Frequent commenter Tatyana and I have a friendly disagreement. She thinks Putin’s a putz. I don’t. Basically, Putin was a mid-level manager of spies in the KGB. A light colonel. An O-5. I do not find that much of a condemnation, although one could argue that someone who could not rise in their own hierarchy is incompetent.
Military Affairs
Cutting Edge Military Theory: A Primer (Part II.)
Part I. in this series dealt with the topic of COIN, which is not a theory but rather a type of warfare. Part II. appropriately begins with the late theorist Colonel John Boyd, whose many contributions to American military thinking went generally unrecognized in his own lifetime, except for a narrow group of senior officers and political appointees. A group that included Dick Cheney, who as Defense Secretary in the first Bush administration, reportedly sought and followed Boyd’s counsel in regard to revising the warplans for Operation Desert Storm ( what John Boyd would have thought of the current Iraq war, I’ll leave to others, but that Cheney was deeply impressed by Colonel Boyd and his ideas in 1991 is difficult to dispute). In the aftermath of the Gulf War, USMC General Charles C. Krulak wrote:
Cutting Edge Military Theory: A Primer (Part I.)
This post is the first in a series that is not intended for those bloggers or readers who already follow military affairs closely; for them it contains nothing new. Nor is this intended to be an exhaustive investigation of any specific military theory. Instead, it is written for those who would like to know more about buzzwords like ” Core-Gap”, “4GW”, “Open-Source Warfare” and “COIN” that have begun seeping into the MSM and the mainstream blogosphere and who would enjoy a set of links for further investigation.
Quote of the Day
Robert Schwartz, a frequent commenter on this blog, left a great comment yesterday in response to a post by Ginny about the war:
MSM Military Expertise
I watched part of an interview on C-SPAN conducted by a guy who was identified as a (the?) “CBS News national security correspondent.” The interview was with a leftist author who has written a conspiracy-mongering book about the Blackwater company. At one point the author used the term, “fourth generation warfare.” The CBS guy subsequently said that he had never heard that term before and was unfamiliar with it. Is this possible? It seems like a very odd admission for a “national security correspondent” to make. Perhaps I misheard, or the correspondent really was familiar with the term and was trying to elicit an explanation for an audience he assumed was not. Either way, very strange.