North Korea Is a Reminder That Preemption Works

North Korea is a predador state that now has nuclear weapons - and it is surprising that the US in 1994 actually considered attacking its nuclear program.

Winning Power Works

Barack Obama believed in the myth of "soft power." Donald Trump is now showing anew Obama was wrong.

A Memo To Donald Trump On Defense

Jed Babbin authors an open letter on restoring US military capacity and the overloading on a flawed F35 fighter as well as ideological disputes within the services.

The Leftist-Ideological Complex

The Military-Industrial Complex was President Eisenhower making an economic point in a military conetxt

..".  . vast bureaucracies of civil servants, no longer servants and no longer civil." (Winston Churchill)

In 1961 President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the danger of a military-industrial complex. This powerful public-private collaboration, he said, had the potential to exert unwarranted influence over America's democratic processes. A half-century later, there are still those on the left who cling to this fear. But it seems that Eisenhower's warning had its intended effect—and perhaps then some. In 1961 defense spending constituted 9.1 percent of the gross domestic product, and there were 2,483,000 uniformed military personnel. Today, defense spending is 3.2 percent of GDP and 1,390,000 men and women serve in the uniformed military. If this behemoth is threatening America's democratic processes, it is not doing so very successfully.

My own sidebar - Eisenhower didn't oppose massive military spending - his enemy in the Republican Party Robert Taft "was more liberal than me" when it came to domestic spending. Eisenhower in fact feared a welfare state - what Lyndon Johnson and a Democratic Congress wound up hoisting on the nation.

There is, however, another interlocking public-private collaboration that is at once more insidious, more powerful, and more straightforwardly partisan: the liberal ideological complex. We do not always see this collaboration so clearly, because we tend to view each aspect of it as unique and not part of a larger picture. We look, for example, at public sector unions as a labor issue. We look at funding for Planned Parenthood through the lens of abortion policy. We look at EPA regulations and grants in terms of global warming and job destruction. And so on and so forth, down to the smallest, most narrowly tailored grant awards of the federal government.

What Good Is Military Force?

Winning wars for starters

"An observer of this summer’s party conventions would get the idea that the use of military force is almost always and everywhere wrong and ill-advised. Any reference to the use of force was drowned out at the conventions by chants of America First and no more war. With the exception of Donald Trump's open-ended threat to knock the hell out of ISIS, there seems to be a political consensus that the use of force is almost never a good idea.

On the campaign trail both candidates have reinforced this view, often promoting a false choice between rebuilding America and being the world's policeman.

Is the use of force a defensible foreign policy tool and, if so, when and why? There are two main arguments against the use of force, either in specific instances or as a more general policy. The first is pragmatic. Are the goals of the use of force vital to America's national security? If so, are these goals important enough to justify the likely costs in terms of American lives and treasure? And if they are, can policymakers be relatively confident the use of force will achieve their aims, without unintended and destructive consequences beyond the immediate military objective? These are serious questions, to which we shall return."

Leave Warfighting To The Pros

A court-martial of an Israeli medic has generated confusion about what a "war crime" actually is.

The Need For Army Reform

The Army has long needed reform, and it is shown here.

Weapons Evolution

A look at the evolution of robot weapons. The Cylon Empire slowly becomes - in a sense - real.

Women Warriors And The Bottle

R Emmitt Tyrrell looks at the Obama Administration's futile effort to get women into combat.

'Game-Changing' Weapons: What the U.S. Military Needs to Know

'Game-Changing' Weapons: What the U.S. Military Needs to Know

Ray Mabus Can’t Handle the Truth

Ray Mabus Can’t Handle that women can't handle combat.

Marines Prove Women Can't Handle Combat

.Obama's Navy Secretary Slanders them

War Of The Battalions

Thomas Donnelly looks at the need for big battalions and the conflict the armed forces have faced in terms of missions vs. budgets.

Women in Combat Is Civilizing?

No, it isn't.