Perspectives: Intolerable tolerance
(July 2008)
At a military training base in the southern U.S., tensions ran high. A minority enlisted service member returned to his work area only to find that a noose had been left on a chair. When it...
BY LT. COL. JIM PARCO, DAVE LEVY AND RANDY BLASS
Perspectives: Credit where it’s due
(July 2008)
Just one week after Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) launched its March assault to wrest control of Basra from various militias, the American media issued the first of a steady stream of...
BY COL. DAVID G. JESMER JR. (RET.)
Perspectives: Good advice
(June 2008)
ROBERT KILLEBREW served more than 30 years in the Army |and is a former Army War College instructor.
BY COL. ROBERT KILLEBREW (RET.)
Perspectives: Managing manpower
(June 2008)
Throughout the history of warfare, it has been common knowledge that leadership can have crucial effects on battlefield success. During pre-industrial-era warfare, the measure of a...
BY MAJ. DAVID F. BIGELOW
Perspectives: Lies, damned lies and counterinsurgency
(May 2008)
It has become a matter of conventional wisdom that insurgencies last an average of 10 years and that the insurgents win about 40 percent of the time. These statistics have appeared in USA...
BY CAPT. ROBERT M. CHAMBERLAIN
The other enemy
(May 2008)
Can we win in Afghanistan? It’s an odd question, considering that we’ve already won, by historical standards. Yet unrealistic metrics of success continue to pile up, fabricated...
BY RALPH PETERS
Perspectives: New answers to hard questions
(April 2008)
Today’s strategic realities outline a world in which many states face internal and transnational threats from terrorist organizations and other violent groups. The past five years in...
BY 1st LT. BRIAN DROHAN and LT. COL. JOHN NAGL
Perspectives: Singular vision
(March 2008)
Winning the battle of ideas against terrorist groups such as al-Qaida is necessary to preserve and promote the interests of the U.S. at home and abroad. To win, theater combatant commanders...
BY CMDR. JOHN M. MYERS
Perspectives: Networks and knowing
(February 2008)
Maneuver warfare has always held the elevated terrain as sacred. Aviators have a similar golden rule: Maintain altitude, which can be traded for speed, another virtue of air power. And at...
BY CMDR. JEFFREY W. EGGERS
Perspectives: The dogmas of war
(November 2007)
There is an ensconced narrative of the Iraq war within the American military and print media that is hypercritical of the counterinsurgency part of the Army’s conduct of the war over...
BY LT. COL. GIAN P. GENTILE
Assessing the surge
(October 2007)
U.S. commanders with whom I spoke in Anbar province in August were worried — worried that their Marines would get bored in the absence of combat action. Enlisted Marines on return...
BY RALPH PETERS
Perspectives: Culture battle.
(August 2007)
The Army, like all military organizations, is defined by its culture, and the culture is defined by the history. Its culture has been defined by its overwhelming success in World War II and...
BY COL. HENRY J. FORESMAN JR.
Perspectives: The 20/20 hindsight gift
(July 2007)
As a career Army officer, I found many elements of Lt. Col. Paul Yingling’s assessment of our general officers’ leadership to ring true, but his use of history and facts are...
BY LT. COL. JOHN MAUK
Perspectives: Defending the generals
(July 2007)
One of the biggest dangers to anyone who criticizes senior leaders within an organization is to lose objectivity to emotion. This is the primary fault of Lt. Col. Paul Yingling in his...
COL. DAVID F. AUMULLER
The Geezer Brigade
(July 2007)
In these years of relentless stress on our understrength Army and Marine Corps, one pool of talent foolishly goes unexploited: military retirees, the “Geezer Brigade,” those of...
BY RALPH PETERS
Perspectives: Opportunity missed
(June 2007)
The hallmark of a professional army is its ability to analyze its performance after military operations and develop strategies that reinforce strengths and improve weaknesses for future...
BY RICHARD MAY
Perspectives: On guard
(May 2007)
Commission reports in Washington, D.C., are sort of like hookers at a Mardi Gras celebration. From a distance, they entice the inexperienced or unaware, but rarely do they look good up...
BY FRANK G. HOFFMAN
Perspectives: The fourth dimension
(May 2007)
The casus belli of the Second Lebanon War, as it is popularly referred to in Israel, was the ambush and kidnapping of two soldiers. The Israeli response to the attack by Hezbollah (Arabic...
BY LT. COL. ABE F. MARRERO
Perspectives: Why the military can’t do it all
(April 2007)
Our nation was founded on the principle of civilian control of the military, but an imbalance has developed that tends to overemphasize military capabilities as instruments of national...
BY MAJ. TIMOTHY T. TENNE
Wanted: occupation doctrine
(April 2007)
Together, the Army and Marines shoulder the combat duties in Iraq, supported by the other services. But the primary burden of occupation has been borne by the Army — as it always will...
BY RALPH PETERS
Perspectives: Iraq’s new drill
(March 2007)
Change is coming for U.S. policy on Iraq. We have a new Congress committed to change. The American people have signaled that there must be change; it’s not clear what kind of change...
By LT. COL. TERENCE J. DALY (RET.)
Strategic invisibility
(March 2007)
No strategic arena is so readily ignored or, arguably, as little understood by the U.S. government as Latin America. Yet, no state is more vital to our security, economy and contemporary...
By Ralph Peters
Perspectives: Eyes wide shut
(March 2007)
Many military professionals and politicians have come to believe that the threats facing the U.S. Army in Iraq and Afghanistan are distinctly different than the threat that the Army is...
By Capt. James G. Alden
Perspectives: A betrayal of our heritage
(February 2007)
The Defense Department last year initiated a comprehensive review of how military awards and decorations are awarded. With our nation at war, it is particularly important that our services...
BY LT. CMDR. JOHN OWEN
Progress and peril
(February 2007)
The final version of Army FM 3-24, “Counterinsurgency,” (MCWP 3-33.5 for the Marine Corps) deserves applause for coming a long way fast. The Sept. 21 draft was a jumble of...
By Ralph Peters
Rebels and religion
(January 2007)
How long will you sleep? How long until you wake up to Allah’s will? Rise up and fight Allah’s fight! The time is now! The evil-doers must pay
even if there are but three of...
By Ralph Peters
Perspectives: Coalitions in crisis
(December 2006)
Within two months of taking over as chief of the British Army, Chief of the General Staff, Gen. Richard Dannatt sent political fur flying by saying the unspeakable publicly: All was not well...
BY AIR VICE MARSHAL TONY HARRISON (RET.)
Killing with kindness
(December 2006)
The Army video touting its Future Combat Systems has superb production values. Set in an unidentified country that resembles Indonesia, it opens with a get-her-phone-number enlisted medic...
By Ralph Peters
Perspectives: A tide to turn
(November 2006)
Fully loaded, an Arleigh Burke destroyer displaces 8,315 tons. It has four turbine engines, an Aegis Combat System that includes the 53C sonar, and multiple radar and communication systems....
By David P. Skinner
Plan B for Iraq
(November 2006)
The odds of Iraq surviving as a constitutional democracy with its present borders intact are down to 50/50. While it’s still too soon to give up on the effort to let free elections...
By Ralph Peters
Perspectives: Airstrike
(October 2006)
Professor Collins’ spirited defense of the ground perspective is exactly the kind of discussion I hoped my article would catalyze. His views are predictable, and not just because he is...
By Maj. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap Jr.
Perspectives: From the ground up
(October 2006)
Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles Dunlap’s essay on air power, “America’s asymmetric advantage,” in the September AFJ was a blast from the past — a throwback to the...
By Joseph J. Collins
Lessons from Lebanon
(October 2006)
Much has been written about Israel’s strategic errors in this summer’s conflict with Hezbollah, from the embrace of the long-since discredited notion that a war can be won with...
By Ralph Peters
Perspectives: Why hearts and minds matter
(September 2006)
Counterinsurgency has no “easy button.” As every soldier knows, insurgents don’t fight fair. Instead of wearing uniforms to signify their combatant status, they normally...
By David L. Perry
The hearts-and-minds myth
(September 2006)
Mastering the languages, cultural nuances, beliefs and taboos that prevail in a theater of war, area of operations or tactical environment is vital to military success. It’s much...
By Ralph Peters
Perspectives: Five long years
(September 2006)
The nature of this war has still to be understood. It’s now five years since the attacks of Sept. 11. Where are we? Where are we going?
By AFJ
Perspectives: The undecided continent
(August 2006)
frica has suffered many curses, from massive corruption to AIDS to dysfunctional borders drawn by cynical Europeans. Oppression, illiteracy, deadly ethnic and religious rivalries —...
By Ralph Peters
Long-distance affair
(August 2006)
If the experience of the past five years means anything, it is that the Long War for the greater Middle East is most likely to be fought at close range, whether the mission is combat,...
By Tom Donnelly
Perspectives: In search of harmony
(July 2006)
Inside the Capitol Beltway, and particularly inside the Pentagon, if you really want to sound smart, you talk about “The Interagency.” It’s not an arm of the government....
By Michéle A. Flournoy and Shawn Brimley
The Navy adrift
(July 2006)
Shipbuilding has been one of the biggest conundrums of post-Cold War defense planning, and the Defense Department’s confusion seems only to escalate as time goes by. In fact, you might...
By TOM Donnelly
Blood borders
(June 2006)
International borders are never completely just. But the degree of injustice they inflict upon those whom frontiers force together or separate makes an enormous difference — often the...
By Ralph Peters
Perspectives: Combat fatigue
(June 2006)
In wartime, seemingly small things can have large meanings. So it was with an Army helicopter recently returned to the U.S. from Iraq for refurbishing. As Pamela Hess of UPI reported, the...
By Lawrence Korb, Loren Thompson and Caroline Wadhams
Perspectives: Air heads
(June 2006)
Our society, even our military, is so hyper-aware and wired that the ubiquitous presence of the television screen is no more illustrative of Clinton focus-group think than it is of a Rovian...
BY William M. Arkin
The force we have
(June 2006)
“As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want.”
By TOM Donnelly
Perspectives: Chasing the Austerlitz ideal
(April 2006)
At 10 o’clock in the morning Dec. 2, 1805, a few miles west of the Austrian town of Austerlitz, the main weight of the Austro-Russian forces under the command of Marshal Mikhail...
By Lt. Col. Gregory A. Daddis
An election in war time
(April 2006)
We are only a few moments away from the opening of the 2006 political campaign season. The election could well be a strategically decisive moment. Consider the following:
By TOM Donnelly
Two out of three ain’t enough
(March 2006)
In the November issue of AFJ, my first as editor, I promised that I would try to refrain from self-referential columns. I now have to grant myself a waiver from that pledge in order to write...
By TOM Donnelly
Perspectives: Misfire
(March 2006)
Considering how much effort went into its preparation, the Quadrennial Defense Review report sent to Capitol Hill on Feb. 6 is a surprisingly modest document. No signature weapon systems are...
By Loren Thompson
Perspectives: ‘It will be better when you leave’
(March 2006)
“Another day fighting the war on drugs.” So commented a Marine Corps platoon commander as he stood atop a dirt- and rock-strewn hill near Jubbah, Iraq, watching his men hike an...
By Christian Lowe
Waters of wealth and war
(March 2006)
Five hundred years ago, the Portuguese conquered the Indian Ocean with a dozen ships. In the 21st century, the U.S. Navy may find itself hard-pressed to maintain control of the same sea...
By Ralph Peters
Kill the QDR
(February 2006)
Doctor: “Where does it hurt?”
By TOM Donnelly
Survival strategy
(February 2006)
As the Christmas holiday approached, it was time to talk about terrorism. I spent part of a December afternoon in a sterile conference room symbolic of strategic thought in Washington...
By Ralph Peters
Perspectives: Spiraling ahead
(February 2006)
Retired Vice Adm. Arthur K. Cebrowski, who died Nov. 12, was at the center of the U.S. military’s struggle with the information age, part of a small coterie of visionaries who...
By William A. Arkin
No silver bullets
(January 2006)
Along with impatience, a great American weakness is our belief that every problem has a straightforward solution, if only we can figure it out. Especially in complex foreign endeavors, such...
By Ralph Peters
QDR’s crucial question
(January 2006)
Sometime late this month or perhaps early in February the Pentagon will release its report on the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), by my count the fifth attempt of the “post-Cold...
By TOM Donnelly
The ‘who’ question
(December 2005)
The many defense reviews of the post-Cold-War era, beginning with the first Bush administration’s “Base Force” plan, have couched themselves in the language of...
By TOM Donnelly
The warrior’s pen
(November 2005)
A follow-up to October’s column on why veterans should write for publication.
By Ralph Peters
Perspectives: Acquisition for the information age
(November 2005)
The Pentagon’s acquisition system, with roots that stretch back to World War II, is rapidly approaching a precipice. In the Cold War, the acquisition process was deliberately...
By Thomas Hone
Echoes of 1863
(November 2005)
Armed Forces Journal published its first issue — under the banner Army and Navy Journal — on Aug. 29, 1863. The Civil War then was at its height, with the North winning the great...
By TOM Donnelly