump ordered Ulchi Freedom Shield cut from eleven days to five before Kim Jong-un had agreed to anything in return. Kim Yo-jong dismissed the...
Analysts dismissed American control of the Strait of Hormuz as a near-impossible task. The US government now says it has been helping tankers move...
As President Trump downsizes the Ulchi Freedom Shield war games after South Korea declined to help with Iran, one uncomfortable fact goes almost completely...
The Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative emerged from US Army Europe and Africa and NATO's Allied Land Command as a concept for restoring deterrence by...
For all the talk of spending targets, the Ankara NATO summit's real work happened elsewhere. Europe is being handed responsibility for NATO's conventional defense...
Western analysts fixate on North Korea's missiles. The real danger is speed — a mass artillery-and-missile salvo in the war's first hours, backed by...
The second Trump administration is reviewing America's military footprint in Europe, and the worst-case outcome is a full withdrawal. Andrew Michta argues that would...
Pharnaces attacked uphill, chariots first, at entrenched Roman veterans on his father's lucky hill — so recklessly that Caesar first read it as a...
The five qualities he listed as missing — strategy, operational art, tactics, generalship, soldiering — were exactly what the previous hundred hours had proven...
His point was never that aliens must be wicked — it was that we would be the Native Americans in the encounter, and good...
The letter says der Alte, the Old One, not God — and it went to the very friend who'd win the Nobel for the...
Of the 1.5 billion barrels in emergency stocks, the IEA cannot order the commercial half released, leaving governments under a billion. The American reserve...
The Houthis have no warships. It doesn't need any. A blockade holds if shipowners and insurers decide the passage is not worth the risk,...
Washington redirected 55 commercial vessels away from Iranian ports as of Sunday, up from 35 a week earlier, while the Kpler intelligence firm counted...
Supply boats bring food and water. Wages arrive late or not at all. A union leader likens it to imprisonment, and one Indian sailor...
Drones reached Moscow on three of the last five nights. A ballistic missile would not extend Ukraine's reach so much as compress Russia's warning...
Georgia Gilholy reports on Trump's map post declaring Hormuz 'New U.S. Territory,' a vessel struck off Oman hours earlier per UK Maritime Trade Operations,...
When it comes to severe economic pressure, Washington has massive options between everything and nothing. Something in the middle that hurts Iran a lot...
Even during genuine unipolar periods, pursuing excessively ambitious goals placed severe strain on America’s military, economic, and political systems. Attempting to do so now...
Russia has used North Korean ballistic missiles in Ukraine since late 2023. The early shots missed by kilometers. Later ones did not. That combat...
Iran's Shahab-1 came from the Scud-B and reached 300km. The Khorramshahr, derived from North Korea's Musudan, reaches 2,000km — a 6.7-fold increase in reach.
North Korea has roughly 60 nuclear weapons and Kim Jong-un keeps demanding an exponential increase. Bruce Bennett works the problem backward, from Kim's objectives...
Xi's first Pyongyang visit in seven years, a ratified Russia pact, and a declaration that the arsenal is permanent: Andrew Latham on why the...
I’ve taken a close interest in civil‐military relations for decades. I was taught the importance of civilian control over the U.S. military as a young NROTC midshipman....
The hospital at which I work offered antibody serology tests to all medical staff last Wednesday. The test detects IgG, the immunoglobulin that appears in...
In a post last month, we raised concerns about the unforeseen and underappreciated costs of expanding export controls on U.S. technology. Either those concerns fell on...
