When prompted to think about the way hackers will shape the future of great power war, we are wont to imagine grand catastrophes: F-35s grounded by onboard computer failures, Aegis BMD systems failing to launch seconds before Chinese missiles arrive, looks of shock at Space Command as American surveillance satellites start careening towards the Earth–stuff […]
θ»εδΉθ¦οΌε―ηΎεΏγ The essence of the army and the state: investigate the minds of the people. βThe Three Strategies of Huang Shigong (2nd century BC) 士ζ°δΈθ¦ͺιοΌεζΉ―ζ¦δΈθ½δ»₯εΏ εδΉγζ ειζ°θ οΌζ―δΉεη¨ε ΅θ δΉγζ ε ΅θ¦ε¨δΉειζ°θε·²γ If the people and the nobility are not devoted, then even a Sage King could not guarantee victory. The man who is skilled at obtaining the support of the people is […]
Image source. Now that the affair in Doklam has come to a close, analysts of various stripes are trying to make sense of what happened and what lessons can be learned from the episode. One of the smartest of these write ups was written by Oriana Skylar Mastro and Arzan Tarapore for War on the […]
This post was originally published as part of the Thucydides Roundtable project over at Zenpundit. I encourage you to read all of the posts in the roundtable. All the world trembles at the dreaded “Thucydides trap.”Of late this phrase has been all the rage. It was first popularized by Graham Allison in 2012, and has only […]
“Let us go forward as with other matters and other measures similar in aim and effect – let us go forward in malice to none and good will to all. Such plans offer far better prizes than taking away other people’s provinces or lands or grinding them down in exploitation. The empires of the future […]
ISIS fighters near Mosul, in the 2014 advance against the city. Image source: “ISIS in Mosul, thousands of Refugees Flee,” Rodaw.com (9 July 2014). Last week Strategy Bridge published an interesting piece by Sebastian Bae. In it Bae analyzes the United States’ strategy to defeat ISIS through the lens of the Sunzi and its precepts. […]
Today Strategy Bridge published my review of Peter Harmsen’s two books on the upper-Yangtze campaigns that kicked off Asia’s World War II: Shanghai: Stalingrad on the Yangtze, and Nanjing 1937: Battle for a Doomed City. Here is an excerpt: ….Books focused on individual campaigns [of China’s WWII] are just now being written and published. Peter […]
Japanese soldiers approach the walls of Nanjing By Sweeper tamonten,China Incident Photograph Album, Vol 2, published in 1938 by Asahi Shimbun., Public Domain, accessed at Wikimedia Commons. In a recent column Peter Harmsen asks “Why do we know so little about China in World War Two?” To quote: We know hardly anything about the war in […]
Recently the Samurai Archives devoted a few episodes of their podcast to dissecting the relationship between military history and Japanese studies. The lead discussant on the program is Nathan Ledbetter, who blogs once a year or so at Sengoku Field Manual but comments regularly at the Samurai Archives forums. In these episodes his focus is […]
Source: Max Fischer and Zack Beauchamp, “14 Maps that Explain ISIS,” Vox.com (25 September 2014) This week has seen a flurry of commentary and discussion about ISIS and the proper way for France and the United States to respond to the attacks in Paris. I find myself repeating a similar set of points in many […]
