Defense and the National Interest

“The Continued Existence of the State: The Clausewitzian Concept of Cohesion,” by seydlitz89 (189 KB PDF)
The second of two articles contrasting the views of Martin van Creveld and Carl von Clausewitz.
Author seydlitz89 continues where he left off “The Decline of Strategic Theory.” Whether you buy into his critique of van Creveld, there’s a lot of [...]

By Michele Pileri
Translated from the Italian — Special to DNI
13 May 2008
[Author’s note: What follows was to be a shortened version of a work written to be published by the Rivista Italiana Difesa (Italian Defence Review). The original one was written for a public that has hardly ever heard of John Boyd, so [...]

A couple in the pipeline:
First, Steven Pressfield has a new historical novel out about special ops in North Africa. The author of Gates of Fire, about Thermopylae, and The Virtues of War, on Alexander, leaps two millenia ahead to take on Rommel, or more accurately, the folks who took on Rommel in 1942 [...]

Spencer Ackerman posted an analysis yesterday of what might be called the strategic dynamics of the Iraqi conflict:
At the risk of saying something disputable, from 2003 to mid-2007, the insurgencies in Iraq had faster OODA Loops than the U.S. did. That’s not to say that there weren’t discrete tactical successes: there were, and lots of [...]