defense

Bill-Walton-Roundtable

The Bill Walton Show: Why America Must Remain the World’s Preeminent Seapower

After decades of cuts to shipbuilding and maintenance, the United States Navy has been stripped down to a fleet barely larger than it was 100 years ago, in1916. Meanwhile, China has dramatically increased its spending on its Navy, as well as on its Air Force, cyberspace and electronic warfare capabilities. Alarmingly, Beijing is building islands in the South China Sea, threatening trade routes and menacing allies. Read More ›
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pre sunrise hike //
Photo by Ahmad Jawed on Unsplash

Against All Terror

The Afghan war drags on. Nobody knows where the next war or terrorist strike will come, or how soon, or how bad it will be. Nobody knows where the defense budget is going, except up, up and away. America remains steadfast. But increasingly, America wants explanations and answers. Enter Against All Terrors: This People’s Next Defense. This is one of Read More ›

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Former United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C, and receiving the Defender of the Constitution Award.
Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Rumsfeld’s Revolution

A revolution is struggling to be born — a fundamental reordering of America's military. Nothing similar in ambition has been attempted since the ferocious struggles of 1945-47 that resulted in the National Security Act and the creation of the Department of Defense. Read More ›
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Army boots close up
Licensed from Adobe Stock

Defense Gets Back to Basics

On Nov. 1, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ran an op-ed in The Washington Post, asserting that the United States must "act now to prepare for the next war, even as we wage the current war against terrorism." Read More ›

The Future of Defense

A Beltway commission is not without honor. Save perhaps among those whose activities it’s trying to reform. Whatever else can be said about America’s post-Cold War defense dilemmas, they’ve spawned no shortage of official studies. BFS, BUR, CORM, QDR I, NDP, NSSG, QDR II . . . all adding up to a fine example of the Military Law of Inverse Read More ›

America Unmasked

I’m a think tank pogue, specializing in national defense. “Pogue,” by the by, is a venerable military term, meaning anybody who’s farther from the fighting than you are. By this standard, Seattle’s a pretty poguey place. Still, whenever the metallic density of the air increases somewhere, I morph into a Media Resource. Since the ordnance started popping in Yugoslavia, I’ve Read More ›