Military

The idea of a service year for young Americans has been floated around for decades but with no substantive action. A definitive first step to push young Americans in a year of service starts with encouraging colleges to require them before matriculation or to weigh the experience heavily in admissions decisions.

The 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) identifies the “reemergence of long-term, strategic competition” as the central challenge to U.S. national security. But how exactly should we interpret strategic competition, and what role does Airpower play in providing an advantage? “Who” we seem to be competing against has remained largely unchanged over the last quarter century. […]

The best strategy for the EU and NATO to contain Putin’s regime is by focusing on strengthening Ukraine’s resilience and making Ukraine a successful state. In creating more economic opportunities and prosperity in Ukraine, the West will stimulate the Russian people to demand better living conditions for themselves.

Time is running out for Taiwan. Under the leadership of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been increasingly aggressive in both poaching Taiwan’s few remaining diplomatic allies and using the growing proficiency of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for messaging the inevitable: reunification with the mainland.[i] Xi […]

  In October 2018, the Supreme Court of India turned down a plea by the Central and Chhattisgarh governments to adjourn a case challenging the retention of members of a banned tribal[1] militia in official state forces. The governments justified their appeal on the grounds that the matter was “sensitive” and could affect the results […]

BY JESSICA “ZHANNA” MALEKOS SMITH As the U.S., the U.K., Russia, China, South Korea, and Israel begin developing fully autonomous weapons (FAW) systems, the issue of state responsibility for such systems remains undeveloped. In fact, the term “state responsibility” did not even appear in the United Nation’s Group of Governmental Experts Chair’s summary of the […]

BY REED SOUTHARD “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”[1] So said Benjamin Franklin at the very birth of the American experiment. Yet Americans today, more and more, hang separately. We no longer collectively tune in to fireside chats, Walter Cronkite, or even Seinfeld. Instead, like a modern […]

BY ANTHONY DANG In 2006, I was an enlisted US Marine deployed to Iraq. My closest friends were my fireteam – four of us who watched each other’s backs: Ryan was the most senior member of the team. He had survived many battles before our time and would often tell us about the First and […]

BY CHRIS DYLEWSKI When I walk to class these days, I am usually wearing jeans and a collared shirt. On a brisk Cambridge morning, I’ll be hunched a bit into my peacoat to escape the brunt of the biting wind. I probably have my headphones in, listening to a podcast or audiobook as I walk. […]

On July 26, 2017, President Trump took to Twitter to proclaim that transgender individuals are prohibited from serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. The directive caused a flurry of activity at the Pentagon. LGBTQ news sources began reporting on Friday, August 4, that a guidance document was on its way to Secretary of Defense Mattis […]

BY BENJAMIN CLAYTON I’m British, so I know what a waning superpower looks like. America, welcome to the club. In 2015, Joseph Nye, geopolitical analyst extraordinaire, published a book: “Is the American Century Over?” His answer: no. Across three dimensions of power – economic, hard, and soft – Nye concluded that only in the first […]

BY DAN FISHER The Trump administration is set to send about 4,000 new troops to Afghanistan, and the usual pessimists are coming out of the woodwork. The naysayers argue against what some are referring to as another “surge,” treating the increase as if it were a time warp back to 2010, when the United States […]