Category: Expert Analysis

We need a new American Grand Strategy if America is to preserve a long-lasting world order commensurate with its national interests and values.

March 12, 2011 was a Saturday, and it was a spectacular day in Southern California. It was warm, but not oppressive, the sky was clear, and there was a very light breeze. I stood on the ramp at Naval Air Facility El Centro, chatting with members of the Viper West Demonstration Team during the base’s […]

On 23 September, a coalition led by the United States began an aerial bombardment campaign against ISIS targets in Syria. The strikes come as a response from the Obama Administration to the growing threat of both ISIS and other extremist groups training and operating out of Syria. A video released by the Department of Defense […]

As the American media continues to inexplicably divert its attention from the conflicts and disease ravaging through several countries in Africa in favor of the ongoing violence in Syria and Iraq, a similar situation to that which characterizes Western Africa has re-emerged in the more remote regions of Afghanistan: an outbreak of an infectious and deadly disease. In […]

Xinjiang, the restive northwestern province of China, experienced yet another attack by Uighur separatists this past Sunday. Rocked by a series of explosive detonations, initial reports stated that two civilians were reported killed in the blasts. The New York Times reported: The blasts, which occurred Sunday, were the latest outbreak of violence to hit Xinjiang […]

Why Major Mariam Al Mansouri is a hero, and why Greg Gutfeld and Eric Bolling, co-hosts of The Five on the Fox, are a disgrace.

In this new era of perpetual sequestration, it seems that budget restraint conflicts with enhancing our national defense. Yet threats to our nation have not diminished in the face of our budget battles. Several years ago, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates accurately asserted that many future conflicts are likely to run the spectrum just […]

In a lame attempt at geopolitical intimidation, Russia again flies its Bear bombers very, very close to the sovereign airspace of other countries. The real symbolism here, however, comes from the fact these propeller-driven planes—yes, the very same aircraft we used to intercept with F-4s—are getting escorted out of the club by a couple Lockheed-Martin F-22A […]

If you are going to back proxies instead of getting directly involved, you’ve got to lose some of the squeamishness and accept that “our guy” trumps “good guy.”

There have been many factors to the rise of ISIS, from a relatively obscure Al Qaeda affiliate that had been forced almost completely underground by a combination of US military power and the Sahwa militias in Al Anbar Province (ISIS was originally Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda in Iraq), to a cross-border rebel/terrorist group […]

Peter Nealen’s three part series in this forum is a fairly apt analysis of the state of the profession at arms. A lot of things important were said that many of us have been grumbling about for years. Since September 11, 2001, the force has struggled to maintain manning while minimizing diminishing returns on the […]

If there’s any way possible, I’d like to get a brief message to the commanding officer of the USS Carl Vinson. This may not be important in the grand scheme of things, but it’s important to me.