Lawrence Freedman and Michael Kofman walk us through the post-Cold War history of the Kremlin as commander. In the second episode of this multi-part series, they focus on Russia’s intervention ...
Vladimir Putin’s role as supreme commander has been center stage, offering a floundering and frightful performance. To understand the present, we reach back to the past. In the first of a multi...
http://warontherocks.com/2022/09/the-kremlin-in-command-part-i-the-chechen-wars-and-georgia/
Michael Eliot Howard died on Nov. 30 having just reached his 97th birthday. I first met him in October 1972 when I arrived at Oxford to do a D.Phil and was informed that he was to be my superviso...
http://warontherocks.com/2019/12/michael-howard-a-reminiscence/
Michael J. Mazarr, Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence, and America’s Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy (PublicAffairs, 2019) Brits have long joked that when Hollywood gets its hands on any Worl...
Russia’s war against Ukraine is now well into its second year. The contested area in East Ukraine is still marked by regular exchanges of fire and equally regular losses of life. At the end of ...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/08/ukraine-and-the-art-of-exhaustion/
Yesterday, Lawrence Freedman of King’s College London joined me for a conversation on the state of the world atop the ME Hotel’s rooftop bar in central London, Radio. From the Middle East, to...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/04/the-state-of-the-world-a-conversation-with-lawrence-freedman/
Towards the end of a long career as a historian and strategic thinker, one error stands out above all others: the time that I was unable to convince you to donate to the War on the Rocks crowdfun...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/04/where-i-got-strategy-wrong/
Editor’s note: Recently, the Clements Center of the University of Texas at Austin and the King’s College London War Studies Department held an important conference on the “special relatio...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/12/on-strategy-and-strategists/
Where is the master strategist we have all been waiting for? In an article last week, Daniel Steed took issue with a point I made in my book Strategy: A History. The relevant chapter, entitled �...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/10/the-master-strategist-is-still-a-myth/
“You Can’t Always Get What You Want” -Rolling Stones, Let it Bleed album 1969 In a piece published in War on the Rocks last March, and in an extended version by the journal Survival in M...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/10/ukraine-and-the-art-of-limited-war/
I took the opportunity at last week’s Current Strategy Forum at the Navy War College to address an issue that had been bothering me for some time. I concluded my lecture with the suggestion tha...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/06/stop-looking-for-the-center-of-gravity/
In the foreign ministries of America’s allies, as they analyse the President’s West Point speech on foreign policy, they will find nothing to set off alarm bells, but they will be fretting an...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/05/obamas-speech-and-fretting-allies/
Authors’ note: This is an early draft of an essay I intend to revisit, although with more hindsight! It is always challenging writing about a crisis before knowing how it will end, not least be...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/03/ukraine-and-the-art-of-crisis-management/
I Despite all the warnings about the dangers of drawing inappropriate conclusions from past events, commentators on contemporary international conflict are constantly drawn to historical analogie...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/02/iran-history-and-strategy-by-analogy/
Editor’s Note: We are pleased to feature this talk by Sir Lawrence Freedman, which took place this week at the British Embassy in Washington, DC. Special thanks to the King’s College London...
http://warontherocks.com/2013/11/50-years-on-can-we-still-learn-from-jfks-strategy/
Does nuclear deterrence still play a role in European security? To answer this familiar question it is important to keep in mind that the vital deterrent behind the formation of NATO was alliance...