Commentary

The foreign policy elite descended on Munich again this weekend, primed for beer, brats, and bilats. The 2024 Munich Security Conference was crowded and frenzied, as security details jostled delegates straining to connect with movers and…

In a stormy cabinet debate after the Six Day War, Israel’s prime minister, Levi Eshkol, rejected hardline demands to apply direct civil rule over the newly captured West Bank, declaring: “I don’t want more land and I don’t want more Arabs.”…

Here’s a question: If you could add $200 billion to the defense budget — or wave a magic wand and pass every needed reform to defense procurement, personnel, business and budget processes, and other areas crying out for change — which would…

The clock is ticking for U.S. forces in Syria. In October 2021, an Iranian-made drone slammed into Tanf, just missing the small row of trailers that house U.S. forces deployed at the spartan base. Last month, an Iranian splinter group…

Can you kill a bear with a thousand paper cuts or slay a dragon with an armada of toy boats? Many a wargame I have participated in suggests you can. Beyond rolling dice and questioning salvo exchange models, the challenge is understanding…

What is stopping China from invading Taiwan? In the past, it was overdetermined that Beijing would not use force to compel reunification. Not only did China lack the capabilities to execute a swift and decisive conquest of the island, but…

The past, famously, is a foreign country. Unfortunately, it often seems that “foreign wars” fought before 1900 are too distant to find their way into our policy analysis. And without understanding the Seven Years War, we can’t fully…

The U.S. military forces that entered Europe and fought their way to Berlin by 1945 bore only a passing resemblance to the U.S. military that had existed just five years before. New technologies on the ground, in the air, at sea, and in the…

On May 1, 1952, the U.S. Army opened the special operations training center and school that still trains most of its special operations forces today. The school was then known as the Psychological Warfare Center, and it emphasized the…

As a historian working in professional military education, I find myself in the awkward position of warning strategists and students alike against drawing too many lessons from history. As quick keyword searches of major foreign policy…