James Mattis and his Strategic Approach to COIN

Yesterday, I watched an interview (found here) with retired U.S. Marine General and Secretary of Defense candidate James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis. Mattis is an incredibly knowledgeable veteran who reached the rank of 4 star general (the 5 star rank was retired in the early 80s) and has had a celebrated career in both the armed forces and in policy analysis at the Hoover Institute. In his time in the Marines, he was known as a champion for a better American approach to COIN (counterinsurgency) and an executor of innovative responses to irregular warfare by focusing on thorough analysis of one’s enemies. Mattis’ candidacy for the Secretary of Defense is a really exciting idea, and I sorely hope that Trump has the common sense to see that.

But back to the interview. At one point, Mattis responded to a question, stating, “Technology throws a few odd wrinkles in, but the bottom line is: the fundamental impulses, the fundamental challenges, and the solutions are pretty timeless in my line of work.” He elaborated...

The Yemeni Civil War and the Consequences of American Involvement

Yesterday, the United States Navy vessel Nitze launched a series of cruise missile attacks on radar sites in Southern Yemen in response to reported attacks on American ships in the area. The attack underscores American involvement in Yemen, an immensely complex and historically under-reported conflict area. Unfortunately, American action in Yemen is likely to only increase extremist activity in the area, leading to a weaker Yemeni state and a greater chance of incubation for non-state armed groups and their affiliates. So why is America involved at all? And what is the conflict in Yemen really about?

The Syrian Cease-Fire and Russia's Game of Incremental Escalation

One week ago, Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed upon a bilateral cease-fire agreement for the Syrian civil war. When the cease-fire went into effect this past Monday, the pact marked the fifth such attempt (and the third made by Kerry and Lavrov) to attenuate the sanguinary conflict and push stability into a brutal war-zone.

While the attempts to quell the conflict (even temporarily) are perhaps admirable, it is evident that Moscow has no interest in resolution. After all, the Russians see any possible conclusion to the civil war as involving the abdication of the Al-Assad regime, in which they have invested heavily. But, the Russians also hope to continue the conflict in order to accomplish their strategic goals in the region. But what are these interests, and what do they mean for American foreign policy?

The American Wars in Vietnam: “A Civil War in the Platoon”

In many circles today, the American-Vietnam war is remembered as a quintessential example of American Imperialism and belligerence; an overstepping of boundaries in a misguided attempt to protect the ideals of domestic and international democracy. This colossal failure of policy, it is thought, brought about the deaths of thousands of Vietnamese civilians and soldiers in a wholly "unnecessary" war. Many members of American society discount the experience of the American soldier in Vietnam, due to the seeming political folly that demanded their services- they see the average soldier as an agent of the American government.

In actuality, of course, this idea is a tremendous and foolhardy simplification, and one that does not explore the extraordinary social and emotional burden that was placed on the average soldier. Indeed, even the war itself was an incredibly complex political and social conflagration- and the average American soldier was as much of an unwitting victim as (often) unwilling participant. What, then, was the environment in which American soldiers fought? What conditions existed among the American soldiers in Vietnam?

Of Woes Unnumbered, Sing: Siegfried Sassoon and the British Experience in WW1

           99 years ago today, a Parliamentary report featuring a letter from a British soldier appeared in the London Times.[1] The letter, entitled “A Soldier’s Declaration,” was written by the decorated war-hero and soldier poet, Second Lieutenant Siegfried L. Sassoon. It spoke vigorously against the continuation of The Great War, the most violent and bloody conflict the world had ever witnessed. In the letter, Sassoon vowed that he would no longer participate in the violence, which had brought so much suffering on the individual soldier. This act was completely unique; throughout the entirety of the war, no other soldier at the Front issued such a public protest. But what was it for? And why was it made?

Cornwallis at Yorktown, 1781

           235 years ago, our country won its independence from an enormous and powerful empire. The road to such a victory was long and hard-fought: farmers, potters, bartenders went to war with one of the most impressive armies to ever be assembled- and triumphed. Even for career military, their tactics and structure were innovative and competitive. Ultimately, the combination of both regular and irregular tactics was too much for the conventional British armed forces to handle. The use of Geurilla and maneuver warfare by various Revolutionary leaders brought about the defeat of a great leader and a genius career officer, Charles Cornwallis. His defeat at Yorktown in 1781 marked the end of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the United States. But who was Cornwallis? And how was he defeated?

The Winds of Change: The Battle of Lepanto, 1571

          In 1570, a young man named Miguel enlisted in the Spanish marine corps, the Infanterîa de Marina. At the age of 23, with a good education and obvious signs of intelligence, Miguel was at the beginning of a remarkable life. He was assigned to the Spanish war-galley Marquesa, and in September of 1571, he sailed out of Messina with the Holy League, an unlikely alliance of Christian-Mediterranean powers. In his first naval engagement, at the battle of Lepanto, where the Christian force won a crucial victory over an Ottoman fleet, Miguel was shot twice in the chest and once in his left arm, costing him its use. It was six months before Miguel de Cervantes was able to leave the hospital. But Cervantes, one of Spain’s most famous authors and an early pioneer of the novel, was among the lucky at Lepanto. All told, 180,000 men sailed into the straits where the battle was fought on October 7^th, 1571, and 40,000 lost their lives. Although the conglomerate Christian forces at Lepanto were merely attempting to protect their cities, territories, and trade lines from Ottoman interference, the bloody battle ended up having far more significant consequences. For the Ottomans, the battle sounded the death knell of Ottoman dominance of the Mediterranean, and marked the sad end of almost an entire generation of Jannisaries, the most elite of soldiers in the Ottoman armed forces. For the Christians, their victory protected the European world from the threat of Turkish hegemony, released tensions placed on European economies, protected the New World from developmental insecurities, and gave the Europeans a fleeting glimpse of the power of unification. Without it, the New World would have likely looked very different.