After four…strange years, what can we expect from the Biden administration on the intelligence front? From key appointments to the strategic context, from insurrection to counter-intelligence, ...
http://warontherocks.com/2021/01/intelligence-and-the-biden-administration/
President Donald Trump’s recent comments at the CPAC convention were unsurprisingly lurid but reflect widely held fears about the dangers that immigrants pose to life and limb in America. The p...
Weeks before Donald Trump took office, Ryan convened a group of professionals from in and around the intelligence community to talk about the incoming president’s approach to intel (“He’s J...
http://warontherocks.com/2017/11/adventures-intel-trumpland/
Like most news junkies in the United States, I was mesmerized yesterday by the leaked transcripts of President Donald Trump phone conversations with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and with...
http://warontherocks.com/2017/08/the-leaks-that-hurt-us-all/
The question of who gets a visa to visit the United States has been a security issue at least since the country was seized by the fear of infiltration by German spies during World War I. In this ...
http://warontherocks.com/2017/07/leave-the-bureau-of-consular-affairs-in-the-state-department/
Word that President Donald Trump as well as some of his family and associates may have appeared in National Security Agency (NSA) intercepts as masked (and in some cases later unmasked) identitie...
One thing is clear about President-elect Donald Trump: He is skeptical of the U.S. intelligence community. With the aid of a bottle of bourbon, War on the Rocks assembled a top-notch group of ex...
http://warontherocks.com/2017/01/hes-just-not-that-into-you-trump-intel-and-the-american-presidency/
In 1914, Austria-Hungary launched what it thought would be a short punitive war against Serbia. The next thing it knew, it was involved in a war against Russia, Italy, France, Britain, and then t...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/11/the-danger-of-inadvertent-war-in-the-next-four-years/
A controversial celebrity and major leaks of national security information have been on the American mind recently. No, I do not refer to Edward Snowden, but to Donald Trump. Not long ago, some p...
The debate about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server is generating a great deal of heat, but not much light. Let’s start off by stipulating that having an email s...
The so-called Islamic State has become infamous for its brutality. Not only has it implemented the old standby of chopping off the hands of alleged thieves, it has also taken to crucifying people...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/01/the-art-of-barbarity-propaganda-from-wwi-to-the-islamic-state/
Christopher Moran, Company Confessions: Revealing CIA Secrets (London: Biteback Publishing, 2015) In his masterwork, On War, Carl von Clausewitz discussed the inner logic of war. He maintained...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/01/the-cias-constant-battle-between-secrecy-and-effectiveness/
Do you always feel a little Grinchy at Christmas? Have you always suspected that Santa Claus was probably up to no good? Then we have the historical document for you. In 1942, President Franklin ...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/12/when-the-u-s-government-took-on-the-sinister-santa-claus-threat/
Right now the holiday season commands a great deal of attention from most of us. However, this time of year may also remind some people of Sherman’s march to the sea during the U.S. Civil War, ...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/12/as-we-were-marching-through-georgia/
The shootdown yesterday of a Russian aircraft by a Turkish F-16 is a worrisome development, but historically speaking, incidents involving the United States or NATO countries and Soviet or Russia...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/11/12-other-clashes-and-close-calls-with-the-russians/
Carl von Clausewitz offered his “paradoxical trinity” as a tool for thinking about wars and their various manifestations. His trinity was: Composed of primordial violence, hatred, and enmity,...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/11/where-has-all-the-hatred-gone/
In histories of the Second World War, the Vatican has not fared well. Pope Pius XII has been condemned as “Hitler’s Pope” and the Church castigated for not doing enough to avert war and sa...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/11/the-vaticans-cloak-and-dagger-war-against-hitler/
A story in the New York Times this week that the Russian Navy seemed to be menacing the trans-Atlantic telecommunications cables that are so vital to the United States and, indeed, the world attr...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/10/trans-atlantic-bandwidth-then-and-now/
American military officers are a studious lot these days. A master’s degree is pretty much de rigueur for advancement. Many officers write books upon retirement and some even write important bo...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/10/military-reading-for-professional-development-stop-being-so-lazy/
Last week, British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn made news by discussing with the BBC his views on nuclear weapons and their role in defending Britain. In doing so, he displayed a staggering ...
On September 17, 1939, the Soviet military invaded Poland. In response to the Nazi German onslaught of September 1, the Polish forces had already fallen back to the southern and eastern parts of ...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/09/secret-pact-with-the-nazis-nyet-never-heard-of-it/
After the OPM hack, there were suggestions that the Chinese might be building digital dossiers on every U.S. government official, or even on all Americans. More recent reports have the Russian an...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/09/chinese-and-russian-cyber-espionage-the-kaiser-would-be-jealous/
According to recent press reports, the Pentagon’s Inspector General is investigating whether officials from U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) have skewed intelligence assessments to show more prog...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/09/warchives-cooking-the-books-on-the-islamic-state-and-the-viet-cong/
On this date in 1862 the Second Battle of Bull Run started. It lasted until August 30. The clash was the culmination of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s effort to bring the Union’s Army of Vi...
The New York Times has reported that the United States, Turkey, and the Syrian opposition are planning to create a “safe zone,” free of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), for Sy...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/07/warchives-when-safe-zones-fail/
The first battle in human history of which we have a tactical account is the Battle of Kadesh, which took place in 1274 B.C.E., near the modern Syrian–Lebanese border. It pitted the ancient Egy...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/07/warchives-beating-the-spies-2/
The Fourth of July often makes me think of President Ronald Reagan, the modern political master of the patriotic demonstration in the United States. Also, the holiday is meant to be a day of unit...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/07/warchives-the-u-s-army-unit-that-was-nominated-for-an-oscar/
According to media reports, the U.S. military intends to preposition in Eastern Europe the military equipment necessary to support the equivalent of an Army brigade, some 3,000–5,000 troops. A ...
The Battle of Manila Bay took place on May 1, 1898 and was the great naval battle of the Spanish-American War. It pitted the U.S. Asiatic Squadron under Commodore George Dewey against Spain’s ...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/06/warchives-a-firsthand-account-of-the-battle-of-manila-bay/
This week marks the anniversary of the turning point of the Pacific War between the United States and its Allies and Imperial Japan, which came with the Battle of Midway in early June 1942, a sca...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/06/warchives-the-battle-of-midway-and-what-defeat-looks-like/
As the United States has relearned in recent years, the military occupation of a country is a difficult business. And it is fraught with the potential for disputes and opportunities for both the ...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/05/warchives-occupation-and-the-black-shame-on-the-rhine/
Ever since the United States went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. government has been struggling to gain an advantageous position in the information environment in the Middle East. I...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/05/warchives-fighting-the-information-war-in-sweden/
Those of us who came of age in the late Cold War imagined that if a nuclear war came it would be The End of Everything. By contrast, those who came of age after the Cold War never thought there�...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/05/warchives-world-war-iii-1955-style/
Forty years ago yesterday, the North Vietnamese Army captured Saigon and the Vietnam War was over. This week we look at the memoirs of a key North Vietnamese participant in those events, Lieutena...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/05/warchives-vietnam-and-the-meaning-of-defeat/
The atrocities committed by terrorists make them appear powerful and in control of their destiny; they seem to act and we seem to react. However, from inside the world of the terrorist, things se...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/04/warchives-its-not-easy-being-a-terrorist/
With the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the Saudi-led operations against Houthi rebels in Yemen, bombing campaigns are on our minds these days. What...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/04/warchives-aerial-bombardment-and-hitting-the-broad-side-of-a-barn/
One hundred and fifty years ago yesterday, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate Army to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox. The Civil War was effectively over as a living experie...
On April 1, 1945 the U.S. Tenth Army, consisting of an Army corps and a corps of Marines, started coming ashore on Okinawa after a lengthy period of naval bombardment of the island and its 130,00...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/04/warchives-the-battle-of-okinawa-and-the-obscenity-of-war/
To mark the centenary of World War I, the United Kingdom’s National Archives has, since last year, been running a fascinating, and addictive (you’ve been warned), website that allows any memb...
When Tunisia’s authoritarian government fell, that democratizing and relatively free country became a place in which jihadists could operate with substantial impunity. One result was that Tunis...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/03/jihadists-as-the-great-coalition-builders/
One of the most famous American posters of the World War I era depicts a soldier climbing up stairs made of books toward a bright future, all under the bold slogan “Knowledge Wins.” That is a...
We got together a great panel of experts to talk all things cybersecurity, with a little bit of ClintonEmail.com and comedy troupes mixed in. Listen here to Jason Healey of the Atlantic Council, ...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/03/cybersecurity-over-sazeracs/
Two days ago the Royal Air Force was obliged to scramble Typhoon fighters to intercept two Russian BEAR bombers near the coast of Cornwall. Yesterday, RT published video provided by the Russian D...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/02/warchives-russian-air-force-gets-a-free-pass/
Tuesday, Jan. 27 was the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. That infamous site and the other major death camps such as Treblinka and Sobibor were mostly in Poland, territory overrun...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/01/warchives-ikes-foresight-publicizing-the-concentration-camps/
“France is at war against terrorism, jihadism, and radical Islamism.” So said French Prime Minister Manuel Valls in the aftermath of the Paris attacks that some observers have called France...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/01/advice-for-france-in-its-war-on-terror/
With the terrorist attacks in Paris and suspected terrorist cells in the news every day and with the trial of the accused Boston bomber underway, the face of terrorism in the West looks like Cher...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/01/warchives-terrorism-a-century-ago/
As this week’s shootings in Paris remind us, the West faces a threat from a dangerous enemy who follows a radical but sophisticated ideology. From a practical point of view, it behooves us to r...
During his marathon annual press conference in December, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who sees Western perfidy wherever he looks, mentioned further evidence of the West’s ill intentions to...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/01/warchives-junk-science-and-russian-national-security/
In the Christmas season many people think of the famous Christmas truce that in 1914 briefly interrupted Western Europe’s slide into industrial-scale slaughter. However, every day that followed...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/12/warchives-pattons-christmas-prayer-and-the-reality-of-war/
When reading the Senate report on CIA torture and the various responses to it, I have often found myself thinking about the country’s experience with CIA excesses during the 1970s. I cannot hel...
As Americans debate the Senate torture report, it may be of some comfort to remember that we are not the only democracy to grapple with such issues in recent history. A useful reminder of this fa...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/12/warchives-torture-and-the-self-correction-of-democracies/
One of the most problematic terms heard in the halls of the Pentagon during the Cold War was “lesser included threat” or the “lesser included case.” The idea was that if the U.S. military...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/12/warchives-world-war-i-and-the-lesser-included-threat/
Senior American diplomat Victoria Nuland was embarrassed earlier this year when someone (by which I mean the Russians) publicly released a recording of a phone call between her and U.S. Ambassado...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/11/warchives-drop-one-on-stalin/
Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz is one of the towering figures of American military history. As Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, he oversaw some of the most famous battles of Pacific War: ...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/11/warchives-dissecting-fleet-admiral-nimitz-grad-school-thesis/
Twenty five years ago on Sunday, the Berlin Wall fell. The Warsaw Pact lasted another year and a half and the Soviet Union struggled on until the end of 1991. However, the fall (really the openin...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/11/warchives-why-the-berlin-wall-had-to-fall/
Mary Elise Sarotte, The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall (New York: Basic Books, 2014). One of the enduring controversies among historians is whether history is shaped by bi...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/11/the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall-it-was-an-accident/
In October and November 1914, exactly 100 years ago, the British Expeditionary Force and the German Army fought the First Battle of Ypres in northern Belgium. Before World War I was over, Ypres w...
There has been no shortage of analytical efforts to conceptualize the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in recent months, specifically the ways in which the group di...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/10/strategic-overstretch-and-the-jihadist-generation-gap/
Last weekend, news broke that the Swedish navy was conducting a search for a Russian submarine inside Swedish waters. Unnamed sources told Swedish newspapers that the search was launched after th...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/10/warchives-is-that-a-submarine-or-just-the-whiskey-talking/
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has often been described as an amoral practitioner of hard-headed realpolitik. But how does Kissinger stack up against political leaders in Moscow over the year...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/10/warchives-how-realist-was-kissinger/
Observers on both the left and right are busily casting doubt on the existence of the Khorasan group, the alleged branch of al Qaeda that the United States bombed on the night of Sept. 22-23. In ...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/10/warchives-skepticism-and-politics-from-the-rosenbergs-to-khorasan/
Americans are an optimistic lot, and we love our toys. This is as true of the U.S. military as it is of society in general. Consider the early history of the airplane. In December 1903, Orville a...
In 2009, War on the Rocks contributor Colonel T.X. Hammes wrote a famous and scathing essay. He noted that the Defense Department spends enormous amounts of money every year educating its people....
As everyone who has seen Lawrence of Arabia knows, British General Edmund Allenby led Britain’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) during the latter part of World War I and campaigned successfu...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/08/warchives-with-allenby-at-gaza/
Seventy years ago a Franco-American force (with a few British troops thrown in) landed in southern France, starting Operation DRAGOON. The American landings began on 15 August 1944 and the French...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/08/warchives-are-wwii-stereotypes-about-the-french-military-wrong/
Is Israel’s Iron Dome a success or a failure? That depends on who you ask and on what level of war you look at. Its tactical success is unclear at this point, but the scale of Israel’s Operat...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/08/israels-iron-maginot-line-system/
One of the twentieth century’s biggest mistakes took place one hundred years ago tomorrow. On that day, August 2, 1914, the German ambassador in Belgium delivered an ultimatum from his governme...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/08/warchives-germanys-violation-of-belgian-neutrality-in-1914/
Yesterday’s tragic and appalling shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which killed some 290 people, reminds all of us of KAL 007. On September 1, 1983, Korean Air Lines Flight 007 strayed ...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/07/warchives-attention-emergency-descent-from-kal-007-to-mh-17/
We’ve heard a lot about “incidental collection” recently. This is intelligence jargon for “we collected information we didn’t really care about while trying to collect something else.�...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/07/warchives-incidental-collection/
Edward Snowden is fond of comparing himself to Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Ellsberg’s deed is often viewed as a great act of patriotism. Ellsberg himself sa...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/07/warchives-the-pentagon-papers-and-premature-publication/
During the brutal war in Bosnia during the 1990s, a war which drew military intervention from across the globe, a grim joke circulated in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo: only the odd-numbered worl...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/06/warchives-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-and-franz-feels-fine/
Over the thirteen years since 9/11, the topic of assassination has kept coming up as a subject of debate in America. To our credit, we agonize over whether assassination is moral and whether it i...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/06/warchives-kill-hitler-oh-i-guess-so/
The spectacular advances by ISIS forces in Iraq in recent days have been a catastrophe for Iraq and a major setback for American interests but they are not the end of the world. ISIS (the Islamic...
As of this writing, the Iraqi army seems to be in free fall while forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are capturing city after city in Iraq. All the tangible measures of military...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/06/warchives-size-isnt-everything/
Seventy years ago today, American, British, and Canadian forces under the overall command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower landed on the beaches of Normandy, beginning the liberation of France fro...
Former Polish leader Wojciech Jaruzelski died on Sunday. Jaruzelski is not well remembered today, except among Poles, but in the early 1980s, he was one of the world’s most reviled men—th...
Calder Walton, Empire of Secrets: British Intelligence, the Cold War and the Twilight of Empire, (New York: The Overlook Press, 2013). The period of British decolonization and America’s present...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/05/intelligence-at-the-end-of-empire/
Today’s historical document is an analysis written in 1993 by Gina Bennett, then a young terrorism analyst at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Ms. Bennett went on...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/05/warchives-wandering-mujahidin-menace/
Flight MH370 is in two places. First and tragically, it is probably somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean. Second, it is now firmly ensconced in the conspiracy theory and urban legend panthe...
In late March, the Russian government released what it said was a recording of a phone call involving former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, in which she reveals a foul mouth and (more...
The Master’s degree program that I direct at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC ran a crisis simulation for our students a couple weeks ago. Though the game dealt with the response to...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/04/dont-be-paralyzed-by-hostage-taking-in-ukraine/
Accusations of atrocities are really hard to get rid of, kind of like athlete’s foot. That is why it is so important to get accusations right and not poison the discourse with false allegatio...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/04/alternate-realities-are-like-athletes-foot/
Ukraine is being conquered by “little green men” who are all pro-Russian and many of whom seem to be wearing matching uniforms and carrying matching small arms. Supporters of the Russian posi...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/04/warchives-implausible-deniability/
On April 11, 1951 the Defense Department’s communication system sent a rare “Flash” precedence message streaking from Washington to South Korea. The message was classified Top Secret, but...
The Ukraine crisis has caused a flurry of consultation among Western leaders on how to handle Putin. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been particularly aggressive in his response to t...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/04/warchives-what-do-presidents-and-prime-ministers-say-to-each-other/
This is the latest edition of our Five Questions series. Each week, we feature an expert, practitioner, or leader answering five questions on a topic of current relevance in the world of defense,...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/03/5-questions-with-senator-flake-on-u-s-cuba-relations/
On 19 March, 2003—11 years ago this week—American F-117s carrying EGBU-27 bombs flattened Dora Farms in an effort to kill Saddam Hussein whom time sensitive intelligence indicated was at that...
This is the latest installment in our (W)ARCHIVES series, which presents something from the past – a declassified report, military document, memo, article, or photo – and considers it in th...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/03/warchives-soviet-views-on-crimes-against-peace/
This is the latest installment in our (W)ARCHIVES series, which presents something from the past – a declassified report, military document, memo, article, or photo – and considers it in th...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/03/current-military-plans-do-not-apply/
This is the latest installment in our (W)ARCHIVES series, which presents something from the past – a declassified report, military document, memo, article, or photo – and considers it in th...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/02/warchives-dissent-is-treason/
This is the first installment of our (W)ARCHIVES series, which presents something from the past – a declassified report, military document, memo, article, or photo – and considers it in the...
Michael W. S. Ryan, Decoding Al-Qaeda’s Strategy: The Deep Battle Against America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013). These days, westerners write more about jihadist strategy than the...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/02/the-makers-of-jihadist-strategy/
Between two great battles in Belgium—Waterloo and Mons—Britain enjoyed what Karl Polanyi called, “a phenomenon unheard of in the annals of Western civilization, namely a hundred years’ pe...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/01/kicking-butt-while-not-at-war/
In the spirit of Jonathan Swift, I have a modest proposal. Now that right-thinking people such as the New York Times, the Guardian and Esquire have agreed that Edward Snowden should receive cle...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/01/clemency-for-edward-snowden-and-philip-agee/
When will this war end? That’s up to us or, in the words of John Lennon: “war is over, if you want it.” This is the conversation we Americans need to have. However, I’m afraid that ...
http://warontherocks.com/2013/12/the-holly-jolly-christmas-conversation-we-need-to-have-about-war/
The ongoing Snowden-Greenwald leaks have brought numerous policy fissures out into the open. Though generalized rage (on both sides) often obscures these fissures, they raise some interesting q...
Counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine in general and the military’s FM 3-24 in particular have been the subject of extensive and often vitriolic debate in recent years. Now the debate is finally ...
http://warontherocks.com/2013/12/keep-fighting-why-the-counterinsurgency-debate-must-go-on/
I’ve been intrigued by the recent proposals to establish some sort of international agreement stating that U.S. intelligence agencies would not spy on European governments and vice versa. As ...
http://warontherocks.com/2013/11/intelligence-arms-control-dead-on-arrival/
I’m in a gloomy mood because of Edward Snowden. He got me thinking again about super-empowered individuals and I find that to be a tremendously frightening subject. In particular, I fear th...
http://warontherocks.com/2013/11/choose-the-form-of-the-destructor/
In 1917, the American Expeditionary Forces were just starting to arrive in France to help expel the German Army. One of the first substantive assignments that American commander, General John J...
http://warontherocks.com/2013/11/can-spying-on-allies-be-right/