Military History, Book Reviews, and Other Things

Category Current Events

Call for submissions

I need your aviation stories. The anthology will be titled SkyWriting: Essays on the Art and Craft of Aviation. See my website for submission guidelines, and send your flying tales for inclusion. Proceeds benefit Angel Flight, the service that flies… Continue Reading →

Taliban Capture a War Dog

The Taliban capture a British dog of war Just before Christmas last year the Taliban in Afghanistan apparently captured a British War Dag and true to form have posted a capture video of it. Now that is going too far…. Continue Reading →

Machiavelli? Try Clausewitz!

Full disclosure: I consider the NYT to be a gang of flabby, post-modernist girlymen who stroke each other(‘s egos) all day long, and try to get an emotional response out of their dwindling readership. So today I saw a comment… Continue Reading →

“Middle War”: The new normal going forward

The Center for Strategic and International Studies has just released Beyond the Last War: Balancing Ground Forces and Future Challenges Risk in USCENTCOM and USPACOM.  The report makes for interesting reading.  What I found the most interesting aside from the scenarios considered… Continue Reading →

Similarities Between the 1920’s and Today?

I am currently reading The Origins of the First World War (3rd Edition), during a pause in my reading I started thinking about not the origins of WWI but its results.  To say that the peace of Versailles was flawed… Continue Reading →

Book Review: The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, is one of the best economic histories I have read.  It seeks to be a global history of money and does a good job of it.  It is somewhat… Continue Reading →

The Reality of War – Violent Death

Today I was reading a selection of articles from Foreign Affairs magazine dealing with modern Counterinsurgency and its perceived success or failure.   One of the things that struck me about the articles and that Bing West brings out in… Continue Reading →

The Moral Quandary?

Lately I have been somewhat preoccupied thinking about the geostrategic position the US and even the wider Western world find themselves in.  While I do not believe that the world is on the cusp of some massive catastrophe, it does… Continue Reading →

Honey or Salt?

There is an old adage that “you can catch more flies with honey than with salt.” The truth of that adage is being put to the test daily in Afghanistan and being to shown to be false under certain circumstances… Continue Reading →

Europe and Modern War

Saw an interesting piece awhile ago on the South African Business Day website called: GIDEON RACHMAN: Threat of war seems unreal in an age of peace. The essential point is that although war seems to have been eradicated in Europe,… Continue Reading →

The Decline and Fall of the United States?

There has been much talk and discussion both in editorials and on various internet forums about the pending decline of the supposed US “empire” or the USA itself. I was thinking about this on the way back from dropping my… Continue Reading →

Book Review: The Age of Total War: 1860-1945 by Jeremy Black

The notion that a book is “thought-provoking” is often thrown out there for works of non-fiction, and of those that are described as such that I have read most very seldom are.   This book is different, Dr. Black has… Continue Reading →

Book Review: The Penguin History of Europe by J.M. Roberts

I cannot remember why I bought The Penguin History of Europe by J.M. Roberts several years ago, no doubt it was as a resource for an undergrad paper I wrote although I cannot find it used as a cite in… Continue Reading →

China: A Potential or Current Threat?

Jed Babbitt has an excellent piece on RCP today that talks about the potential threat China represents to the US and by implication, the rest of the Western world.China’s Economic Sword.   People have been pointing to the potential threat… Continue Reading →

More Research Needed On Veterans Health Issues

More Research Needed On Veterans Health Issues By: Doug Karr, USN Veteran Operations Desert Storm & Desert Shield The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that there are nearly 25 million veterans currently living in the United States. Nearly $60 billion is… Continue Reading →

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