Editor’s Note: In honor of Christmas, we proudly publish the text of Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe’s 1944 Christmas letter to the U.S. 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne. An image of the let...
http://warontherocks.com/2019/12/nuts-brig-gen-anthony-mcauliffes-1944-christmas-letter-3/
Editor’s Note: In honor of Christmas, we proudly publish the text of Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe’s 1944 Christmas letter to the U.S. 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne. An image of the let...
http://warontherocks.com/2017/12/nuts-brig-gen-anthony-mcauliffes-1944-christmas-letter-2/
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...
At the beginning of World War II, the United States was the only nation that equipped its soldiers with semi-automatic rifles as their standard issue service rifle — in this case, the M1 Garand...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/10/how-churchill-paved-the-way-for-natos-standard-ammunition/
The American ambassador interrupted a Turkish cabinet meeting. He was there to prevent them from deciding to militarily intervene in Syria. He told the Turkish leader that Washington “would not...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/09/the-cia-and-a-turkish-coup/
The era between the 20th century’s world wars has become a favorite for recent historical analogy. Writers have harkened back to the kindling of innovation, the introduction of new ideas like t...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/09/a-96-year-old-report-can-teach-us-about-velocity-in-naval-learning/
The summer is coming to an end, despite the fact that Washington D.C. and the environs still feel like a swamp. In the first century of the capital’s existence the city would still be largely a...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/08/are-you-smarter-than-a-19th-century-midshipman/
Less than two weeks into President Jimmy Carter’s administration, the top China and Asia staffer at the National Security Council staff, Michel “Mike” Oksenberg, wrote a memo expressing con...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/08/getting-china-right-from-carter-to-obama/
Emblazoned in red on the magazine’s cover is a Red Army soldier, his bayonet at the ready and a large white mask with a small red star in its center draped across his back, superimposed over th...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/05/a-deception-primer-for-the-fledgling-red-army/
Two of the candidates remaining in the Republican presidential field — Donald Trump and Ted Cruz — have indicated their support for waterboarding as a means to interrogate suspected terrorist...
In 1965, the Scripps-Howard News Service sent Gene Basset to cover the growing war in Vietnam. But Basset wasn’t a reporter or photographer like the typical war correspondent — he was the chi...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/04/a-cartoonists-view-of-the-vietnam-war/
As Women’s History Month draws to a close, I wanted to share some insights about one of my favorite scholars at war, anthropologist Dr. Cora Du Bois (1903–1991). During the Second World War, ...
For several years now many states and organizations in the Middle East and elsewhere have become involved in the situation in Syria. Though there are many players and overlapping interests, there...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/02/1914-yet-another-cautionary-tale/
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/
Historic reoccurrence is a controversial concept. However, events, especially in military history, often take place in similar sites. The reason for this phenomenon is simple. Throughout centuri...
Many diplomatic officers and military analyst are fine writers, but their talents for prose are often washed out of their reports in the name of objectivity, clarity, and accountability. They lea...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/01/fighting-words-spies-soldiers-and-stylish-scribes/
To put it mildly, Turkey has been substantially involved in Syria since the eruption of the Arab Spring in 2011. After Turkish F-16s recently downed a Su-24 Russian tactical bomber over the regio...
http://warontherocks.com/2016/01/ankaras-hidden-hand-turkish-covert-ops-then-and-now/
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/
Editor’s Note: In honor of Christmas Eve, we proudly publish the text of Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe’s 1944 Christmas letter to the U.S. 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne. An image of the...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/12/nuts-brig-gen-anthony-mcauliffes-1944-christmas-letter/
The U.S. Navy schemed to invade Canada during the summer of 1887. This fact may surprise readers familiar with the long history of amicable relations between the United States and its northern ne...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/12/the-u-s-navys-secret-11-page-plan-to-conquer-canada/
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 horrific attacks in Paris on November 13 have increased calls for the United States to take a greater role in Syria. This is not the first time that the question of American involvement in Sy...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/12/deja-vu-debating-a-u-s-intervention-in-syria-in-1919/
The Church Committee’s report, “Alleged Assassination Plots against Foreign Leaders,” turns 40 today. Most of us first learned of this document — easily accessible courtesy of the Senate ...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/11/the-mysterious-blunderings-of-the-cia/
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/
The recent New York Times article about the concerns that Russia might be prepared to cut the submarine cables carrying voice and data traffic between North America and Europe conveys the impress...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/11/silencing-the-enemy-cable-cutting-in-the-spanish-american-war/
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/
The famous and often reprinted portrait of the West’s most influential military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz, was painted by Wilhelm Wach in early 1830s. One of Prussia’s most fashionable ar...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/10/a-portrait-of-clausewitz-as-a-young-officer/
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/
On July 3, 1754, a young British colonial officer named George Washington surrendered Fort Necessity to the French in Pennsylvania. While the loss of a relatively small fort was not an uncommon o...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/10/george-washington-confessed-assassin/
Some know him as Saddam Hussein’s half-brother, some remember him as the head of the Mukhabarat, the dreaded Iraqi intelligence agency, and others recall the graphic image of his decapitated he...
Earlier this month, the Argentine army declassified documents showing that some officers abused other officers and soldiers under their command and subjected them to excessively harsh disciplinar...
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 debate about the civil–military divide remains a constant topic within our post-modern society. The arguments usually circle around how to help civilian leaders understand military culture,...
Current headlines are replete with stories of urban warfare. Be it Aleppo, Ramadi, Tripoli or some Ukrainian city you only learned of last year, there appears to be no shortage of combatants that...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/08/warchives-urban-warfare-back-in-the-day/
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/
Today, NATO is forced to consider the possibility of war with a revanchist Russia over the Baltic states. And of course, during the Cold War the prospect of military action against the Soviet Uni...
British archives contain little on covert action. The Secret Intelligence Service, (SIS, more commonly known as MI6) was only legally avowed in 1994 and is not well-known for transparency. It doe...
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/
If we define an era of naval enlightenment as a rising tide of junior officers guided by more senior officers gathered together to think, speak, and write about their profession, then the United ...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/06/warchives-the-naval-lyceum-and-the-first-x-article/
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/
I’ve always been skeptical of the kind of historical op-ed that relies on building some absurdly precise parallel between a contemporary political event and an obscure precedent from the past. ...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/05/warchives-the-buddhist-al-baghdadi/
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/
Famed historian Seymour Butts made a startling discovery in the basement of the Library of Virginia in Richmond: a secret battle plan documenting the second planned usage of unmanned aerial vehic...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/04/general-lees-secret-plan-to-use-drones-at-gettysburg-revealed/
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...
After years of debating the existence or nonexistence of an “Obama Doctrine,” we finally appear ready to move on to discussing the doctrines of potential 2016 presidential candidates. So perh...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/03/warchives-a-penny-for-your-doctrine/
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...
By now the parallels between current Russian and pre-war German expansionism are so obvious as to invite satire. Those parallels are indeed stark and sobering. It is hard not to recall the ineffe...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/03/warchives-another-munich-or-another-cuban-missile-crisis/
Today’s historical documents are a collection of artistic depictions of war digitized by the British Library on their remarkable flickr account. They come from the chapter headings in the fin d...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/02/warchives-art-and-the-glamor-of-war-in-the-good-old-days/
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/
The Islamic State’s capture of large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria has reignited interest in what many had hoped was a closed chapter of U.S. military history in Iraq: the fight against...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/02/warchives-is-the-past-prologue-for-the-islamic-state/
As long as we all remain obsessively focused on the drawing and re-drawing of borders in the Middle East, it is easy to conclude that indeed, the region’s problems come from artificial states m...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/02/not-the-map-youre-looking-for-nations-and-borders-are-always-messy/
When you wrote to the White House or the State Department during the 1950s, the reply you got was surprisingly personalized. Whether asking for help or offering advice on matters of Middle East p...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/02/warchives-useful-dictators-1957-and-2015/
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/
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/
The usual date cited for the end of the Battle of the Bulge is Jan. 16, 1945—seventy years ago today—though half of the “bulge” remained in German hands for more than a month after that. ...
http://warontherocks.com/2015/01/warchives-pinching-the-bulge/
Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Michael E. Haskew’s book, West Point 1915: Eisenhower, Bradley, and the Class the Stars Fell On. On the afternoon of Sunday, December 7, 194...
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/
The celebration of Christmas during wartime has always been a bittersweet experience, no less so than during the First and Second World Wars. We offer this collection of Christmas-themed photos f...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/12/photos-christmas-in-the-world-wars/
December 24, 1941. Christmas Eve. Just 17 days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. President Franklin D. Roosevelt lights the White House Christmas tree and is joined in this ceremon...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/12/fdr-and-churchill-at-the-1941-white-house-christmas-tree-lighting/
Editor’s Note: In honor of Christmas Eve, we proudly publish Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe’s 1944 Christmas letter to the U.S. 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne. An image of the lette...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/12/nuts-brigadier-general-anthony-mcauliffes-1944-christmas-letter/
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/
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/
Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. The United Sta...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/12/fdr-a-date-which-will-live-in-infamy/
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/
From the Iranian revolution to the Arab Spring, the United States has consistently been accused of misunderstanding the politics and culture of the Middle East. The Intelligence Community has com...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/11/warchives-cia-and-the-arab-mind/
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/
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...
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/
Today the United States often faces questions about when adversaries will develop particular military capabilities. When will Iran get the bomb? When will North Korea develop a true ballistic mis...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/10/warchives-industrial-hubris/
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/
Shortly after the 1980 presidential election, former President Richard Nixon sent an eleven-page memorandum to then-President-elect Ronald Reagan. While the memo’s main thrust was dedicated to ...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/09/warchives-nixons-advice-to-reagan-and-todays-gop/
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...
Vernon Walters enlisted in the United States Army during the Second World War and rose to the rank of lieutenant general before retiring in 1976. He served as deputy director of central intellige...
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....
On August 31, 1944 the rampage of General George S. Patton’s Third Army that had started in Normandy at the beginning of the month came to a halt on the Moselle River, just short of Metz. The r...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/08/warchives-the-myth-of-germanys-obsession-with-patton/
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/
At a summit meeting in Washington, DC on December 8, 1987, General Secretary Gorbachev and President Reagan signed the historic Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty that eliminated an e...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/08/warchives-back-to-the-future-with-inf-and-srinf/
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/
The US Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) has added another excellent resource for the study of special operations. First Paul Tompkins reprised the Assessing Revolution and Insurgent Str...
http://warontherocks.com/2014/07/understanding-the-office-of-strategic-services/
In September 1973, Chilean President Salvador Allende was overthrown in a coup that he did not survive. General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship followed. Who overthrew Allende, why, and what ex...
Editor’s Note: Yesterday, we published President Ronald Reagan’s speech in reaction to the downing of Korean Airlines Flight 007 by a Soviet warplane. That wasn’t the only inadvertent and t...
Editor’s Note: Many commentators have drawn comparisons between the downing of MH17 – possibly by pro-Russian Ukrainian separatist forces – and the downing of Korean Airliner 007 by a Sovie...