Category: Military strategy and politics
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Russia and the West moving into state of more “professional antagonism”
The Russian Prosecutor General has declared Bard College an “undesirable organization”. This means that any Russian citizen who maintains a relationship with the American liberal arts school faces up to six years in prison, while all foreign professors and students are banned from Russia. Bard runs a mini-campus in Saint Petersburg, so the number of […]
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The argument that Russia’s security zones around Crimea are legal
Since HMS Defender’s recent freedom of navigation operation close to Crimea, there has been an interesting public debate about the legal aspects of innocent passage. My attention has been drawn to this article by professor Stefan Talmon where he makes the case that Russia’s suspension of this right in certain areas in the Black Sea […]
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Do tripwire forces work?
Not according to Paul Poast and Dan Reiter. In this article in War on the Rocks titled Death without deterrence, or why tripwire forces are not enough they argue that nobody is deterred by a militarily insignificant body of soldiers whose only job it is to die. Though tripwire forces offer little deterrence power, larger […]
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Silo-based nuclear missiles are better than their reputation, and Stanislav Petrov did not save the world
Pavel Podvig has some interesting points on his blog about the Soviet Union’s nuclear strategy and the value of silo-based missiles. Pavel’s point is that silo-based ICBMs are much more useful than they are typically made out to be: Silo-based multiple-warhead ICBMs have a consistently bad reputation with the arms control crowd and nuclear hawks […]
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Some thoughts on HMS Dragon’s FONOPS off Crimea
Last week, first deputy director of FSB and leader of Russia’s border control service Vladimir Kulishov made some noticeable comments to RIA Novosti about an incident in October 2020 involving the British destroyer HMS Dragon. The British warship crossed the territorial waters off Crimea in what must be characterized as a Freedom of Navigation Operation […]
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US needs a new Arctic security strategy
David Auerswald in War on the Rocks: The exercise in March highlighted increased Russian military activity in the Arctic, but that was not the sole Russian signal. U.S. Alaska Command, under U.S. Northern Command, reported that they had intercepted more Russian military aircraft near the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone in 2020 than at any […]
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The history of Danish gendarmerie forces
Rasmus Dahlberg and Henrik Stevnsborg have an interesting look at the history of Danish gendarmerie forces in Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies: Since 1952, Denmark has had no border gendarmes, and since 1894, gendarmes have not patrolled the territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. The ghost of the gendarmes, however, has kept on haunting Danish […]
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The sorry state of collective European defense capabilities
Robert Dalsjö and Michael Jonsson in a great piece in War on the Rocks on the state of NATO and Europe’s ability to defend itself: This has led to at least two lively debates, one on just how deficient NATO’s defenses against Russia are, and the other on how to respond to the threat of […]
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No turning back
Sam Greene on his blog: By the summer of 2019, it should have been clear that this prediction was wrong. The Kremlin ramped up arrests and street violence (albeit not to American levels on the latter count), culminating in the arrest of some 11,000 people in January 2021. Since then, they have moved to bar […]
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Russia challenges international law with Black Sea prohibition zones
Analysis of Russia’s decision to close three zones in the Black Sea for foreign warships including the Kerch Strait.
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Interview with Corporal Frisk about military reductions in UK
Corporal Frisk’s look at the UK’s new “Defence in a competitive age” plan for the armed forces.
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Clausewitz may help us understand why forever wars take forever
David Betz has written an article in Military Strategy Magazine titled In Search of a Point: The Blob at War on the importance of Clausewitz in modern war theory: [Consider] that the greatest military power in the world today has not won a war in seventy-five years. So accustomed now is the world to this […]