By Robbin Laird This week I had dinner with Brig. Gen. Randy Lau, the Land Component Commander of the Nevada Army National Guard and his Sgt Major. We talked about leadership, warfighting, and how to prepare people and organizations for a world that doesn’t follow the plan. Afterward, Lau summed…
By Robbin Laird When I spoke with Robert Dane, founder and CEO of Ocius, on September 30, the Bluebottle program had moved past the “will it work” phase. It is now in the harder phase of deciding how navies and border agencies should build a force around a system that…
Vladimir Putin has spent much of the past decade insisting that Ukraine has no independent claim to nationhood, that it is, in his formulation, an artificial construct carved out of “historical Russia.” It is worth remembering that this is not a new argument. It is Stalin’s argument, updated for a…
By Robbin Laird On August 31, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek, Narendra Modi told Vladimir Putin, “We must move away from endless war towards an end to the war.” He described a peaceful resolution of all issues as the call of humanity and said…
The first installment in this series on General Pasquale Preziosa’s foreword to The Unfinished Pillar takes up the argument that gives the book its title — and its sharpest edge. The unfinished character of the European pillar, Preziosa argues, was never primarily an institutional story. It is a story about…
By Jim Jenkins I. Introduction In The First Battle of the Next War: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan, the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) lays out the results of extensive wargaming of a Taiwan scenario, revealing several serious friction points for U.S. success in the conflict. These…
By Pasquale Preziosa Understanding what future Russia desires requires a preliminary distinction between the country, its ruling class, and the political system that governs it: three closely linked realities whose interests and perspectives do not always coincide. The Kremlin’s decisions bind the Russian state, but they do not necessarily express…
On my way back from Australia, I had a chance to reflect on years of writing and wrote this piece as a consequence. Over the years I have worked through nearly every format available to someone who thinks about defense and strategy for a living. I have given lectures and…
