Read this article slowly and consider the ancient and modern historical background information. If you understand the fundamentals of Counter-Insurgency Warfare, this is basically a re-cap on the basics… it is too bad the U.S. Govt. has yet to grasp this simple fact. -SF The Latin phrase hic sunt dracones translates roughly to “here be dragons,”…
Category: Asymmetrical Warfare
The POVERTY of American Strategy
By Kenneth Allard Are you serious, Mr. Obama? In spite of the latest wave of ISIS attacks that spilled innocent blood on the streets of Paris, our president still considers it a “mistake” to send ground troops to defeat them, possibly preferring similar battles on American soil. Even his most reliable media defenders, speaking from…
How Active Camouflage will Make Small Drones Invisible
British company Plextek Consulting wants to make drones impossible for their targets to spot. And rather than having to choose between camouflage patterns optimized for rocky desert terrain or for dense vegetation, they have developed electronic panels to cover a vehicle with adaptive camouflage that could display different patterns at the flick of a switch….
Colombian Mercs in Yemen?
The Arabian Dream: Colombians Taking Part in Yemen War Some 800 former Colombian military troops will enter the city port of Aden in Yemen, switching the jungle terrain of their home country for the deserts of Arabia. The former Colombian army troops will join a coalition of allied international troops fighting Shiite rebels. They will operate under…
Knowing Your Enemy: Mujahideen, The Strategic Tradition of Sunni Jihadism
By Brett A. Friedman The world is in the grips of the group known as ISIS. Unable to look away but equally unable to fathom the group’s extreme violence, the civilized world marvels at a terrorist threat that is seemingly al Qaeda cranked up to eleven. Its media blitzkrieg has recently been described by Jessica…
The Social Science of Online Radicalization
As Charlie Winter noted recently at War on the Rocks, the Islamic State’s robust social media apparatus has been propagating a remarkably effective, multi-faceted communications strategy that incorporates narratives of statehood, military success, and religious legitimacy. The Islamic State’s success in using social media to disseminateits extremist ideas and mobilize tens of thousands of foreign…
History of Guerilla Warfare: How Would Lawrence of Arabia Defeat ISIS?
Lessons from the Early 20th century for the Chaotic, Modern Middle East By James Stavridis A Colleague of mine recently watched the Oscar-winning classic 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia. His brief comment on its merits in regard to understanding the Middle East of today: a cynical shrug of his shoulders and the words “nothing has…
The Moral Hazard of Proxy Warfare
It has been a very bad month for advocates of the “indirect” approach to U.S. national security policy. U.S.-trained rebels in Syria handed over their weapons to al-Qaeda; and the United States has been forced to sit back helplessly and watch as Russian bombers target CIA-backed rebel forces. The Department of Defense’s train-and-equip program has…
Doomsday Scenario: Reviewing the ISIS Apocalypse
The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State. William McCants. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015. pp 256. Apocalyptic anticipation thriving in a sectarian bloodbath is the focus of this text, which was released alongside a biography of the group’s leader available from Brookings. Despite the claims of a recent…
Here is How World War 3 Could Start Tomorrow
By PW Singer and August Cole There is an old adage that militaries set themselves up by failure by preparing to fight the last war. When it comes to 21st Century warfare, the problem however may not be with looking back, but that we aren’t looking back far enough. For the last two decades, leaders…