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Book Reviews
August 28, 2026 — Book reviews autumn 2026...

Getting There First: Strategic Competition Requires a Proactive Mindset
August 28, 2026 — This Strategic Competition Corner analyzes a recent war game dealing with strategic competition in Africa over critical minerals. It argues US military and policy practitioners need to think more about ways to leverage crises to America’s advantage and to its competitors’ disadvantage...

Intellectual Interoperability: Lessons from Afghanistan for Security Cooperation
August 28, 2026 — This article argues that intellectual interoperability—the cognitive and conceptual alignment necessary for multinational partners to coordinate decision making effectively—is a critical, yet undervalued, dimension of security cooperation. While considerable scholarship already explores technical and procedural interoperability, this piece examines its human dimensions and demonstrates their significance through an evidence-based analysis of gaps observed in Afghanistan (2001–21). Drawing on policy documents, doctrine, scholarly literature, and one author’s firsthand experience as a Ministry of Defense adviser in Afghanistan, this article offers military and policy practitioners three actionable lessons for building security partnerships resilient enough to withstand strategic pressure...

Transforming the US Army Reserve for Protracted War
August 28, 2026 — This article argues the US Army Reserve must be transformed from an operational to an adaptive reserve to meet the demands of protracted, high-intensity warfare. The author’s analysis focuses on how the Army Reserve’s current structure lacks the strategic depth, mobilization capacity, and training to sustain long-term conflict. Drawing on historical cases, contemporary conflicts, and official documents, this article blends strategic analysis with policy recommendations, offering practitioners actionable reforms relevant to the Army Transformation Initiative and future Joint Force readiness in large-scale combat operations...

Maximize Your Returns: The Critical Need for Red-Team Capabilities at All Echelons of Command
August 28, 2026 — This article argues that the US Army’s underuse of red teaming at echelons below flag-officer levels hinders effective decision making and operational adaptability. Unlike existing literature that primarily focuses on red teaming at higher command levels, this article emphasizes the need to integrate red-team capabilities at the division, brigade, and battalion levels. The methodology includes a comprehensive analysis of current Army doctrine, historical case studies, and interviews with military experts to assess the impact of red teaming on operational outcomes. The findings suggest that embedding professionally trained red-team members at lower echelons enhances critical thinking, identifies potential vulnerabilities, and improves overall mission success. This article offers actionable recommendations for policymakers and military practitioners to restructure training programs and resource allocation, strengthening the Army’s strategic and tactical effectiveness...

Innovation and Adaptation: Lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War, 2024
August 28, 2026 — The third year of the Russia-Ukraine War was marked by inconclusive counterattacks and minimal territorial gains despite a loss of life and materiel, mostly on the Russian side, greater than any witnessed in Europe since World War II. The most important lessons for US forces from this year of the war are the impact and promise of emerging, multi-use technology on war-fighting functions and domains. Perhaps most notably, each year of this war has further reinforced principles of mission command, either by their observance or omission...

Russia’s Attritional Theory of Victory in Ukraine
August 28, 2026 — This article argues the Russia-Ukraine War has evolved from a failed decapitation attempt into a coercive strategy of attrition designed to exhaust Ukraine, fracture Western cohesion, and force political recognition of Russia’s claims to status and strategic depth. Unlike accounts that focus solely on battlefield adaptation, it links Moscow’s changing conduct to Russian strategic culture and official strategic discourse. Drawing on Russian strategic documents, official statements, elite Russian commentary, and Western military assessments, it offers practitioners a framework for denying Russia the political fruits of endurance...

Constraint Breeds Lethality: Three Models of Military AI Adoption
August 28, 2026 — This article argues that the United States faces an institutional, not technological, adaptation gap in military artificial intelligence (AI). Constraints drive adversaries toward optimization choices that generate greater operational lethality than abundance-driven Western procurement allows. Departing from algorithmic or budget-centric commentary, it compares three procurement architectures (compliance-optimized, battlefield-validated, and systematically extractive) and treats Ukraine as a distinct wartime adoption system rather than a fourth model. Using Russian ZALA Lancet loitering munition strike data, Chinese-language doctrine on dissipative warfare, and US and NATO acquisition documentation, the analysis offers acquisition executives and combatant commanders five reforms achievable within existing authorities...

Can AI Pass the US Army War College?
August 28, 2026 — The US Army War College oral comprehensive examination serves as the institution’s capstone, measuring its senior officers’ strategic thinking. In early 2026, three faculty panels applied that standard to four leading commercial artificial intelligence (AI) systems: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Grok. Prompted without core curriculum materials, all four models passed. Unlike static benchmarks, the examination’s impromptu dialogue format revealed meaningful performance differences that were invisible in general-purpose evaluations, with one model performing at a statistically significant advantage. These findings challenge how the Department of War assesses commercial AI for strategic applications and point toward domain-specific, dialogue-based benchmarking as a more rigorous standard...

From Reliability to Fit: Trust, Adaptation, and Distributed Cognition in AI-Enabled Mission Command
August 28, 2026 — This special commentary argues that military artificial intelligence integration must pivot from model reliability to a “cognitive fit” within human-machine teams to ensure decision advantage under uncertainty. It advances beyond traditional artificial intelligence metrics by focusing on dynamic, operational adaptation and systemic resilience. The research employs an eco-cognitive framework, synthesizing John Boyd’s evolutionary theories with modern cognitive science and risk management principles. This analysis offers policy and military practitioners a crucial blueprint for designing command structures that preserve human judgment and mitigate risk...