In 2014, somebody dared to write on this august website that artists are “America’s overlooked strategic asset.” What? Really? That’s not hard-nosed foreign policy realism. That’s just ...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/11/comedy-and-strategy-dont-laugh-this-is-seriousok-laugh/
The Morse code for the letter V corresponds to the first four opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. In a twist of poetic irony, the Allied powers used this code, inspired by a German com...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/11/music-in-war-from-rebellion-to-patriotism/
Editor’s Note: The Ring is on at the Kennedy Center until May 22. “Can you remember when you first felt the power of music?” Clive Staples Lewis could, according to M. Owen Lee, whose Wagne...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/05/power-love-and-the-american-ring/
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is no stranger to the art of the music video. In 2014, its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, was heralded in its own montage. A PLA recruitment of...
Among the legacies of the Cold War is the ability of the United States to use its aircraft carrier fleet to affect strategic deterrence. This strategic deterrence strategy depends on a rather sma...
For well over a decade the film and television industry has ranged over the political and moral terrain generated by the 9/11 era and the West’s subsequent foreign policy interventions during t...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/04/game-of-drones-reviewing-eye-in-the-sky/
There are tons of policy discussion websites out there, with a million different levels and types of funding. But there are painfully few that utilize one of the most effective means we humans ha...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/03/to-better-understand-policy-read-and-write-fiction/
The faces looking through the chain link fence don’t despair any more. They gave up days ago. That’s why they are in the Hudson Refugee Camp, packed in by the thousands just to be close to wh...
I am now one of those “mid-career” professionals who from time to time is asked to impart her words of wisdom upon younger women who are in a completely different facial cream demographic tha...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/02/swim-with-the-fishes-quoting-your-way-to-the-top/
On an August day in 1983, I went to a hospital in Shanghai to visit my father. He’d developed liver problems in the mid-1960s while being tortured and forced to do hard labor by the communist g...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/02/from-shanghai-to-new-york-contrasts-contradictions-cyberwarfare/
Editor’s Note: There are a few spoilers in here, but the vast majority are from the first couple episodes. This time of year, Battle Road in Minute Man National Park outside of Boston is enc...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/02/run-freeze-or-fight-occupied-and-the-future-of-warfare/
Something is revealing in Denmark; Hamlet would be proud. In this case, it is the third film from writer/director Tobias Lindholm (English title: A War, Danish: Krigen — Danish with English sub...
As winter temperatures have (belatedly) arrived here on the East Coast, the temptation to binge-watch multiple episodes of past or present shows has increased. The recent uptick in quality script...
Editor’s note: This is the first time War on the Rocks has published original poetry, and this poem is a perfect fit for our Art of War channel. Written by a veteran of the Gulf War, its lines ...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/12/a-veterans-poem-on-memory-and-ptsd/
My dear friend Kori Schake has written a wonderful article at War on the Rocks in praise (mostly) of my new book, The Heroic Heart: Greatness Ancient and Modern. The book takes up the subject of ...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/12/achilles-and-patroclus-archetypal-heroes/
Our military officers tend to be technically minded. This is especially the case in the Navy, but also true of the other services. From early debates over whether it was appropriate for a midship...
Bryan Doerries, The Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today (Knopf, 2015). How can I say something that should never be spoken? You would rather die than hear what I’m a...
Note from the author: The purpose of this scenario, which stretches over three years, is to gauge potential future developments in NATO–Russia relations. While it is a work of fiction, and thus...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/12/radioactive-in-riga-the-latvian-nuclear-standoff-of-2018-part-iii/
Note from the author: The purpose of this scenario, which stretches over three years, is to gauge potential future developments in NATO-Russia relations. While it is a work of fiction, and thus l...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/11/radioactive-in-riga-the-latvian-nuclear-standoff-of-2018-part-ii/
Note from the author: The purpose of this scenario, which stretches over three years, is to gauge potential future developments in NATO-Russia relations. While it is a work of fiction, and thus l...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/11/radioactive-in-riga-the-latvian-nuclear-standoff-of-2018-part-i/
Before everything, Macbeth is a warrior. The opening scenes of the Scottish play include a famous description of Macbeth’s leading role in defeating Macdonaldwald and the King of Norway in thei...
“I’m not a monster. I’m just ahead of the curve.” — The Joker When he first appeared, back in 1940, the Joker was just a criminal trying to go about his business. And Batman was, lik...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/08/batmans-war-on-the-joker-and-the-war-on-terror/
Editor’s note: This is a serialized five-part story for the Atlantic Council’s Art of Future Warfare project. Read parts one, two, three, and four. The term “Forlorn Hope” is der...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/07/the-fall-of-heaven-episode-5-forlorn-hope/
Summer for a lot of people means time off. It used to in Washington, especially before the advent of air conditioning. Yet with email and social media, it sometimes feels like there is no real br...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/07/the-beers-of-world-war-iii-drinking-and-reading-ghost-fleet/
Editor’s note: This is a serialized five-part story for the Atlantic Council’s Art of Future Warfare project. Read parts one, two, and three. Deutschentalk is unique product of the Moon...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/06/the-fall-of-heaven-episode-4-moon-miners-daughter/
Editor’s note: This is a serialized five-part story for the Atlantic Council’s Art of Future Warfare project. Read parts one and two. Armand De Castro can only be described as the mind ...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/06/the-fall-of-heaven-episode-3-manifest-destiny/
Editor’s note: This is a serialized five-part story for the Atlantic Council’s Art of Future Warfare project. Commander Wainwright was an engineer, then a pilot, then an astronaut. Befor...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/06/the-fall-of-heaven-episode-2-the-midway-fleet/
Editor’s note: This is a serialized five-part story for the Atlantic Council’s Art of Future Warfare project. Space is a fog of debris, steel rain, and iron snow. Unusable. The Interne...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/06/the-fall-of-heaven-episode-1-red-guard/
If limbo is defined as “an imaginary place for lost, forgotten, or unwanted persons and things,” then Moldova is definitely in limbo. At any instant, violent conflict may erupt in this small ...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/05/waiting-for-better-times-in-moldova/
Editor’s note: The following story was written by hipbonegamer. This piece is a finalist from the Atlantic Council Art of Future Warfare project’s space-themed war-art challenge that explored...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/05/future-war-in-space-war-in-heaven/
Editor’s note: The following story was written by Saku. This piece is a finalist from the Atlantic Council Art of Future Warfare project’s space-themed war-art challenge that explored space a...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/05/future-war-in-space-the-indian-defense/
Editor’s note: The following story was written by Jonathan Jeckell. This piece is a featured entry from the Atlantic Council Art of Future Warfare project’s space-themed war-art challenge tha...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/05/future-war-in-space-snowfall/
Editor’s note: The following story was written by Mimori Oizumi Jones. This piece is a finalist from the Atlantic Council Art of Future Warfare project’s space-themed war-art challenge that e...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/05/future-war-in-space-a-clear-blue-horizon/
During a speech at West Point in 2011, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates offered a sobering account of the United States’ track record on predicting future conflicts: “When it comes to p...
Donya Al Shirazi watched the missile streak towards her. Just five minutes. That was all she needed. Might as well have been an eternity. She concentrated on the Microdrive engines, and her craft...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/05/how-the-future-war-in-space-will-be-fought/
“Welcome to the first day of the end of your life.” – E-mail from Jared Baxter Chris Martin, Engines of Extinction, Episode One: The Ends & The Means (Amazon, 2015) Of all the potenti...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/03/what-comes-after-strategic-surprise/
Are you a beer or wine person? At Sona Creamery and Wine Bar in Washington’s Eastern Market neighborhood, you can be both. Their clean and modern space features a Boschian mural by local artist...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/03/hops-vs-grapes-a-contest-to-depict-the-greatest-battle-of-all-time/
Not long ago I was searching for an obscure office off a little-used corridor in the lowest subterranean level of the Pentagon when I had an epiphany. Though it seems far-fetched at first glance,...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/03/harry-potter-and-the-five-sided-labyrinth/
My stiff fingers ritually explore the keyboard in the early morning dark. The coffee maker in the kitchen gurgles like it’s drowning, but I am the one needing that cup of salvation next to me o...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/03/breaking-through-the-fog-rethinking-a-morning-military-ritual/
Editor’s note: The following fictional editorial and news account was written by Edward Osborne. This piece is a featured entry from the Art of Future Warfare project’s “Great War” war-a...
Editor’s note: The following story was written by hipbonegamer. This piece is a featured entry from the Art of Future Warfare project’s “Great War” war-art challenge that called for a f...
Editor’s note: War on the Rocks has partnered with the Atlantic Council’s Art of Future Warfare project, which seeks to use “war-art” challenges to showcase the value of creative thinking...
Remember when the next war started? Now you do. If we were to describe one of the main missions of the Atlantic Council’s Art of Future Warfare project, it would be using stories to create thos...
American Sniper has been nominated for six Academy Awards and, according to initial viewing figures, is likely to be one of the most successful war films of all time. In the first 10 days of rele...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/02/why-american-sniper-isnt-a-great-war-film/
Editor’s Note: Diplomatic Security Agent Damien Golzari is a fictional character in the Connor Stark series. This is the first in a series of short descriptions of the various watering holes ar...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/01/raffles-and-slings-in-singapore/
Editor’s note: The following story was written by Saku. This piece is a featured entry from the Art of Future Warfare project’s “Great War” war-art challenge that called for a fiction...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/01/future-wars-first-shots-fired-in-space/
Editor’s note: The following story was written by Major Matt Cavanaugh, a U.S. Army Strategist currently assigned as an Assistant Professor teaching military strategy at the U.S. Military Aca...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/01/fear-in-the-pacific-and-cyber-conflict-in-2023/
Editor’s note: The following story by Sydney J. Freedberg, Jr., the deputy editor at BreakingDefense.com, is a featured entry from the Art of Future Warfare’s “Great War” war-art chal...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/01/tallinn-is-burning-a-dispatch-from-the-beginning-of-a-future-war/
Editor’s note: The following story by Nikolas Katsimpras was the winner of the Art of Future Warfare project “Great War” war-art challenge that called for a front-page style dispatch from t...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/01/coffee-wi-fi-and-the-moon-how-the-next-great-war-will-start/
“The Interview” is a silly, fun movie that you’ll want the kids out of the room for. If you are (or were) expecting Kubrick or Hitchcock, I’m assuming you didn’t pay attention to the ...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/12/the-interview-no-one-promised-hitchcock/
Recent research has found that when people spend money on experiences they tend to be happier with their purchases than when acquire a new “thing.” Books, particularly science fiction, occupy...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/12/art-of-future-warfare-holiday-reading-list/
#feareatsthesoul As Twitter hashtags go, it is a well-crafted one. The tweet last week that went with it, “Sad day for creative expression,” was sent by none other than comedian Steve Carell,...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/12/dual-billing-for-art-and-conflict-in-blockbuster-sony-hack/
John Maynard Keynes, the renowned 20th century British economist, once wrote that “the idea of the future being different from the present is so repugnant to our conventional modes of thought a...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/12/using-fiction-to-understand-strategy-and-the-future/
War movies matter. The American military is responsible to the American people, and the American people’s image of the experience of war is largely shaped by cinema. To them, winning (and indee...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/12/a-british-war-movie-america-needs/
For all our talk about the need for military technical superiority, what if pursuit of that goal becomes our downfall? A couple of weeks ago, Bill Sweetman from Aviation Weekly and I were talking...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/12/when-superiority-goes-wrong-science-fiction-and-offset-strategies/
Editor’s Note: This is the latest article in our partnership with the Art of Future Warfare initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center. Check out the project and keep an eye ...
War on the Rocks has partnered with the Atlantic Council’s Art of Future Warfare project, which seeks to use “war-art” challenges to showcase the value of creative thinking in the national ...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/11/war-art-challenge-the-next-great-war/
Editor’s Note: We at War on the Rocks are proud to announce our partnership with the Art of Future Warfare initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center. Check out the project and k...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/11/americas-overlooked-strategic-asset-artists/
In a series of articles at War on the Rocks and Slate, I heavily criticized Black Ops 2’s vision of future warfare for – among other things – a stale consensus vision of future conflict tha...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/11/what-black-ops-2-gets-right-about-americas-dirty-little-wars/
The past month’s media cycle has certainly articulated the strengths of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) as it has expanded control and governance across eastern Syria and wester...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/10/how-about-some-unconventional-warfare-thoughts-on-countering-isil/
The Atlantic Council, seeking to enhance its exploration of the Future of Warfare with some new blood, recently hired Call of Duty: Black Ops series director Dave Anthony for an unpaid position a...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/10/why-call-of-duty-may-not-help-us-predict-future-wars/
In the previous post, I explored what The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) had to tell us about when and why alliances came to life and what obstacles they needed to overcome. In this post, I ponder a co...
Alliances are curious beasts, at once abstract and concrete, distant and immediate. They are means of maximizing power, managing allies, and deterring adversaries, but also expressions of communi...
Ghost in the shell, one of the most famous cyberpunk films of all time and an inspiration for everything from The Matrix films to the study of cyber conflict, will turn 20 next year. Are we livin...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/09/do-cyborgs-dream-of-electric-powerpoint/
Most of us “remember” America’s wars less from personal experience or the memories of loved ones who served than through the movies those wars have inspired. And as the generations that fou...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/09/world-war-ii-remembered-through-the-movies/
Anyone who thinks “western values” are an arrogant fiction created to perpetuate the dominance of market democracies or whitewash their crimes should read A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, ...
Editor’s note: This is another entry in the WOTR series, Art of War. To submit to Art of War, email Kathleen.McInnis@warontherocks.com with “SUBMISSION” in the subject line. Jonathan ...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/08/a-new-history-of-the-great-war-wwi-gets-a-graphic-treatment/
Sparing no page, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace captures the cycle of popular passion as it erupts forth in war and wanes in peace creating an appropriate lens through which to survey the rekindli...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/08/flaring-up-war-and-peace-and-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict/
For any of our London-based readers looking for something to do this weekend, we’ve got a suggestion for you. Check out the Imperial War Museum’s “Truth and Memory” exhibition. From I...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/08/imperial-war-museum-hosts-art-of-wwi-exhibition/
Editor’s Note: We polled our contributing editors on the best autobiographies or memoirs by warriors. Here are their responses. President and General Ulysses S. Grant – Personal Memoirs Th...
Joon-ho Bong‘s action film Snowpiercer is a critically acclaimed film set in the future. As a solution to global warming scientists develop a substance named CW-7, which they dispense into the ...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/07/snowpiercer-the-problem-of-the-elites/
Is the next Banksy an ISAF vet? This article from a while back just caught my attention (H/T to Doctrine Man for pointing it out). The piece explores graffiti art on the security barriers at Kan...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/07/tagging-afghanistan-graffiti-art-in-a-combat-zone/
War films generally cover both war and history and can on occasion be very informative (think Letters from Iwo Jima) on both; however, what war films rarely do — and even rarer still do well �...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/07/the-railway-man-the-long-shadow-of-past-grievances/
The Middle East is once again on fire. Once again, Iraq hangs in the balance. The conflict in Syria, which has been metastasizing for years, has now spilled over into the broader region and is th...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/07/to-be-engaged-or-not-to-be-engaged-that-is-the-100000-question/
This week marks the passing of an entire century since Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, an event that ultimately culminated in World War I. Many have used the occasion to sombrely ref...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/07/wwi-kicks-off-with-an-epic-rap-battle/
Looking to crack open a novel at the beach this summer? Look no further than this list. Our contributors offer their favorite fiction about war, foreign affairs, and intrigue. John Amble Spyti...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/06/the-war-on-the-rocks-summer-fiction-reading-list/
“The Wind Rises” is Hayao Miyazaki’s latest, and last, movie. And while it’s an animation, it’s a very far cry from the Saturday morning cartoons of our childhood. After all, Miyazaki i...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/06/reviewing-hayao-miyazaki-the-wind-rises/
This is another entry in the WOTR series, Art of War. To submit to Art of War, email Kathleen.McInnis@warontherocks.com with “SUBMISSION” in the subject line. Discerning followers of th...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/06/the-grand-budapest-hotel-and-the-rule-of-law/
Editor’s note: The purpose of this column is to inspire a conversation about the arts and what they can tell us about statecraft and national strategy. Which, of course, means that I want y...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/05/american-amnesia-in-the-afghan-war/
“Why Don’t You Pass the Time by Playing a Little Solitaire?” Brainwashing, The Manchurian Candidate, and Cold War America The recent U.S. Senate report on abusive interrogation is hel...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/05/brainwashing-the-manchurian-candidate-and-cold-war-america/
This is another entry in the new WOTR series, Art of War. To submit to Art of War, email Kathleen.McInnis@warontherocks.com with “SUBMISSION” in the subject line. Joseph Conrad, Heart of D...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/05/afghanistan-and-the-colonel-kurtz-effect/
This is the first entry in the new WOTR series, Art of War. To submit to Art of War, email Kathleen.McInnis@warontherocks.com with “SUBMISSION” in the subject line. Ever since we were cave...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/04/art-of-war-oculus-and-military-interventions/
Given that this is a new column at War on the Rocks, you might be tempted to think that your humble columnist is going to use this space to discuss the ins and outs of Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, and al...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/04/introducing-the-art-of-war/