National Security

I am going to look at the history of China’s encounters with the West in reverse order, beginning with the more familiar storyline of China as a weak and battered power in the modern era and closing with a...

During the 2007 protests in Myanmar, the media reported that the opposition was coordinating their protests by text messaging and getting video out of the country through wireless internet connections. These tactics were so successful that the government limited...

Unfortunately, since I wrote on the situation in Kenya last month, the prospects have not improved and the country appears to be headed off a cliff. A series of mediators have failed to achieve any productive talks between the...

By their very nature, diplomacy and military force are means to the ends of statecraft as well as channels by which governments press their agendas onto others. Neither is inherently more or less useful than the other. Diplomacy verbally...

While most Americans were preoccupied with the holidays, Bowl games, and the Iowa caucus, Kenya had a presidential election. As African elections go, it went off pretty well. There were long lines, and a record number of people were...

The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review Report asserted that the United States is engaged in a “long war” against Islamic terrorism, a war that is now centered in Iraq, Afghanistan, and potentially a nuclear Pakistan. Containing violent Islamic extremism, however, is just...

May 3, 2006 is the day when my interest in Iraq moved from the analytical to the personal. I had known friends who served or were serving in Iraq, but on that day I found out I would be...

No detached observer of 1450 would have picked Western Europe as the most likely group to break out from their isolation and become dominant among the world’s civilizations. The Ottoman Empire, China, India, and perhaps even the Mongols all...

Our general subject is why and how to teach military history in high school; my particular assignment is to reflect on ways in which military history might be used to enable students to think more seriously about war and...

War and technology have always been linked very closely. Indeed, without technology, there would probably have been no war. After all, without technology, if only in the form of sticks and stones, man’s ability to kill his own kind...