HISTORY
ESSENTIAL READING | A History of Savagery
Important New Strategic Literature
SECURITY, UNREST & WAR
Surviving the First Shot
It is said that no plan of campaign survives beyond the first shot fired. But, in the case of the Russia-Ukraine military campaign of February-March 2022, and — most importantly — all that contrived to its beginning, some trends and lessons are already visible.
PERSONNEL
Key Transitions and Defense and Intelligence Appointments - 02/2022
SECURITY, UNREST & WAR
US-Russia: Do All Major Wars Begin With “Phony Wars”?
It started as an information dominance campaign carried out abroad to distract US voters from the unpopularity of their government, running up to new elections. But it has placed Ukraine in a no-win situation, and has already led to a profound and lasting division in NATO.
HARDWARE, WEAPONRY & TECHNOLOGY
STRATEGIC TRAJECTORIES | We Have Seen Defense’s Enemy, and it is Inflation. Or is it?
“New Defense” industrial thinking, with far greater private sector engagement from new companies using newer technological approaches, is starting to mirror the success of the “New Space” sector. Defense bureaucracies, however, are slower to adopt such anti-inflationary thinking.
SECURITY, UNREST & WAR
Washington's Stumbling War Against Ethiopia
How the US plunges into the defeat of its own and Western interests in the Horn of Africa
SECURITY, UNREST & WAR
EARLY WARNING | Humanity Walks Unguarded to the Gallows
PERSONNEL
Key Transitions and Defense and Intelligence Appointments - 12/2021
HISTORY
Consequences: Today It Is Us; Tomorrow It Is You
The Horn of Africa is sliding toward a major war which seems likely to rapidly expand to embrace the major powers. The situation has strong parallels to the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia, which began World War II and destroyed the League of Nations.
GOVERNANCE & ELECTIONS
ESSENTIAL READING | The Eternal Tyrant
Important New Strategic Literature
Afghanistan
AUKUS: The Dysfunctional Birth and Accidental Promise of the West’s New Global Alliance
Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States hastily created a new global alliance, but its founders have different views of alliance priorities. AUKUS might actually work, but the US seems intent on jeopardizing Red Sea security, critical to making the bloc work.
GOVERNANCE & ELECTIONS
Global Trends: Lostpolitik
Germany’s 2021 elections accelerated the leadership vacuum in the European Union and its growing strategic irrelevance, but equally highlighted the tentative rise of a new global power framework …