Alessandra Nisch
Putin’s Wars: Testing Boyd’s Strategy of ...

President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.

Putin’s Wars: Testing Boyd’s Strategy of Applied Friction

#Reviewing

A Year in #Reviewing

A Year in #Reviewing

Michael Howard, the great British historian, once advised that military officer who wish to avoid the pitfalls of military history should study in width, depth, and context—studying the great sweep of military history to see what changes and what does not; studying a single campaign in all its complexity to “get beyond the order created by the historian;” and studying the nature of the societies that fight the wars we seek to understand. Here at The Strategy Bridge, we feel very much the same way about the study of strategy, and we work hard to realize this width, depth, and context in the books we review each week.

#Reviewing The Future of Decline: Anglo-American Culture at its Limits

#Reviewing The Future of Decline: Anglo-American Culture at its Limits

Esty’s slim book charts what he terms “declinism” to powerful effect, distinguishing declinism from decline: “Decline is a fact; declinism is a problem. American decline is happening, slowly but inevitably. It is a structural and material process. Declinism is a problem of rhetoric or belief.” This story of America on a downhill slide that Esty tells is not self-consciously set in opposition to today’s national security concerns—whether they are framed as integrated deterrence, multi-domain operations, or large-scale combat operations—but the implications of Esty’s account are profound for what America might look like on the backside of decline.

#Reviewing: On the Initiative of Subordinate Leaders in War

#Reviewing: On the Initiative of Subordinate Leaders in War

In pre-nineteenth century wars with linear tactics, initiative existed but was not necessary in the same ways. From the Napoleonic Wars onwards, initiative became imperative, mainly due to the increase in the size of armies. The third chapter examines how we should interpret the principle of initiative. Woide believes that it should be made obligatory for the entire army, its implementation should be formalized and it should be considered a professional duty.

#Reviewing Armies in Retreat: Chaos, Cohesion, and Consequences

#Reviewing Armies in Retreat: Chaos, Cohesion, and Consequences

Military leaders and policy makers would be foolish to believe that war with a peer adversary would not involve some form of retreat or retrograde. Retreats can lead to routs, or they can provide critical time to rally forces for new campaigns or counteroffensives. Routs must be avoided, but such disaster may befall those who fail to study the history of armies in retreat.

#Reviewing A Republic in the Ranks

#Reviewing A Republic in the Ranks

Zachery A. Fry reimagines the camps and battlegrounds of the Army of the Potomac as focal points of ideological debate. Enlisted men not only reflected partisan divides of the broader Northern public but directly engaged in the political process through correspondence, voting, and political resolutions. This book sheds light upon mobilization within the ranks to reframe notions of political space and activity during the Civil War. 

#Reviewing Grand Delusion: A New Book Takes Aim at American Foreign Policy in the Middle East, With Limited Results

#Reviewing Grand Delusion: A New Book Takes Aim at American Foreign Policy in the Middle East, With Limited Results

Simon reviews more than four decades of American endeavors in the region from the perspective of eight presidential administrations ranging from Jimmy Carter to Joe Biden. The book’s chapters illuminate cabinet-level thinking on vexing national security issues: Iranian influence in the Levant in the 1980s, the response to the U.S. Marine Corps barracks bombing in Beirut, the Persian Gulf War, the unsolvable Israel-Palestine quandary, and the rise and fall of Saddam Hussein and the resultant chaos in Iraq and Syria.

#Reviewing Writing Wars

#Reviewing Writing Wars

Simply put, Writing Wars is necessary reading for scholars and writers working at the intersections of literary, military, and American studies. The interdisciplinary nature of the book also makes it well suited for a variety of classes. In addition to American Literature and History courses, select chapters on higher education’s influence on the genre and the ethics of authorship would make for insightful reading in creative writing classes that consider the history of writing programs or how identity politics figures into the ethos of storytelling. This potential widespread readership of Writing Wars is timely. With the ongoing military conflict in Ukraine and the reverberating effects of the U.S. campaigns in the Middle East, there is a need for a new wave of war fiction and, perhaps more importantly, a diverse collection of voices to tell such stories. Eisler’s book emphasizes the critical importance of this need and illuminates how those diverse voices can effectively address it.

#Reviewing The Big Picture: The Cold War on the Small Screen

#Reviewing The Big Picture: The Cold War on the Small Screen

The subject of John W. Lemza’s scholarly study The Big Picture: The Cold War on the Small Screen is a U.S. Army-produced documentary television series called The Big Picture that ran from 1951-1971 on network, local, and educational stations, as well as on the Armed Forces Network of overseas stations. Lemza’s study is relevant to our own era in which a gaping civil-military divide separates the American public from the military, and in which the military largely fails to communicate a compelling appreciation of its goals, virtues, and activities.

#Reviewing To Boldly Go: Leadership, Strategy, and Conflict in the 21st Century and Beyond

#Reviewing To Boldly Go: Leadership, Strategy, and Conflict in the 21st Century and Beyond

Drawing on a universe of science fiction franchises including The Expanse, Star Wars, Star Trek, Ender’s Game, Starship Troopers, Dune, Earthseed, The Murderbot Diaries, and many more, a wonderful array of authors, who are strategic thinkers in their own right, offer fresh perspectives in 35 chapters that span 6 major themes: leadership and command; military strategy and decision making; ethics, culture, and diversity; cooperation, competition, and conflict; the human relationship with technology; and toxic leaders.

#Reviewing The Peacemaker

#Reviewing The Peacemaker

The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink takes up the banner of attributing the end of the Cold War to the foreign policy acumen and foresight of Ronald Reagan. Indeed, it suggests that Reagan possessed a remarkable perspicacity that allowed him to perceive the world's historic changes on the horizon well before others did, and that this, plus his innate optimism, helped him lead the United States toward a better future.

#Reviewing Victor in Trouble: The Value of Satire as a Tool of Professional Development

#Reviewing Victor in Trouble: The Value of Satire as a Tool of Professional Development

Finley’s work is part of a long and glorious tradition of satire in the world of military and foreign affairs. Her books are a welcome mental break for modern audiences, but the wellspring of military and diplomatic satire was already deep. For autocratic societies, where censorship is a defining characteristic, satirists walk fine lines to say quiet thoughts out loud.

#Reviewing Military History for the Modern Strategist

#Reviewing Military History for the Modern Strategist

Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is an influential advisor to the national security elite with a reputation for deep expertise and careful judgment. Though O’Hanlon is a political scientist, he argues that military history can usefully inform current policy debates. His latest work, Military History for the Modern Strategist: America’s Major Wars since 1861, attempts to do just that through a survey of over 150 years of U.S. military history.

#Reviewing: Mud Soldiers: Life in the New American Army

#Reviewing: Mud Soldiers: Life in the New American Army

Mud Soldiers: Life Inside the New American Army is an examination of the post-Vietnam U.S. Army and the pre-Gulf War Army. It serves as an excellent supplement to recent works on the AVF by authors like Beth Bailey, Bernard Rostker, and William A. Taylor. Author George C. Wilson writes a broad study of Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment (2-16), 1st Infantry Division spanning two generations of soldiers.

#Reviewing Preparing for War: Law, Strategy, and the Making of the Geneva Conventions:

#Reviewing Preparing for War: Law, Strategy, and the Making of the Geneva Conventions:

Brian Drohan joins The Strategy Bridge to review “Preparing for War” by Boyd van Dijk” “International humanitarian law has only appeared to be absent during recent wars in Yemen, Syria, and Ukraine, but Boyd van Dijk’s Preparing for War: The Making of the Geneva Conventions reveals that the 1949 Geneva Conventions have an enduring influence. He shows that the Conventions have retained their legal, moral, and ethical applicability through a contextualized understanding of their history.

Change and Continuity? #Reviewing Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations

Change and Continuity? #Reviewing Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations

Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations shows how the various views of civil-military relations have transformed in a dramatic fashion, but also how much we rely on old conceptual tools to study new phenomena. It definitely shifts existing conversations about civil-military relations, allowing us to imagine that it is possible to move beyond Huntington…Moving past Huntington's model means recognizing complication and fluid boundaries. This departure from Huntington could also build better military and civilian expertise to understand and navigate civil-military relations, rather than dangerously assuming superiority in a military class that is isolated from democratic society.

#Reviewing An Army Afire

#Reviewing An Army Afire

An Army Afire offers lessons for leaders throughout the joint force in how to approach and solve complex and seemingly overwhelming problems. Bailey’s work is an important addition to the historical record of the U.S. military, and, more specifically, the U.S. Army. Innovative ideas and novel courses of action are necessary for combat and institutional actions. The military that fought in the 1991 Gulf War, and later in Afghanistan and Iraq were more than the product of combat platforms, the Goldwater-Nichols Act, and AirLand Battle; it was a force composed of a diverse set of men and women who stood on the shoulders of those who suffered and fought to change a system of inequality.

The Psychology of Killing with Drones: #Reviewing On Killing Remotely

The Psychology of Killing with Drones: #Reviewing On Killing Remotely

To date, moral injury remains a syndrome, that is, a group of symptoms lacking clear definition or cause. Phelps exemplifies a possible way ahead in On Killing Remotely. In terms of quantifiability, Phelps makes room for analyzing a new arena for moral injury without stretching the term past its breaking point. In terms of severity, Phelps clarifies that stakes can be high without involving immediate personal danger, thus opening up discussions of comparable scenarios with the potential to morally injure. In terms of technology, Phelps distinguishes between kinds of unmanned or remote aerial technology, sketching a taxonomy and noting the unique stressors of each tool or mission.

#Reviewing Space Civilization

#Reviewing Space Civilization

In Space Civilization: An Inquiry into the Social Questions for Humans Living in Space, political science professor James Gilley provides an ambitious interdisciplinary overview of the social factors, from the interpersonal to the international levels, that will affect humanity’s ability to become a truly interplanetary species. In its relatively short format, the book moves briskly through many of the broad technological and biological, legal, economic, psychological, sociological, and political issues that will shape the future human exploration and potential settlement of outer space.

#Reviewing The Military and the Market

#Reviewing The Military and the Market

Looking beyond more traditionally studied factors such as battlefield tactics, leadership, and military strategy, new studies under the general War and Society umbrella take into account social dynamics such as race, class, and gender in the context of national defense and warfare. In the case of The Military and the Market, the wide scholarly aperture offered by the War and Society approach extends to marketplace and economic factors, adding additional layers of complexity to American military history.

#Reviewing Is Remote Warfare Moral

#Reviewing Is Remote Warfare Moral

Is Remote Warfare Moral? Weighing Issues of Life and Death from 7,000 Miles by Joseph O. Chapa is a thoughtful and necessary contribution to the literature on RPA warfare. The book’s biggest contribution is that of a primary source from a seasoned veteran and RPA instructor in the United States Air Force. The book also elucidates some of the ambiguity surrounding RPA warfare.