By William S. Lind July 28, 2008 Senator John McCain’s position on the situation in Iraq is wrong on two counts, which means his criticism of Senator Obama is also wrong.  The twin pillars of McCain’s assessment of the war are a) the surge worked and b) because the surge worked we are now winning.  […]

By William S. Lind July 23, 2008 Two recent news stories added important evidence to issues raised in On War columns.  The first concerns a Fourth Generation war taking place on America’s doorstep, that between the Mexican state and drug gangs.  The July 14 Financial Times, one of the world’s best newspapers, reported that the […]

In that department this week, two items stand out: First, the ACLU announced that the terrorist watch list now contains over 1 million names.  Your first reaction might be that if the number of terrorists is into seven figures we are truly doomed — it only took 19 plus a support organization of perhaps a […]

By William S. Lind July 15, 2008 The war as in life, the secret to success is having a wide range of options. That was the basis of von Moltke’s approach to operational art, as opposed to the Schlieffen school’s myopic focus on one option. The list of commanders and nations whose single option failed […]

By William S. Lind July 14, 2008 The war between the Colombian state and the Marxist FARC is not a Fourth Generation conflict, because it is fought within the framework of the state. The Colombian government seeks to maintain control of the state, while the FARC want to replace it. It’s all about who runs […]

About grand strategy:  What it is, why we need it, why we don’t, and how to tell if we have a good one. All playing now on Fabius Maximus’s blog! Be sure to read his latest installment, on peak oil.  You may wonder how this plays into grand strategy, but how we deal with the […]

Perhaps Boyd’s greatest contribution wasn’t EM Theory or Patterns of Conflict.  It might have been that he exemplified what it means to be a professional in this day and time. Retired USMC Colonel Mike Wyly, a guiding force behind the Marines’ efforts to instill maneuver warfare, was also a close associate of Boyd’s.  He writes […]

by Chuck Spinney A recent article by Thomas Powers in the New York Review of Books is a very good analysis of why Mr. Bush’s impulse to attack Iran before he leaves office is sheer madness. And at a deeper level, it well illustrates how perverted the militarization of US grand strategy has become at […]

By William S. Lind July 2, 2008 Pat Buchanan’s new book, Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, is causing a stir, which is a good thing. Buchanan argues that both World War I and World War II were unnecessary wars; that Britain bears at […]