In grad school, Herman Kahn was my second favorite strategic theorist (after Thomas Schelling). I still have an original edition of On Thermonuclear War with the dust jacket -- restrain your envy, my copy was marked up as I read it. In any case, Kahn is known for a number of interesting ideas, including the so-called "ladder of escalation." Essentially, Kahn's term explains gradations of conflict, from "ostensible crisis" up 40+ rungs to...

It has been a bloody week in Iraq. Today saw a particularly vicious attack in the action-reaction cycle that marks Iraq's increasingly dangerous communal violence.Masked attackers with heavy machine guns mounted on pickup trucks slaughtered at least 40 people in a crowded market area south of Baghdad on Monday, hurling grenades to blow up merchants at their counters and shooting down mothers as they fled with their children, witnesses and...

Foreign Affairs continues its roundtable on US policy towards Iraq. Today I take aim at Christopher Hitchens' contribution.Hitchens open his response by excoriating his fellow panelists for the "absence of historical dimensions" or "by its appearance only in the form of false analogy" in their contributions. What does he mean by this rather clumsy phrase?There is nothing remotely comparable here with the experience of the French in Algeria and...

Like all other frustrated scholars out there, I wanted to publish an Op-Ed, thinking I have something interesting to say about what's going on between Israel and Lebanon. I thought that I might have something to contribute-- my dissertation had a looooong chapter on the Israel - Lebanon Monitoring Group, a small organizaton set up after Israel's 1996 Operation Grapes of Wrath in Lebanon. There's not a lot written about the ILMG, so I figured I...

Wretched argues the following:If Sheehan is right [that we will date WW3 to the bombing of the USS Cole] , then the Global War on Terror would have failed. A focused attack on extremism will have been supplanted by an uncontrolled clash between peoples, religions and cultures. But we are not there yet. There's still a chance, and the rulers of the Middle East are hoping that this thing can be pulled back from the brink and the fires focused on...

What Greg said. The pearls of wisdom just keep on coming this morning.Lack of intellect+misplaced faith in easy to understand analogies=advocacy of diasterous foreign policy.Filed as: Appeasement

Why do people pay this man for his commentary?Dan’s favorite commentator is back again, this time with an op/ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Hanson essentially lays out what he sees as the talking points the Bush administration should be using in an effort to deflate criticism of the handling of the War on Terror. What follows is a long, snarky discussion of Hanson's latest drivel.VDH’s first problem lies with questions regarding how to deal...

[UPDATED]I've been critical of the strategic wisdom of the IDF attacks in Lebanon, but some new developments suggest that it might work after all. Haagi at American Footprints:The Lebanese government appears to be throwing in its lot against Hezbollah, appealing for international help to change the dynamic in the south of the country:Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora called Saturday for an immediate cease-fire with Israel, and asked for...

Courtesy of Coming Anarchy's Curzon. Someday we'll get around to implementing a nice design for the Duck.

My daughter's sick and I'm pretty tired - from writing and reading - so here's what's catching my eye...In the "Crisis in the Middle East" department, things seem to be getting worse with the death of eight Israeli civilians in Haifa. The IDF is also resuming strikes in Gaza. Mubarak claims he persuaded the Israelis not to launch a ground offensive against Beirut. Mossad's chief leaves for the US this week to discuss the Iranian nuclear...

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hizbollah's chief pledged open war on Israel on Friday after it bombed his home, saying "look at it burn" when an Israeli warship that had earlier rocketed Lebanon was attacked and set ablaze."You wanted open war. We are going to (wage) open war," Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a telephone message broadcast live on Hizbollah television after his house was hit as Israel ramped up the assault it launched after Hizbollah...

For an administration that likes to keep things secret they sure do pick some funny things to make public--like our military's operational weakness. This was accomplished in large part by partaking in a strategically questionable operation that begins with the letters I-R-A and ends in Q. This has long been a complaint of mine. Yours truly in January of '06:"...the Iraq War not only decreased the capability of the US to launch any kind of...