I hink there are some very insightful comments in this piece.

The 21st-century battlefield may look more like the American frontier and have more in common with the tribal wars of the Middle Ages, but fought with the most lethal and modern weapons at the disposal of our adversaries. The war will come to our homeland again.
I agree more with the second than the first analogy. The warfare along the American frontier was always controlled, to some degree, by a belief in manifest destiny and, at its root, an expanding population and land grab. While the technological differences and style of warfare may be similar, I don't see, for example, the US colonizing Somalia. This renders many of the geopolitical strategies used on the American frontier null and void - e.g. creation of forts or mining / agricultural settlements as the basis for future towns and the destruction of the environment that supported First nations economies and livelihood (i.e. slaughtering the buffalo herds, etc.).

I'm really not sure what he means by "tribal wars of the Middle Ages" either. Which ones? If we are looking at Europe as the model, then most of them operated within the same overarching weltanshauung - i.e. dominated by the Roman Catholic church. The few that weren't were examples of the Church supporting crusades of one form or another (e.g. the Thuringian crusade of the 10th century, the Albigensian Crusade, the civil war in Denmark which converted it to a Christian kingdom).

If we leave these particular overtly religious examples aside, then most of the rest were dynastic wars with an implicit religious assumption (i.e. who is the true God appointed ruler) and, again, we have the imperative to grab chunks of land and population. The only other form that we really have running around is the constant fueding / warfare that never really resolves itself (think about the Scots border raids or Ireland ca 9th-16th centuries).

As an Army, we must be expeditionary and capable of quickly responding to the changing needs of our nation. To fight the wars of the 21st century, we require the support of the people of our nation. Since the end of World War II, American political leaders have determined that they do not need declarations of war before sending our armed forces into harm's way. There was a time when I believed a declaration of war was a nicety that had more in common with the 18th century, when our Constitution was written, than the 21st century. As I have gotten older, I have come to appreciate the wisdom of our founding leaders who insisted that the Congress would have the power to declare war. The act of the president asking Congress to declare war, and then Congress declaring war, serves to bind the people of the nation behind the actions being undertaken by the armed forces. Without a declaration of war, without the support of the people, without involving the whole fabric of society in the undertaking of war, prolonged military operations in support of our national interest are bound to fail.
I think the key fault in this statement, at least from my perspective, is that phrase "national interest". For the past 100+ years, most warfare has been based on conflict between coalitions not individual nation states. This may be in the form of overt conflict such as WW I and WW II,or covert conflict (i.e. which coalition supports which side in a civil war or a single state vs. state conflict).

How these coalitions are constructed, i.e. their organizational form, has become increasingly important. For example, the old Soviet "alliance" was a pretty straight forward dominance model - Russia speaks and the Warsaw pact does. In this case, there was a clear dominance of one "national interest". This is not the model that operates in the current Western alliances, either the implicit Anglo Culture alliance (the US, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) or of NATO. In these alliances, the justifications for war are based on either ideology or group security (yes, I know that economics plays a major role - it just doesn't "sell" at the symbolic level). While there are hegemons ("superpowers" if you prefer the less overtly Marxist term ) who dominate these alliances (first Britain then the US), these hegemons have rarely had a complete dominance of the other nations in the alliance and, as such, individual "national interests, while important, have not dominated the alliance. BTW,think back to Macciavelli and the differences between a "first amongst equals" power structure and a "god king" power structure.

The US may well have decided to move towards assumption of unilateral declarations of war in the "national interest", but where does that leave the other nations in their alliances? Furthermore, I would point out that such a move also inherently breaks the implied social contract of the alliance structure (a key point for Canadians in the debate over the war in Iraq - it's why we, as a country, aren't there despite what many of us as individuals may wish).

All of this is why I say that the phrase "national interest" is problematic. Now for some more details....

First, what is the US national interest? This is not clearly spelled out in operational, as opposed to rhetorical, terms. Many nations, including Canada, are, IMO, quite correct in being leery of such rhetorical terms since we have been on the receiving end of too many bad deals (for a current example, think about the soft wood lumber fiasco / trade war that has been dragging on for over a decade).

Second, what actions by the US do we (i.e. everyone else in the world) see as proof that the US actually has an ideological position other than economic opportunism? For example, the claim of possession of WMDs was used as a causus belli for invading Iraq, but the demonstrated proof of the possession of WMDs in the case of North Korea is seen by many as the US backing off and trying to buy them off. Where is the consistency of logic in this and, perhaps more importantly, what does it say about the reputation of the US for being true to its word? If Canada were invaded, would the US only come to our aid if the invader was a non-nuclear power?

My point behind raising this is not to insult anyone but, rather, to point out a glaring flaw that I see in the article that the author notes at one level of organization but not at the higher level of international relations (actually of alliances).

Marc