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Prime Minister Winston Churchill also recognized the power of using irregular forces to combat the Wehrmacht in conjunction with regular military operations. In July 1940, he charged a new organization, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), with the mission to “set Europe ablaze.”9 For the next several years, British agents assisted local resista
... See moreWilliamson Murray • Hybrid Warfare
Thucydides wouldn’t have put it in that way, but I suspect this is what he meant when he encouraged his readers to seek “knowledge of the past as an aid to the understanding of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it.” For without some sense of the past the future can be only loneliness: amnesia is a
... See moreJohn Lewis Gaddis • On Grand Strategy
His strategy of humility was composed of four elements: accepting the consequences of defeat; regaining the confidence of the victors; building a democratic society; and creating a European federation that would transcend the historic divisions of Europe.
Henry Kissinger • Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy
It is actually not a question of size, because the government must naturally be large to oversee a highly complex nation. The problem is over-complexity and convolution, with subgroups of experts who do not cooperate, trust each other, or work well together.
George Friedman • The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond
if the diagnosis is that Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is “another Hitler,” war might be the logical implication. However, if he is “another Moammar Gadhafi,” then strong pressure coupled with behind-the-scenes negotiation might be the chosen guiding policy.
Richard Rumelt • Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The difference and why it matters
The peace which Stalin imposed bemused the world by its moderation. He enforced his prewar territorial demands, amounting to 10 percent of Finland’s territory, but refrained from occupying the entire country, as he probably could have done. He appears to have been uneasy about provoking international anger at a moment when much larger issues were a
... See moreMax Hastings • Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945
Jan Christiaan Smuts,
Max Boot • Invisible Armies
By February 10, when the civil rights bill arrived in the Senate, the most valuable hostage, the tax cut bill, was out of the South’s clutches, “locked and key” in the storm cellar of completed legislation, and so were the appropriations bills. And Johnson made sure that no other bills would wander onto the battlefield to be captured and held hosta
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