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    my thoughts on defense budgeting

    I attempted to address some of the questions that would need to be considered in order to bridge the strategy-resources gap in a recent piece in the new JFQ ...
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    some observations from the recent TISS grand strategy conference

    As promised :D, here are some of the more interesting observations that came up at the recent TISS/Duke conference "American Grand Strategy after War." Fellow SWC member Col. Robert Jones (aka Bob's...
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    Maybe focus more on particular challenges and less on "grand strategy"?

    When I raised a similar argument with a senior NSC official who worked in the Bush 43 White House I got a lot of push back and was referred to the 2006 National Security Strategy as a clear...
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    more on definitions

    Here's how Oxford's Hew Strachan put it a couple of years ago (in Survival I think) in an article aptly titled "the lost meaning of strategy":
    “The word strategy has acquired a universality which...
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    Strategy or policy?

    Ken,
    One of the things I find most frustrating when reading scholarship and commentary on US grand strategy is this frequent lack of distinction between the concepts of "policy" and "strategy". As a...
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    a good book

    There is a nice small book on grand strategy in early American history that I would recommend, John Lewis Gaddis- "Surprise, Security and the American Experience."

    Robert Kagan's "Dangerous...
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    Some readings on a closely related topic

    Cavguy,

    One of the weeks of my graduate seminar in international security here at Duke deals with the performance of democracies in wars in general. This question is larger than your specific...
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    Well said...

    Ken said:


    Ken,
    I think this pretty much nails it, and I don't think many people really object to this. I would only add that the probability of an eventuality should determine the emphasis...
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    Cordesman on the war and its impact on US interests

    http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/090105_cordesman_gaza-_how_does_it_end.pdf

    Interesting commentary, touches on several issues debated on this thread, and also on the potential impact on the...
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    Steve Biddle's Military Power

    I'm currently finishing Steve Biddle's "Military Power: Explaining Military and Defeat in Modern Battle" Does anyone remember if this book was discussed on a SWC thread?
  11. Bill wrote: Bill, These are the issues I...

    Bill wrote:


    Bill,
    These are the issues I was trying to get at in my earlier post on this thread.
    As far as I can tell, many current top officials involved in strategic planning reached the...
  12. Is this ultimately about different visions of the "Long War"?

    Bill wrote:


    120mm wrote:


    Ken wrote:


    This is a really brilliant thread. I doubt I can add much to the excellent conversation above, but there is one thing that I'd like to draw to your...
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    it's a good chance gates will stay

    I've had the chance to have it confirmed by a top Democratic defense expert that Obama wants Gates to stay and will ask him to do so. It all depends if Gates accepts, and on what conditions.
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    Yes, but that never stopped people from...

    Yes, but that never stopped people from continuing to espouse that crap.
    Even among academics, anthropologists (along with sociologists and English professors) have some of the looniest specimens...
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    Got that.

    I totally agree with that, and my feelings on the nature and role of the discussion are identical. I'm sorry if my comments seemed pedantic or academic; I assure you they were most certainly not...
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    Moving away from buzzwords

    I am getting more and more confused by the way people use various terms and concepts in this "conventional vs. COIN" debate. I'll use the above post just as an example, not because it is any better...
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    Glad to hear that

    I've just started reading the Osinga book. I don't have much background on Boyd, so I am hoping Bill Lind is right about the value of it.

    From the first chapters, Osinga seems to have sourced his...
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    Just to clarify

    I agree, and in fact I did not mean to imply that "modes of warfare" can be divorced from the desired ends. I actually agree with Eliot Cohen, Fred Kagan and others who argued that one of the big...
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    ends-means mismatch vs. future warfare

    Yeah, the current state of that academic field is rather deplorable. That's one reason why I'm preparing to enter it: weak competition.

    On a more serious note, I currently see two general ways of...
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    What if they don't step up?

    Steve,

    I remember reading last year the excellent brief you and Frank did on ground troops level where you two did some serious damage to the arguments made by Kagan&O'Hanlon in a similar Stanley...
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    "You go to war with the Army you have", I guess :)

    I began reading this 2001 book on defense budgets and force structure, Holding the Line, edited by Cindy Williams (currently at MIT, formerly in a high-level position at the Congressional Budget...
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    Budgetary aspect

    I wrote about this on a previous thread, so sorry for repeating myself a bit, but one aspect that I think does not receive sufficient attention in general in this debate is the financial trade-off...
  23. What about Bob Gates...

    I guess I also have very mixed feelings about Rumsfeld. Much higher grades for effort than results. I think his thinking on strategy came too much from a business perspective - focused on efficiency...
  24. My review of Dale Herspring's Rumsfeld's Wars: The Arrogance of Power

    I just finished drafting a review of this book. It deals with some issues of great interest to the SWC community, but all in all I don't really recommend buying it, as the text below probably makes...
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    Fine argument Steve

    I think you are exactly right in pointing out the lack of solid strategic thinking on the part of the administration in the run-up to Iraq. My reasoning for that is that they did not really...
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