Commentary

Madeleine Albright once asked Colin Powell, “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” Nobody ever asked that question about nuclear weapons. Not using them is the whole point.…

In the past several months, the U.S. Navy has continued to protect global shipping in combat in the Red Sea, the Port of Baltimore struggled through the Francis Scott Key Bridge disaster, and the Chinese Coast Guard and maritime militia…

This is a special edition of our members-only newsletter, The Adversarial, where we provide expert analysis on America’s greatest challengers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and jihadists. To receive The Adversarial directly in…

“This is about winning a war. We don’t have time for some politically correct publicity stunt.” This is the typical response we encountered when proposing sustainable logistics and sustainment practices at a recent military exercise in…

Two years ago, on May 31, 2022, President Joe Biden announced in his New York Times op-ed that the United States would provide Ukraine with high-mobility artillery rocket systems. The op-ed noted that the White House neither encourages nor…

The Islamic State today looks different than it did five years ago and is far more integrated now as an organization amongst its global network than al-Qaeda ever was. It has been 10 years since the Islamic State announced itself as a…

The People’s Liberation Army is often described as “the largest military in the world.” But depending on who you ask and what you count, the details are murky and confusing. The deeper one dives into the numbers, the more complicated the…

Throughout its history, Russia has rarely cared for its soldiers, on or off the battlefield. The Kremlin’s current attempt to do right by its veterans looks to be simultaneously insufficient and unaffordable, destined to leave behind armies…

Editor’s Note: This is the introduction to Volume 7, Issue 3 of the Texas National Security Review. When I was a young scholar, I was torn between two models of academic writing. I was trained as a historian, but my mentors, research…

Forget Lexington. Forget Bunker Hill. The first battle of the American Revolution — the one that made revolution possible, although not inevitable — was James Wolfe’s posthumous triumph on the Plains of Abraham in 1759. This engagement,…