Sublime

The well-trained soldier will surely perform better than one with no preparation at all, but what is “training,” as Clausewitz understands it? It’s being able to draw upon principles extending across time and space, so that you’ll have a sense of what’s worked before and what hasn’t. You then apply these to the situation at hand: that’s the role of

Part of the problem while possessing chemical arms, by removing them Assad became key to the solution. Henceforth, he would enjoy utter immunity while butchering his own people with barrel bombs and other conventional ordnance. The phrase “Assad must go” vanished from Obama’s vocabulary.

What won the war, for the Americans, was a Machiavellian insight: that a constitutional monarchy’s humiliation of an absolute monarchy could cause the latter, years later, to rescue a republican revolutionary upstart. Still bitter over France’s loss of North America to the British in 1763, Louis XVI welcomed rebel emissaries to Paris in 1776. The

Cette guerre, explique-t-il, oppose des pays libres à un pays qui ne l’est pas. « Dans un pays libre, l’État n’est pas une idole ; il est une organisation nécessaire qui doit justifier constamment sa nécessité et ne demander à chacun des citoyens que ce que lui demande explicitement le bien de tous. » Il paraît bien loin l’éloge imprudent de

People who assure you that you can only gain security at the price of liberty usually want to deny you both.

When Erwann works with national governments to create their risk management strategies, he suggests they start by asking five questions: (1) What risks do we face and where? (2) What assets and populations are exposed and to what degree? (3) How vulnerable are they? (4) What financial burden do these risks place on individuals, businesses, and the

It is not enough to say that Israel retains the right to defend itself and to retaliate against terrorism, because when Israel has done so in the past, it has been condemned by the international community and the United Nations.