In The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power, just out from Yale, Kaplan brings a bleak outlook drawn from Greek tragedy to the practice of statecraft. He wants to bend practitioners’ attitudes toward healthy caution. 

The post Robert Kaplan: Think “Tragically” About War and Politics appeared first on 19FortyFive.

So Carl von Clausewitz, when properly understood, was right about how wars do or do not end. Even after a resounding triumph, it behooves the victors to be on guard for what follows. Even final victory is never something absolute.

The post One False Word Makes a Big Difference in Warfare appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Sad to say, but rhetoric alone is not enough. It seems things must get worse in the commercial world before they get better for a U.S. naval buildup. 

The post How to Get Americans to Support a Bigger Navy appeared first on 19FortyFive.

F-35s could find themselves grounded for want of spare parts and kindred support. A supply shortage can knock a fighter jet out of the wild blue as surely as an enemy missile can, if perhaps not as devastatingly.

The post Logistics Could Doom the Mighty F-35 In a War appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Dr. James Holmes, our Naval Diplomat, delivered the following remarks at a panel on “Indo-Pacific: Maritime Security,” Navy League Sea Air Space Expo, National Harbor, MD, April 3, 2023. 

The post Indo-Pacific Maritime Security: What Does the Future Look Like? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Last week the amphibian pundit CDR Salamander had some tart words for Joint Chiefs chairman Mark Milley. General Milley recently held forth on the Ukraine war, maintaining that “a big lesson learned” from the Russian invasion is “the incredible consumption rates of conventional munitions” even in a limited regional conflagration. A war in Korea or the Taiwan Strait would consume far more. A major war means a major expenditure of ordnance. Who’d’ve thought?

The post The U.S. Military’s Great Relearning appeared first on 19FortyFive.

As a rule military folk do the bidding of political grandees out of duty and honor, agree or not. But military history implies that statesmen are best advised to seek out an executor in full concord with the cause. 

The post Pick a True Believer to Run Your Military Campaigns appeared first on 19FortyFive.

The framework seems sound; now let’s see what substance the Pentagon and Biden administration hang on it. Last month the Joint Chiefs of Staff published a directive entitled Joint Concept for Competing, aimed at defining strategic competition and explaining how the U.S. armed forces will go about it. But because the concept’s framers define it […]

The post Joint Concept for Competing: The Best Way for the Pentagon to ‘Compete’ with China? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

This week I returned to the mothership for the first time in a dozen years, to take part in a conference at Vanderbilt University asking whether Chinese strategy is “universal or unique?” My answer: Chinese maritime strategy is novel but not unique. Chinese strategists excel at combining and recombining the same concepts available to everyone, […]

The post Look to Korea to See How China Might Fight in the Pacific Today appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Of late there’s been a lively discussion in the halls of U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I. (where I serve as the  J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy) about whether and how the U.S. military should try to preserve lessons about irregular warfare learned through hard experience during the global war on terror. […]

The post Irregular Warfare, American Style  appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Russia’s year-long onslaught against Ukraine proves, yet again, that the fundamental nature of war never changes even though no war is precisely like another. That ought to give future aggressors—looking at you, Xi Jinping—pause. Even the best-scripted war plan can go awry, with fateful consequences for the aggressor as well as the aggrieved. And Russia’s […]

The post Ukraine Ruined Russia’s Script for War. Will Ukraine Do Better? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings smiled beatifically on the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps last week. For poet Rudyard Kipling the simple headings British schoolchildren copied over and over to learn penmanship in yesteryear expressed eternal truths about life. Truths such as “Stick to the Devil you know,” or “If you don’t work you […]

The post Rudyard Kipling to U.S. Navy: Get Real to Get Better appeared first on 19FortyFive.

This week an indigenously built Indian fighter jet trapped aboard an indigenously built aircraft carrier for the first time. The flattop, INS Vikrant, is the second in the Indian Navy inventory. Vikrant’s entry into service may seem to mark a phase change in Indian maritime strategy. That was the line coming from service chieftains. The […]

The post India’s Navy Is No Superpower Just Yet appeared first on 19FortyFive.

So is it going to be Mahan or Corbett in orbit? Corbett, according to Frank Calvelli, the top acquisition executive for the U.S. Space Force. On January 24, Space News reports, Calvelli addressed the National Security Space Association’s defense and intelligence conference. And his remarks had a seawater flair—in all likelihood unintended—for students of nautical […]

The post Should Space Force Look at the Moon or the Earth? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

If things don't go China's way, Beijing could try for a rematch at a more auspicious time, and it lays colossal weight on the island.

The post A U.S.-China War over Taiwan: How Bad Could It Get? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

This week Yomiuri Shimbun reported that the U.S. Marine Corps intends to found a Marine Littoral Regiment capable of island-hopping along Japan’s Ryukyus chain, which arcs from the southernmost home island of Kyushu, through Okinawa at the chain’s midpoint, almost to within sight of northern Taiwan. Small sensor- and missile-equipped detachments will comprise the new […]

The post The U.S. Marine Corps: Now An Access-Denial Force to Fight China? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

It wasn’t that long ago that suggesting that China is enamored of Alfred Thayer Mahan’s ideas about sea power was a laugh line. Nowadays it’s common sense. Nor is this some radical notion. Ideas about politics and strategy matter—and they can be imported from other ages, countries, or civilizations. Heck, Mahan was an importer himself. […]

The post Is China a Mahanian Sea Power? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Nikkei Asia recently interviewed retired marine general and assistant secretary of defense Wallace “Chip” Gregson (also a 19FortyFive contributor) on the subject of how Japan can best contribute during a cross-strait war between China and Taiwan. Chip held forth about the need for the Japan Self-Defense Forces to fight jointly, to buttress their ability to […]

The post Japan Matters if China Invades Taiwan appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Earlier this month, the Japanese government published its latest National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy documents, outlining how Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his advisers see Japan’s strategic surroundings and intend to manage them. The directives sound a stark and blunt note. For example, the National Security Strategy closes by declaring that “in no […]

The post Japan Is Getting Serious About Its Security appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Over at the Atlantic Monthly earlier this month, big brains Robert Work and Eric Schmidt recapped a longer report from the Special Competitive Studies Project detailing “Offset-X,” an aspirational effort aimed at “achieving and maintaining military-technological superiority over all potential adversaries, thwarting China’s theories of victory, restoring America’s ability to more freely project power in the Indo-Pacific region, and […]

The post Offset-X: How to Ensure the U.S. Military Stays Ahead of Russia and China appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. That being the case, it’s hard to say with confidence whether Ukrainian drone strikes deep within Russian territory might induce Vladimir Putin to order a nuclear riposte. Putin is given to muttering darkly about nuclear war, presumably to deter the West from involving itself […]

The post Is Russia Close to Using Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Habits of Highly Effective Gray-Zone Competitors: How do we compete to good effect in the gray zone? We do so by developing strategic and operational habits fit for this murky seascape. As human beings, we are our habits. Or as the psychologist William James put it a century ago, we are “bundles of habits.” And […]

The post How Do We Beat China in the Gray Zone? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Anti-Access Bubbles: An Idea Whose Time Has Come? Help others help themselves. That’s the gist of a new report out of the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), Great Britain’s premier think tank on defense and security affairs. If Britain wants to help beleaguered Asian states guard their maritime sovereignty against such predators as China, […]

The post Anti-Access Bubbles: How to Stop China from Militarily Dominating Asia? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

The latest entry in the U.S. Naval Institute’s Maritime Counterinsurgency Project, titled “Winning without Gunsmoke in the South China Sea,” comes from Wendell Leimbach and Eric Duckworth of the Joint Intermediate Force Capabilities Office, a directorate overseen by the U.S. Marine Corps commandant. The office is doing crucial work. Gaming and analysis have revealed that […]

The post How the U.S. Navy Can Compete with China in the Gray-Zone appeared first on 19FortyFive.

How do people conceive new ideas? And how can you deliberately stoke out-of-the-box thinking among individuals and groups of people? Overlords of the armed forces, academe, and probably institutions in general commonly entreat their comrades to formulate innovative ideas, but they seldom seem to know how to kindle imaginative thought beyond pleading for it. Yet […]

The post How Can the U.S. Military Innovate? Ask Isaac Asimov appeared first on 19FortyFive.

China and U.S. Have Entered the Danger Zone Says Dr. James Holmes: This week Wisconsin congressman Mike Gallagher delivered a brusque speech at the Washington, DC-based Heritage Foundation sounding the alarm klaxon about the state of the U.S. armed forces. Occasioning his remarks was the release of the annual Heritage Index of U.S. Military Strength, which […]

The post The United States Has Entered the ‘Danger Zone’ with China appeared first on 19FortyFive.

DDG(X): Do we have a cost issue? Caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware. Denizens of the military-industrial complex have an exasperating habit: how many times have you heard a spokesman for an armed service or defense firm talk about some future platform, sensor, or weapon as though it already exists and is a known, proven, reliable […]

The post The Navy’s DDG(X) Destroyer: We Have a Price Problem appeared first on 19FortyFive.

‘Tis a mystery. Over at Foreign Policy this week, Christopher Walker explains why Russia and China can’t get anyone to like them while wondering how much Putin, Xi & Co. even care about amassing “soft power” anymore. Soft power is an intangible civilizational “power of attraction” according to the concept’s godfather, Harvard professor and former […]

The post Russia and China Don’t Give a Damn About Soft Power appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Not guilty. This week marked the climax of the court-martial of Seaman Recruit Ryan Mays, the sailor alleged to have put the torch to the amphibious warship USS Bonhomme Richard two years ago. The blaze raged for days while Bonhomme Richard was moored in San Diego undergoing deep maintenance, along with an upgrade to operate […]

The post USS Bonhomme Richard Disaster: Did Justice Prevail? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Will a ‘Peak’ China decide now is the time for war with America: Hal Brands and Michael Beckley have breaking news from 1832! Namely that it sometimes makes sense for the weak to pick a fight with the strong. No less an authority than Carl von Clausewitz affirms it. Suppose, postulates Clausewitz, a weaker contender […]

The post China Could Decide Now Is the Time for War with America appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Putin: King Pyrrhus of Moscow?: Over at Geopolitical Monitor, Julian McBride wonders whether Vladimir Putin has come to a “Pyrrhus of Epirus moment.” Maybe so. What McBride is really asking is whether Putin has frittered away his nation’s human and material resources through constant misadventures—most recently, and most egregiously, his misbegotten invasion of Ukraine. Losing […]

The post Will Vladimir Putin Know When to Stop in Ukraine? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Yesterday the crack Institute for the Study of War (ISW) team had glad tidings in their daily roundup of the latest developments out of Ukraine. Namely, the Ukrainian armed forces have reclaimed some 2,500 square kilometers of ground from Russia, chiefly in the northerly Kharkiv oblast. The accompanying map tells the story visually. Ukrainian forces […]

The post Ukraine’s Big Counteroffensive Seems Inspired by Sun Tzu appeared first on 19FortyFive.

You take your wisdom where you find it. In 2020, on impulse, I incorporated the “weird fiction” of H. P. Lovecraft, the grandmaster of the genre, into my recreational reading. I can’t remember exactly why. After all, that year was creepy enough without marinating in tales of monsters, demons, and ghoulish folk plaguing New England […]

The post Read H. P. Lovecraft to Understand War appeared first on 19FortyFive.

If you harbored any doubt that the first island chain represents the focal point of strategy, counterstrategy, and counter-counterstrategy in the Western Pacific, take a gander at recent developments out of Tokyo and Beijing. Exhibit A: the Japan Ministry of Defense released Defense of Japan 2022, an official statement wherein the ministry takes stock of […]

The post Controlling the First Island Chain: How to Ensure China Can’t Dominate the Pacific? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Chinese leaders take delight in the results of wargames such as the one conducted recently at CSIS, which showed that America could win in the Taiwan Strait but only at a terrible cost.

The post How Does China Deter America in the Taiwan Strait? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Nancy Pelosi did not need to go to Taiwan. But having publicly broached the possibility of alighting in Taipei during her tour of Asian capitals, she must go. Otherwise, the U.S. House speaker will appear to have quailed before the bombast issuing from Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officialdom since the news broke that she might […]

The post Would China Really Start a War over a Nancy Pelosi Visit to Taiwan? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Today the chief of naval operations, Admiral Mike Gilday, released an updated “Navigation Plan” for 2022. In effect, the Navigation Plan represents Admiral Gilday’s instructions to the service on how to execute the Triservice Maritime Strategy (2020), along with higher-order directives such as the National Defense Strategy and the interim National Security Strategy. Several things […]

The post Buy More Ships and Renovate the Culture: The Navy’s New Plan to Prepare for War appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Niccolò Machiavelli, meet Chester Nimitz. In his Discourses on Roman history the Renaissance Florentine philosopher-statesman claimed that human beings do not relish change. In fact, he verges on saying people can’t change as the times and surroundings change around them. They get stuck as events march on. Thankfully for World War II America, Fleet Admiral […]

The post Note from Nimitz: You Need Lots of Ships to Take Risks in War appeared first on 19FortyFive.

I’ve been a ghost around the hallowed halls of the U.S. Naval War College in Newport this sabbatical year. But I did clank and moan my way onto campus late last month to give a talk at the Center for Irregular Warfare and Armed Groups annual symposium. This year’s workshop attendees explored “gray-zone” competition at […]

The post Why the U.S. Navy Needs to Be in the South China Sea appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Late last month U.S. Marine Corps headquarters issued MCDP-8, a doctrinal publication titled Information. Sounds like a snoozer, right? And indeed, tracts belaboring military doctrine can be deadly dull. But this one is well-written and interesting on the whole. More importantly, it plumbs the substance of “information operations” in more depth than documents found elsewhere […]

The post U.S. Marines: Manage Your Message to Win in Strategic Competition appeared first on 19FortyFive.

To what end? That’s a timeless question military folk and their political masters should ask themselves before crowing about their ability to wield this or that weapon to do this or that in wartime. A refresher on the political uses of arms may be in order in the case of Taiwan. Over at The War […]

The post Attack Beijing or an Invasion Fleet? How Taiwan Should Use Its Cruise Missiles appeared first on 19FortyFive.

This week China launched—meaning deposited in the water for the first time—its latest aircraft carrier, the Type 003. Dubbed Fujian, China’s third flattop will now undergo several years of outfitting before becoming battleworthy come 2025 or thereabouts. Fujian bulks larger than its predecessors, a refitted Soviet carrier and an upgraded, Chinese-built version of the same […]

The post Fujian: China’s New Aircraft Carrier Is Important — But No Game-Changer appeared first on 19FortyFive.

So during this sabbatical year, I’ve been reading Andrew Lambert’s The British Way of War: Julian Corbett and the Battle for a National Strategy while gearing up for my own next book, a primer on joint sea power. In essence, Lambert’s book is an intellectual biography of Sir Julian Corbett, who has a strong claim […]

The post Look to World War I for Lessons About Today’s Navy appeared first on 19FortyFive.

This week marks the eightieth anniversary of the Battle of Midway. That’s when, guided by imaginative intelligence work, remnants of the U.S. Navy fleet battered at Pearl Harbor ambushed the Kidō Butai, the Imperial Japanese Navy’s vaunted aircraft-carrier strike force, in the Central Pacific. American torpedo and dive-bombing assaults sent four Japanese fleet carriers plunging […]

The post The Battle of Midway: Where Japan Lost World War II? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Can’t the Littoral Combat Ship Be Repurposed? Can the U.S. Navy leadership really not find a use for its flotilla of littoral combat ships (LCS) in an age of littoral combat? The navy’s fiscal 2023 budget submission proposes decommissioning nine youthful LCSs, justifying the move on the grounds that the leadership has decided to abandon the […]

The post Does the Littoral Combat Ship Really Need to Die? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Two theaters or one? The Biden administration seems conflicted. Do Europe and East Asia comprise a single theater for U.S. diplomatic, economic, and martial endeavor? Or are they multiple theaters—implying a hierarchy between them that governs how Washington apportions finite national resources? Kurt Campbell, the National Security Council’s seniormost Asia adviser, first said two, reminding […]

The post Europe and East Asia: All Part of the Same ‘Theater’ for America? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Repeat after me: “Force Design 2030” is not mainly about the South China Sea, no matter what General David Berger’s detractors say. That claim constitutes part of the pushback from retired marines against the Marine Corps commandant’s effort to reinvent the corps as an island-warfare force. The latest to advance it was retired colonel Gary […]

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Editor’s Note: These remarks were made by Dr. James Holmes at the Strategic Deterrent Coalition Symposium, Mystic, CT, April 28, 2022 – Even though this is a conference mainly about nuclear deterrence, it’s important to note that strategic deterrence vis-à-vis China involves far more than doomsday weapons. The Chinese Communist Party has resolved to make […]

The post How to Deter China from Making War appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Penobscot Expedition, explained: Paul Revere court-martialed? Say it ain’t so! But it was. Last Tuesday marked the anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord, fought on April 19, 1775. Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow immortalized Revere’s midnight ride to warn militia commanders that some 800 British regulars had marched out of Boston to seize contraband armaments secreted […]

The post The Penobscot Expedition: The U.S. Navy’s Worst Defeat Until Pearl Harbor? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Could China defeat a “Great Wall in Reverse”? Suppose General David Berger, the commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, gets his way and transforms the corps into an island-hopping, missile-toting force able to transmute the first island chain into a “Great Wall in reverse”—a barricade against sea and air movement between the China seas and […]

The post How China Would Wage War Against the ‘Great Wall In Reverse’ appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Revolt of the Generals: Former marine officer, secretary of the navy, and senator James Webb took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal late last month to announce that “the gloves have now come off” in a burgeoning feud between the U.S. Marine Corps old guard and the current leadership. According to Senator Webb, […]

The post Stay the Course on Reinventing the US Marine Corps to Fight China appeared first on 19FortyFive.

In the wake of Russia’s misadventure in Ukraine and the United States’ and NATO’s likewise disastrous pullout from Afghanistan, it’s worth speculating: is it possible that militaries can destroy things, devastate territory, and kill people but not control them? It’s starting to look that way. Ultramodern armed forces boast unprecedented destructive potential, manifest in long-range […]

The post Can a Modern Military Destroy People But Not Control Them? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

A No-Fly Zone over Ukraine is a Bad Idea: Confucius exhorted aspirants to wisdom to call things by their proper names, and to ensure their behavior conformed to the language they used. Rather than obfuscate, in other words, they should label things in accurate, plainspoken language and shape their actions accordingly. For him, clarity and candor […]

The post A NATO ‘No-Fly Zone’ Over Ukraine Means an Air War with Russia appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Which antagonist—if either—will prevail in Ukraine? The longevity and success of Russia’s offensive is a hot topic of debate among foreign-policy practitioners and the commentariat. Nor is it an idle topic. But beware of too-confident assessments. Canvassing military history indicates that campaigns tend to sputter over time. A campaign may stagnate, and reversals of fortune […]

The post Yes, Ukraine Could Beat Russia appeared first on 19FortyFive.

The Russian onslaught in Ukraine set loose an important—but ultimately subjective and insoluble—debate about the mental state of one of the belligerents. Namely the aggressor, President Vladimir Putin. “Is Putin Irrational?” asks a typical entry in the genre. Or as strategic theorists would put it, do calculations of cost, benefit, and risk govern Putin’s decision-making, […]

The post The Question the World Is Asking: Is Vladimir Putin Rational? appeared first on 19FortyFive.

A cheery huzzah! goes out to Representative Elaine Luria and Representative Jack Bergman for championing the cause of plainspoken language at the Pentagon. Stars & Stripes has the story of how U.S. House Armed Services Committee members grilled U.S. Navy leaders over the state of surface-fleet upkeep. A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report took […]

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This week the Pentagon named billionaire and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg the chairman of the Defense Innovation Board. This advisory body advertises itself as a catalyst for adaptability within the Defense Department at a time when changes in technology and the threat environment are galloping along. It supplies top leadership with “independent […]

The post Want to Innovate in the Military? Beware of the “Machiavelli Effect” appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Congress is in the midst of making a strategic decision—an awful one. We’re pushing four months into the new fiscal year, and lawmakers have not yet appropriated funds to execute the National Defense Authorization Act passed last month and signed by President Joe Biden. The $768 billion defense budget would help keep America competitive with […]

The post China and Russia Love That Congress Can’t Pass a Defense Budget appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Earlier this month War on the Rocks carried an interview with General David Berger, commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps. The interview was mostly about personnel policy, but toward the end the interlocutors dwelt briefly on strategy and operations in the Western Pacific. Asked about the danger to fixed U.S. bases from Chinese missile salvoes, […]

The post The US Military Needs to Avoid a Linear Approach In a War with China appeared first on 19FortyFive.

Warship design is a political process as much as an engineering challenge. Never was that more true than during the interwar decades, the heyday of naval arms control. Shipwrights in those days thought in terms of tradeoffs among speed, protection, and armament. You couldn’t have it all. For instance, adding more protection to a man-of-war—chiefly […]

The post Building a US Navy Warship Isn’t Just About Firepower (Think Politics) appeared first on 19FortyFive.