Commentary

In contrast to first president George Washington’s advice to “steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world,” a core principle of U.S. grand strategy since 1945 has been to grow and nurture its unrivaled network…

After the abrupt end of the aborted Wagner mutiny on June 24, Western media was ablaze with speculation that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “weakened” and “humiliated.” Some commentators went as far as suggesting that the failed…

It will have been easy to miss with all the excitement of a mutiny by the Wagner Group marching unhindered hundreds of miles toward Moscow, but Russian analysts are talking seriously about nuclear weapons use. Not in the context of Russia’s…

Editor’s Note: What follows is am excerpt from the authors’ forthcoming book, Information in War: Military Innovation, Battle Networks, and the Future of Artificial Intelligence. The current promise that artificial intelligence/machine…

While serving as a Coast Guard lieutenant, Christopher Hasson made plans to kill “journalists, Democratic politicians, professors, Supreme Court justices and those he described as ‘leftists in general.’” On Jan. 31, 2020, he pled guilty to…

In June 2023, Russia’s expert community descended into a public debate about the wisdom of preemptive nuclear use. The exchange occurred against the backdrop of Ukraine’s counteroffensive and betrayed a fear that Russia might lose the war —…

American power and prosperity are destined to decline unless Washington can reverse the decline of U.S. manufacturing capacity and the toxic effects of decades of defense consolidation. In 2022, the Defense Department assessed that it was…

<!-- category --> July 17, 2023 War on the Rocks turns 10 this month. Some days it feels like 10 years, other days it still feels so new. As regular readers will know, we do an annual most-read list. To mark a decade, below…

No hunter is immune from “buck fever,” that nervous excitement the first time prey is spotted. In the Nevada desert in the late 1970s, the Air Force 4477th Test and Evaluation Squadron — dubbed the “Red Eagles” — stood up a squadron of…

Plenty of wargaming articles quote famous testimonies by Adm. Chester Nimitz or 19th-century Prussian general Karl von Muffling on the critical role wargames play in military success. But it’s often forgotten that the celebrated wargames of…