Blog Posts

“The Afghan government is giving support to a Taliban faction in an effort to sow rifts within the insurgency and nudge some of its leaders toward peace talks.”

“This attempt to integrate the weaker Sunnis with stronger Kurds represents a more pragmatic alternative to the earlier $500 million 'train and equip' program.”

“Surveying the wreckage of the Middle East and the fraying of Europe, President Obama would like us to believe that no other policy could have worked better.”

“If legitimacy is indispensable, how do we explain the apparent ability of authoritarian states to defeat insurgents with little to no concern for popular support or root causes?”

The Afghan intelligence agency NDS confirmed that Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Pakistan near the Afghan border.

The op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, ‘Take the Gloves Off Against the Taliban’, by Dave Petraeus and Michael O’Hanlon is at once reasonable, baffling, insufficient and infuriating.

The Brussels bombing is a precursor for a Boston or Baltimore or fill in the blank city within our own borders.

"Kosovo now finds itself, like the rest of Europe, fending off the threat of radical Islam."

“The rules of engagement mean that the indigenous Afghan and Pakistani Taliban generally get a pass.”

“The problem, as nearly every commander here will acknowledge, is that U.S. military might cannot make a broken Iraq work as a nation.”

Continue on for a link to the interview.

“Russia has experienced some successes on the Syrian battlefield, but these victories are far from establishing Moscow as the new power broker in the region.”

“It’s time for an American Foreign Legion. It would be a part of the Defense Department, but its enlisted members would be recruited globally.”

Continue on for a OUPblog infographic based on Orde F. Kittrie’s “Lawfare: Law as a Weapon of War”.

This report presents a comprehensive examination of the organization, territorial designs, management, personnel policies, and finances of ISI and AQI, both predecessors of the IS.

“I am troubled by what appears to be a growing primary reliance on special operations in lieu of a more comprehensive strategy from the Administration to defeat ISIS.”

Dave Kilcullen discusses the challenges in Africa, to include urbanization, at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.

The US military is prepared to support a train-and-equip mission to fight the thousands of IS militants in Libya when the Libyan government is ready for it.

"The sudden rise in ISIS attacks, U.S. officials believe, signals that the terror group no longer is committed to territorial expansion."

"It is Phases IV and V that the United States has recently had more difficulty with, both as a military and as a nation."

World powers say they will back Libya’s new government in its bid to lift a U.N. arms embargo.

In small wars of a thousand cuts, time is not an American or European ally.

The pact, signed amid World War I, divided the Ottoman Empire into spheres of imperial control, and is often held responsible for establishing the current borders of the Middle East.

“Today, a major in the Army knows nothing but fighting terrorists and guerrillas, because he came into the Army after 9/11.”

“The reforms (officer promotion) were opposed by many leaders in the Army and the Marine Corps, where the service cultures focus more on traditional leadership.”