What Deters? Strength, Not Weakness

The risks of sharp reductions are of the greatest magnitude, and so are the possible consequences. “Existential deterrence,” the pivotal concept in Admiral Turner’s scheme, is a very risky and dangerous approach to nuclear deterrence—for if it fails, it fails catastrophically

Strategic Culture and Its Relationship to Naval Strategy

At the Naval War College’s Current Strategy Forum in June 2006, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Michael Mullen, called for the creation of a new maritime strategy. The key for the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard in for- mulating a new strategy will be in describing how, within the context of a national military strategy, maritime forces can make a strategic difference

Naval Power for a New American Century

Today, with the free use of the sea, the air over the sea, space, and cyberspace; with the power of information superiority enabled by networking; with long-range precision weapons; with the development of new, abundant, and affordable sensors to illuminate the future battlespace; and with the techniques of information warfare, navies are far more able than ever before to influence events ashore rapidly, directly, and decisively

Technology and Naval Blockade

Through the centuries major changes have taken place in the ability of states to prevent the movement of ships or particular goods over the sea lanes of the world.1 Some of the changes have been wrought by technological evolution, some by increasing importance of seaborne trade, and some by alterations in the structure of international relations. The combined effect has profoundly af- fected both the way maritime blockades are conducted in the twenty-first cen- tury and the means employed for them. In large measure, it has also rendered the traditional law of blockade obsolete

Tactical Nuclear Weapons and Maritime Strategy

In April 1989 the press reported that the U.S. Navy would he retiring three types of tactical nuclear weapons: the underwater-to-underwater Subroc and the nuclear versions of the Asroc antisubmarine rocket and the Terrier surface-to-air missile. This leaves submarine-launched ballistic missiles, the nuclear variant of the Tomahawk cruise missile, and some air-dropped bombs as the only nuclear weapons in the Navy\u27s arsenal

Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad

For anyone who has followed, however peripherally, the disposition of those who have come to be called “detainees” of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Andrew McCarthy’s Willful Blindness is a mandatory read. McCarthy was the prosecuting U.S. attorney in the case of the “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel Rahman, for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. The book chroni- cles McCarthy’s prosecutorial clean sweep in that case, in which ten defen- dants were convicted and the remaining two pleaded guilty