By Lieutenant Colonel Nerea M. Cal In the summer of 2021, reports of the chaotic and rushed withdrawal from Afghanistan dominated the news, with harrowing images of Afghans – desperate to escape what would surely be oppressive rule by a Taliban government – clinging to the landing gear of U.S. Air Force cargo aircraft as... Continue Reading →
By Randell Yi Aiding National Defense in Fragile Democracies Just as the United States appeared to have disengaged from large scale nation building, it massively doubled down on providing economic and military assistance to Ukraine in response to Russia’s invasion. While total military aid flows to all recipients increased from $7.34 billion in 2000 to... Continue Reading →
By John Christianson The Value of Airpower for Modern Militaries The Russian invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022 shocked the world and united western democracies in a way Vladimir Putin has always aimed to undermine. The war has now become a clarion call for the defense of democracy from external threats that has united... Continue Reading →
Become a Patron! Did we Overestimate the Russian Military Today's episode of The Daily highlights the systemic challenges and problems in the Russian military. The episode is titled "A Tactical Disaster for Russia's Military." It begins with an attempt of the Russian military to cross a river where they exposed their troops to catastrophic losses. The... Continue Reading →
Zoltan Barany is the Frank C. Erwin, Jr. Centennial Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Armies of Arabia: Military Politics and Effectiveness in the Gulf. The last time, and luckily this hasn't really happened since 1990, there was minimal resistance from the Kuwaiti and the... Continue Reading →
Armies of Arabia Early in the book, Armies of Arabia, Zoltan Barany writes, “Perhaps the most important and conspicuous attribute that all Arab armies in republics and monarchies share is their remarkable ineffectiveness on the battlefield.” This is where most of us need to start. Barany seeks to understand why the Gulf monarchies field ineffective... Continue Reading →
Introduction to Myanmar The politics of Myanmar confuse many of us (although few will admit it). Let’s start with the name. Some still call it Burma. This is the original name dating back to British colonial rule. However, its name officially changed in 1989 to Myanmar. At the time the United States refused to recognize... Continue Reading →
Military Coups On February 1st, the Tatmadaw arrested the Burmese State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, many other politicians from the National League of Democracy, and declared a state of emergency. The Tatmadaw has formally held power in Myanmar between 1988 and 2011. But it also held power informally as early as 1962. The recent... Continue Reading →
Military Missions in Democratic Latin America was first published in 2016. It offered an examination of the new roles the military had begun to handle in recent years. Its author, David Pion-Berlin, is a widely known scholar of civil-military relations in Latin America. In this book, he went beyond traditional civil-military relations to consider the... Continue Reading →
Last week the Navy Secretary, Richard Spencer, resigned at the request of Defense Secretary Mark Esper. The specific details remain unclear but there is no doubt the pivotal moment surrounded the intervention of Donald Trump into the handling of disciplinary action against Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher. It is not my intention to evaluate the... Continue Reading →
