Defense and the National Interest

Don Vandergriff holds forth — undoubtedly illuminating some esoteric facet of tactical decision gaming — at the VIP party.

Have to pick up Vandergriff at ATL and then head to Greenville for the conference. I hope to be able to blog some of the activities, but I don’t know if the schedule will permit.
In any case, if you’ve signed up, see you there!

For a while, it seemed like the only people questioning the success of the surge were hard core anti-Iraq-war types like Bill Lind. Recently, however, even some doyens of the national media are beginning to express doubts. Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek and someone who has been giving the surge the benefit of [...]

John Goelker had an interesting look at the issue in last Saturday’s Counterpunch:
Iraq has morphed from a fourth generation war (4GW)–for which US forces began belatedly to prepare under the leadership of General David Petraeus–into a fifth generation conflict (5GW). The difference is profound, and it obviates our political strategy, our military strategy and our [...]

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
By Elaine M. Grossman
Global Security Newswire
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
“The last thing the Middle East needs now is another war,” a senior Defense Department official recently said when asked about the prospect that President Bush might order airstrikes on Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons facilities.
Were those [...]

[Significantly revised at 6 pm EDST, on March 12th]
Fabius Maximus, in stark contrast to his nickname “Cunctator” (Delayer), takes the initiative:
When non-T conflicts become struggles for control of large geographic areas (not neighborhoods) AND involve substantial use of force, we call them 4GW’s. In the words of Martin van Creveld (private communication) 4GW is [...]

A large-scale conventional war involving the United States and a “near peer” (read: Russia or China - see Bill Lind’s latest, below, for more) just isn’t going to happen. But a massive pandemic, either natural or released by accident or terrorism, cannot be so glibly ruled out. This season’s flu fiasco shows [...]

By William S. Lind
At a recent book party for Winslow Wheeler’s new history of the Military Reform Movement of the 1970s and 1980s, I was asked for my views on the prospects for genuine reform. I replied that “So long as the money flow continues, nothing will change.” Chuck Spinney, a reformer who spent decades [...]

A new generation?
When Bill Lind, Keith Nightengale, John Schmitt, Joseph Sutton, and GI Wilson published the paper that introduced the term “fourth generation warfare,” they were speculating:
Is it not about time for a fourth generation to appear? If so, what might it look like?
They posed two broad alternatives, a technology-driven fourth generation (as was the [...]

By Elaine M. Grossman
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON - A top U.S. general is pressing Congress to accelerate plans for a study he said is crucial to the effort to field a new nuclear warhead (see GSN, Feb. 5).
Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, head of U.S. Strategic Command, told Global Security Newswire that without results from an [...]