SmallWarsJournal.com May 4, 2012 This Week at War In my Foreign Policy column, I discuss the fragile assumptions behind the new Strategic Partnership Agreement with Afghanistan and explain why U.S. policymakers should have a Plan B ready. President Barack Obama's sudden appearance in Afghanistan on May 1, a calculated attempt to display his administration's foreign-policy expertise and …
Telling The Enemy What We Know By James Jay Carafano
New York Post May 4, 2012 Pg. 29 If the White House hoped that releasing documents scored by Seal Team Six at Osama's hideaway would ease anxiety about the threat of terrorism, it badly misjudged the value of reading bin Laden's mail. The government turned over a cache of the captured documents to the Combating …
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How Short-Term Thinking Makes the U.S. Worse at Fighting Wars by Joshua Foust
view original / theatlantic.com From Vietnam to Afghanistan, 12-month deployments and institutional norms have made long-term planning more difficult. In 2010, the U.S. adopted a new tactic in southern Afghanistan: it began to bulldoze entire villages to clear them of IEDs. The policy -- reminiscent of Vietnam, of destroying villages to save them -- spoke to a deeper issue …
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People Are Losing Trust In All Institutions
View original Lack of Trust – Caused by Institutional Corruption – Is Killing the Economy The signs are everywhere: Americans have lost trust in our institutions. Deeper question: how do we get better?
Turning Strategic Ambiguity into Strategic Clarity
View original / by Deloitte? By leveraging the planning and performance management cycles as well as analytical capabilities, CFOs can minimize strategic ambiguity and establish strategic clarity for the organization and its stakeholders. In battle, strategic ambiguity can sometimes lead to disastrous results. At Gettysburg, for example, on the first day of the epic Civil …
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Military Airships: Hot Air or Soaring Promise? By David Axe
View original / David Axe / defense.aol.com The past decade has seen an unlikely revival of a long-grounded technology. Military airships, last operational with the U.S. Navy in the 1960s, took back to the skies, propelled by soaring demand for long-endurance, low-cost aerial surveillance in Iraq and Afghanistan. Per flight hour, an airship costs a …
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Rethinking The Army Rebuilding the Big Green Machine after a decade of war
St. Louis Post-Dispatch April 30, 2012 Pg. 8 Our view . After nearly 10 years of relentless combat, the U.S. Army has begun to catch its breath and think about what's next. Army Chief of Staff Raymond T. Odierno, in an article published last Wednesday in the May/June edition of Foreign Affairs, writes that the …
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The Air Force We Need By Rep. Randy Forbes
Politico.com April 29, 2012 U.S. military superiority has helped maintain stability around the globe and keep peace for nearly 70 years. Our air superiority has meant that no U.S. soldier, sailor or marine has been killed by enemy airplanes in nearly six decades. Air power is now central to joint war-fighting and helped achieve our …
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Should The United States Use Military Force To Intervene In Syria?
Arizona Daily Star (Tucson) April 30, 2012 Yes: Our strategic goals depend on it; No: Negotiations are the best hope By Lawrence J. Haas; John B. Quigley Editor's note: Every Monday we offer pro/con pieces from the McClatchy-Tribune news service to give readers a broad view of issues. Yes: Our strategic goals depend on it …
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Who Needs The U.S.? By Jackson Diehl
Washington Post April 30, 2012 Pg. 13 For a year, a chorus of pundits has been proclaiming that the Arab Spring has ushered in a new era in the Middle East in which the United States no longer is the "indispensable nation" Bill Clinton once described. Syria has proved them wrong. To be sure, so …
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