News

Book Review: Unwinnable Wars: Afghanistan and the Future of American Armed Statebuilding
September 25, 2024 — Dr. Erik Goepner reviews analyst Adam Wunische’s Unwinnable Wars, which, according to Gopener, offers a “timeless reminder—American power has limits.” Goepner provides a helpful outline of Wunische’s four “major preexisting conditions that severely limit the success of armed state-building efforts.” Wunische argues that preexisting conditions are “beyond the control of the intervening power” and “often foreordain the failure of such missions” (such as Afghanistan, the book’s main case study)... MORE

Cover of Unwinnable Wars: Afghanistan and the Future of American Armed Statebuilding

Book Review: The New Makers of Modern Strategy: From the Ancient World to the Digital Age
September 25, 2024 — John Erickson and John Nagl provide a useful overview of the latest (third) edition of Princeton University Press’s anthologies on modern strategy, directing readers to the most salient chapters of the book and giving insight into why “this third edition is the most interesting yet” and “are of immeasurable importance for students, practitioners, and scholars alike.” Erickson and Nagl write that “[the] essays provide excellent starting points for research on almost any topic relevant to practitioners, and many of them will endure as the best summaries of thinking on their respective subjects until the next edition is published.”... MORE

cover of The New Makers of Modern Strategy: From the Ancient World to the Digital Age

Book Review: War in Ukraine: Conflict, Strategy, and the Return of a Fractured World
September 25, 2024 — John Erickson and John Nagl review Hal Brands’s 2024 anthology on the Russia-Ukraine War, including a thorough and helpful overview of the parts and chapters. They supplement the review with a contextualization of the war and its significance for the rest of the world. They call Brands’s book, “a scholarly appraisal of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that may mark the first blows of World War III.”... MORE

cover of War in Ukraine: Conflict, Strategy, and the Return of a Fractured World

Book Review: Putin’s War on Ukraine: Russia’s Campaign for Global Counter-Revolution
September 25, 2024 — Senior Russia analyst Dr. Lionel M. Beehner provides thoughtful praise and critiques on Samuel Ramani’s 2023 book, Putin’s War on Ukraine, calling it “a must-read for diplomats and defense experts.” According to Beehner, Ramani provides “a front-row seat to the war,” helpfully “recalls incidents that may be buried in readers’ minds,” and “masterfully shows the chaos within Russian leadership circles near the invasion.” Beehner also distills and explains Ramani’s main point—that the reason behind Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is “not fear of NATO encirclement but of regime change and popular revolution from within” (or “counter-revolution”)... MORE

cover of Putin’s War on Ukraine: Russia’s Campaign for Global Counter-Revolution

Book Review: The World: A Family History of Humanity
August 21, 2024 — The Harding Project’s Lieutenant Colonel Zachary Griffiths reviews this best-selling, epic in scope history of the world framed by powerful families and gives an honest evaluation of the book’s potential value (and shortcomings) for soldiers. Griffiths notes that the book provides insight into the “richness of the human experience” with “vignettes to give color to historical military campaigns and humanize those campaigns’ participants.”... MORE

Cover of The World: A Family History of Humanity

Book Review: Standing Up Space Force: The Road to the Nation’s Sixth Armed Service
August 21, 2024 — Robert D. Bradford III reviews this “first history” of the United States Space Force. He overviews the author Forrest L. Marion’s resources (“primary sources and extensive oral history interviews”) and highlights the book’s value in the way it “depicts cultural and bureaucratic barriers to . . . organizational change.” Bradford notes the history’s universal applicability as it relates to other situations in which an institution successfully approaches change... MORE

Cover for Standing Up Space Force: The Road to the Nation’s Sixth Armed Service

Book Review: Info Ops: From World War I to the Twitter Era
July 19, 2024 — Dr. José de Arimatéia da Cruz calls Info Ops a “must-read for any future combatant commander concerned about how our enemies use information and communication technologies within a contested environment to advance their causes and wreak havoc within an increasingly polarized society.” He overviews the book’s topics, including World War I and World War II, social media, Soviet Union propaganda, and even Israel and Hamas, and discusses their immediate relevance, “highly recommend[ing] Info Ops to US Army War College students.”... MORE

Book Cover: Info Ops: From World War I to the Twitter Era

Book Review: Skies of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission over the Roof of the World
July 19, 2024 — Dr. Heather Venable, course director, Airpower Strategy and Operations, at the Air Command and Staff College, insightfully analyzes multifaceted author and translator Caroline Alexander’s latest history of the China-Burma-India Theater. Venable overviews the book’s four main elements and the two structural topics—the “ ‘Hump’ of the Himalayas” and the land bridge. She praises the author’s “beguiling human and geographical detail” that “brings the CBI Theater to life while casting a critical eye on the human frailties of her research subjects.”... MORE

Book Cover: Skies of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission over the Roof of the World

Book Review: Cold Rivals: The New Era of US-China Strategic Competition
June 18, 2024 — Naval War College associate professor Dr. Jeffrey Reeves provides a thoughtful critique of this anthology on relations between the United States and China. After a brief note on US-Chinese relations during the Trump and Biden-Harris administrations, Reeves offers suggestions for further reading and implies that the book, while providing a “historical account of US-China relations and [chronicling] its evolution,” is not unique in its contributions compared to similar literature, though he does praise two chapters on economics and technology that “stand out.”... MORE

Book Review: Age of Danger: Keeping America Safe in an Era of New Superpowers, New Weapons, and New Threats
June 18, 2024 — Dr. John A. Nagl overviews Andrew Hoehn and Thom Shanker’s contributions with their recent book, Age of Danger, which is “well worth readers’ attention.” Nagl describes Hoehn and Shanker’s emphasis on the importance and relationship between the US intelligence community and the US Department of Defense. His review also focuses on the US relationship with China and Russia, the latter of which is featured as “[t]he acute threat” in what Nagl calls “the book’s best chapter.”... MORE