Sublime

First, our NSC process would deliver options to advance and protect the interests of the American people and overcome national security challenges.

Mark Moyar’s account of American SOF from World War II to the present (Moyar 2017) is well researched.

To ensure that we did not repeat the Vietnam War mistake of confusing activity with progress, our staff would institute “framing sessions,” which I believed were necessary to foster understanding, before we developed options for the president. These sessions would result in succinct analyses of a particular challenge to national security; the “so

To understand how the U.S. could face defeat at the hands of a weaker insurgent enemy for the second time in a generation, we must look at the structural influences that produce our general officer corps.1 —Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling

Afghanistan. Yet the salient fact about the ongoing conflicts of our time is that all are irregular in nature. That is, they are primarily conducted through acts of terrorism or more classic guerrilla hit-and-run tactics. Those who face insurgents and terrorists have learned—as the Americans did in Iraq—that conventional responses will not suffice.

That was even more the case early in Putin’s first term, when he was still testing what he could get away with. Like any born autocrat, Putin respects only power. He takes a step, looks around, sniffs the air, and then, if there are no negative consequences, he takes another step. With each advance, he gains more confidence and becomes harder to

Theodore von Hippel,

Lawrence’s second element, the “biological,” concerned the components of war, “sensitive and illogical” human beings. Because of unknown human factors, commanders are forced to hold a body of men in reserve as a safeguard, thus stretching thin their other human resources. Lawrence worked to magnify his enemy’s ignorance: “We were to contain the