NATIONAL HARBOR, MD: Many new threats, but few new weapons to meet them. That’s what the cash-strapped future holds for the entire Army, but especially for the service’s most expensive branch, the helicopter corps. So the challenge is to teach old birds new tricks. As budgets tighten, the service’s strategy to keep up with the… Keep reading →

Libya has become the Obama administration’s Iraq. Enthusiasm for intervention without clarity of strategy after intervention is common to both the Bush and Obama administrations. What is different is that George W. Bush took ownership of the Iraq crisis; Barack Obama has not. In the Libyan case, the dynamics are occurring in the background of… Keep reading →

QUANTICO, Va: Even though the administration’s strategic guidance swears off “large-scale, prolonged stability operations” while emphasizing air and naval forces, the lessons that ground troops learned in Afghanistan and Iraq will remain vitally relevant, both because we will still do stability operations in the future and because those skills apply to other kinds of conflicts… Keep reading →

Call it Somalia on steroids. Call it Syria next week. Either way it’s a scenario the US military needs to prepare for: an intervention into a failing state where rival factions have looted a sophisticated arsenal, from tanks to shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to weapons of mass destruction. There’s no political will in Washington to intervene… Keep reading →

With news of Muammar Gaddhafi’s death, the U.S., NATO, and the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) deserve a moment to relish in the successes of the democratic movement in Libya. Yet it’s important to understand that despite this success, the story of Libyan democracy is in its infancy. Now begins the difficult part. Can the… Keep reading →