Commentary

Sometime next year, the Royal Canadian Navy will take delivery of its first of two new Joint Support Ships, HMCS Protecteur. The project is about a billion Canadian dollars over its anticipated cost and a decade late. Moreover, the ships…

It could be a boat anchor that kicks off the invasion of Taiwan, not a bullet. The thousands of miles of sub-sea cables are what make everything function — not just in Taiwan — and it’s clear to any invading force that owning this is key to…

Major or minor You don’t want yourself An incident Don’t ever invade China Mark Knopfler, Don’t Crash the Ambulance (2004) Just as the U.S. National Defense Strategy lists homeland defense as the first priority of the Department of…

There’s a story about the dangers of slow, incremental change. The story says if you throw a frog in hot, boiling water, he’ll jump right out. The way to boil a frog is to start with room-temperature water, and then slowly increase the…

Since 1979, it has been the policy of the United States, as codified in the Taiwan Relations Act, to maintain the capacity to resist the use of force or other forms of coercion by China against Taiwan. Until recently it could be taken for…

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol stated at the recent NATO summit that “North Atlantic security is inseparable from East Asian security.” His words highlight the growing realization among Asian and European states that both regions are…

The last few years have seen a surge in defense spending, particularly in regard to conventional defense technologies. “We’ve had a huge increase in demand from our European allies and partners over the last few years since the … invasion…

In a now-famous blog post from 2014, journalist Steve Cichon compared a Radio Shack ad from 1991 to the then-current iPhone. The difference was stark. Of the 15 items in the ad, 13 had effectively disappeared, all of them replaced by the…

Boris Nikolaevich Rodin was a known entity in the KGB. Operating as an intelligence officer in London from 1947 to 1951, he helped manage the defection of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean — members of the notorious Cambridge Five spy…

After the war in Ukraine freezes or ends, the Russian military will begin a long-term effort to regenerate equipment and personnel. How will they recruit the next generation of professional enlisted soldiers and officers, having sustained…