Free Republic

I’m busy reading final papers for the grand strategy seminar at Bard this spring, and the students are finishing up their exams and thinking about summer. It’s already time to start reading and thinking about the syllabus for the fall course in Anglo-American grand strategy. British and American strategic thinkers and policy makers developed a new form of global strategy in the last 300 years that enabled the two English speaking powers to build a global political and security order resting on a foundation of liberal capitalism. Understanding the grand strategy that shaped the modern world is surely something that...

Mass Grave Sheds Light on Europe's Bloody History By David Crossland in Berlin Europe's soil is blood-soaked from centuries of fighting but rarely yields mass graves from battles that took place before the two world wars. One such grave has now been found near Berlin with over 100 soldiers who died in the 1636 Battle of Wittstock. Archaeologists say they can learn much from the skeletons which show terrible wounds. An archaeologist gently uncovering a row of skeletons in the mass grave found in Wittstock near Berlin. Archaeologists in Germany are examining a mass grave containing the skeletons of more...

I would say that pretty much since the bloody and muddy stalemate of WWI, there has been a growing orthodoxy amongst Western opinion leaders that is contra Von Clausewitz. In a nutshell, the orthodox logic goes something like this: 1. The Flanders mud, and the horrors of stalemate trench battles, endless artillery bombardment and chemical warfare, taught us that modern, mass, mechanized, highly destructive warfare is so damaging to civilization that war of any serious magnitude must now be considered uncivilized. 2. The League of Nations was the right idea but the implementation was flawed. 3. The leaders who started...