Our military strategy

This Reference Page lists articles about our national defense apparatus.

Other FM Reference Pages about related topics:

Contents

Click on the title to jump to that section.

  1. Other resources
  2. About the skill and integrity of our senior military leaders
  3. About our defense agencies working against us
  4. About our defense strategy and tactics
  5. Reforming our defense agencies
  6. About our geopolical experts
  7. About the US Marines
  8. About the US Army
  9. About Mercs and Spec Ops
  10. About America’s military machinery
  11. About drones and UAVs

 

1.  Other resources

 

2.  About the skill and integrity of our senior military leaders

  1. The Core Competence of America’s Military Leaders.
  2. The moral courage of our senior generals, or their lack of it.
  3. Generals read “Ender’s Game” and see their vision of the future Marine Corps. By a sergeant in the USMC, now with the National Guard.
  4. Obama vs. the Generals.
  5. Careerism and Psychopathy in the US Military leadership. by GI Wilson (Colonel, USMC, retired).
  6. How many generals would Lincoln have fired to win in Iraq & Afghanistan?
  7. Rolling Stone releases Colonel Davis’ blockbuster report about Afghanistan – and our senior generals!.
  8. Do we need so many and such well-paid generals and admirals? By Richard A Pawloski (Captain, USMC, retired).
  9. Why the Pentagon would rather hire a jihadist like bin Laden than reformer Donald Vandergriff.
  10. How officers adapt to life in the Pentagon: they choose the blue pill.
  11. Overhauling The Officer Corps. By David Evans (Lt. Colonel, USMC, retired).
  12. The cost of too many generals: paying more to get a less effective military. Info from Ben Freeman (POGO) and Don Vandergriff.
  13. William Lind looks at our generals, sees “rank incompetence”.
  14. How did the US Army’s leadership problem grow so bad? by Don Vandergriff.
  15. Does America have the best military in the world?
  16. “How our military reached its current state, so only desperate reform can save us” by Doug Macgregor.

About solutions and reforms

 

3.  About our defense agencies working against us

  1. News from the Front: America’s military has mastered 4GW!, 2 September 2007
  2. 4GW at work in a community near you, 19 October 2007
  3. The media discover info ops, with outrage!, 22 April 2008
  4. Successful info ops, but who are the targets?, 1 May 2008
  5. Psywar, a core skill of the US Military (used most often on us), 26 November 2008
  6. Concrete evidence of government info ops against us, but it’s OK because we are sheep, 2 December 2008
  7. DoD confesses that they whitewashed revelations about an info op run against us, 12 July 2009
  8. A warning from Alexis De Tocqueville about our military, 7 August 2009
  9. Who can we trust to defend our liberty? Will our culture’s rot spread to the military?, 17 June 2010
  10. The hidden story behind “Obama’s Wars”: the insurgency in Washington, 25 September 2010
  11. The US government sponsored jihadist menace, 29 November 2010
  12. What will our Mercs do when our wars wind down?  Who will hire them?, 16 August 2011
  13. More evidence that the military is slowly cutting itself off from civilian control, 15 July 2012

 

4.  About our defense strategy and tactics

  1. America’s Most Dangerous Enemy, 1 March 2006
  2. Adopting the tools of our enemies, a path to victory, 4 September 2008
  3. How can America adapt to a new world? A conference about national security lights the way., 18 October 2008
  4. The 2 most devastating 4GW attacks on America, and the roots of FM 3-24, 19 March 2008
  5. Can we defeat our almost imaginary enemies?, 10 December 2009
  6. More Chirstmas Eve war advocacy – bombing while we sing, 24 December 2009
  7. Stratfor’s strategic analysis – “Jihadism in 2010: The Threat Continues”, 17 January 2010
  8. Where is the outer boundary of our military operations?, 21 January 2010 — Coast guard to the world!
  9. No matter how skilled the author, US geopolitical analysis so often looks like something from Oz, 18 June 2010
  10. This is how a nation thoughtlessly slides into stupid wars, 2 July 2010
  11. Is America fighting the tide of history? Are we like the Czars in the 19th century?, 29 July 2010
  12. Every day brings new pro-war propaganda for our amusement and despair, 1 August 2010
  13. The biggest re-branding exercise in the history of the world, 21 August 2010
  14. America plays the Apollo Option: killing from the sky, 26 August 2010
  15. US troops must fight in the Congo! A report from the asylum, home to many of our geopolitical experts, 20 September 2010
  16. Defining the Marine Corps’ Strategic Concept, 29 September 2010
  17. Our growing domestic insurgency: revolt of the generals, 6 October 2010
  18. Killing the leaders of our enemy. Is this the fast track to victory – or disaster?, 25 October 2010
  19. Our tactics are an obstacle to victory in the Long War, as the Darwinian Ratchet works against us, 19 April 2011
  20. What happens when a nation gets nukes?  Sixty years of history suggests an answer., 10 January 2012
  21. Continuity and dysfunctionality in US foreign policy (lessons for our conflict with Iran), 13 January 2012 — Insights about today from Cold War strategist Colin Grey
  22. What the conflict with Iran can teach us about modern State-to-State war, 16 January 2012
  23. A powerful new article shows why we lose so many wars: FAILure to learn — By Dominic Tierney (Assoc Prof of political science, Swarthmore).
  24. We weaponized anthropology. Why didn’t it work?
  25. Why a decade of assassinations hasn’t helped America.
  26. Is victory impossible in modern wars? Or just not possible for us?
  27. Important: Why the West loses so many wars, and how we can learn to win.

 

5.  Reforming our defense agencies

  1. Recommended reading: transforming the Army, the hard way, 15 January 2008
  2. America needs a Foreign Legion, 18 April 2008
  3. Secretary Gates would be a hero – if speeches could reform DoD, 6 May 2008
  4. I was wrong about SecDef Gates – here is a more accurate view of him, 7 May 2008
  5. “The Pentagon Takes Over”, 30 May 2008 — DoD’s very size militarizes our foreign affairs.
  6. Militia – the ultimate defense against 4GW, 31 May 2008
  7. Lawrence Korb of CAP and CDI advocates a militia, 4 June 2008
  8. Thoughts on fixing America’s national security apparatus, 11 August 2008
  9. How can America adapt to a new world? A conference about national security lights the way., 18 October 2008
  10. The State Department needs help, stat!, 22 December 2008
  11. Does Secretary of Defense Gates have cojones grande?, 8 April 2009
  12. About the rising pressure to cut the US military budget, 24 July 2010
  13. About the newest experts’ review of our defense strategy, 6 August 2010
  14. Dragging American Military Culture into the 21st Century, 13 August 2010
  15. We could reduce government bureaucracy, but much of it is military/intel – and untouchable, 31 August 2010
  16. Who is to blame for our civil-military dysfunction?, 5 September 2010
  17. Building a new generation of visionary leaders for the US military, 30 September 2010
  18. Our geopolitical experts see the world with the innocent eyes of children (that’s a bad thing), 14 March 2011
  19. Important new articles about reforming our military, a key to balancing the Federal budget, 29 April 2011
  20. Reconfiguring the US military for life after The Long War, 27 September 2011 — By Doug Macgregor

 

6.  About our geopolical experts

  1. The Essential 4GW reading list: chapter One, Martin van Creveld
  2. The Essential 4GW reading list: Chapter Two, Donald Vandergriff
  3. The Essential 4GW reading list: chapter 3, David Kilcullen
  4. Another example of war advocates working their rice bowls, 24 December 2009
  5. Exum looks at Af-Pak campaign of the Long War, revealing more about ourselves than the foe, 7 June 2010
  6. The threat of insurgents using MANPADS is exaggerated (SOP for our experts), 31 July 2010
  7. Our geopolitical experts will destroy America, if we let them, 27 October 2010
  8. What is a warmonger?  Who are the warmongers?, 10 March 2011
  9. Our geopolitical experts see the world with the innocent eyes of children (that’s a bad thing), 14 March 2011
  10. A child-like credulity is required to be a US geopolitical expert, 25 April 2011
  11. We can learn an important lesson about ourselves from the “Three Cups of Tea” affair (part one), 26 April 2011
  12. The lessons about ourselves we can learn from the “Three Cups of Tea” affair (part two), 27 April 2011

 

7.  About the US Marines

  1. Why a Marine Corps?, 23 August 2010
  2. Another perspective on the future of the Marine Corps, 24 August 2010
  3. Generals read “Ender’s Game” and see their vision of the future Marine Corps, 7 September 2010
  4. Defining the Marine Corp’ Strategic Concept, 29 September 2010
  5. The Marine Corps Today, Tonight, and Tomorrow, 21 February 2011
  6. Looking back on USMC thanksgivings, reminding us of things for which we should be grateful, 24 November 2011
  7. Father Vincent Capodanno and the Meaning of “Sacrifice”, 4 December 2011
  8. Old Corps? New Corps? It Doesn’t Matter as Long as it’s Marine Corps!, 11 December 2011
  9. Fortune Favors the Brave – Marines aboard the USS Constitution, 18 December 2011
  10. I’ll Be Home for Christmas – Marines in WWII, 2 December 2011

 

8.  About the US Army

  1. Recommended reading: transforming the Army, the hard way, 15 January 2008
  2. US Army – the antidote to US civil disorder, 3 January 2009
  3. The US Army brings us back to the future, returning to WWI’s “cult of the offense”, 13 February 2009
  4. What does the future hold for the US Army – and America?, 29 April 2012 — By Doug Macgregor
  5. Our Army, under attack on many fronts, fights to maintain its integrity and cohesion, 29 October 2012
  6. The US army under attack by internal foes, but responds quickly, 31 October 2012
  7. A look at the Army’s plans to adapt to the 21st century, 2 November 2012
  8. As our 9-11 wars end, new problems appear for the US Army, 14 June 2014

 

9.  About Mercs and Spec Ops

  1. Don’t read this about Blackwater! Why ruin your illusions, so carefully manufactured by our government’s info ops., 25 November 2009
  2. Mercs spread special ops methods to corporations and (eventually) our, 17 September 2010
  3. What will our Mercs do when our wars wind down? Who will hire them?, 16 August 2011
  4. The men of US Special Operations Command are heroes.  But are their deeds heroic?, 15 August 2011

 

10.  About America’s military machinery

  1. Another cycle down the Defense Death Spiral, 30 January 2008
  2. One telling similarity between the Wehrmacht and the US Military, 10 March 2008
  3. Only our amnesia makes reading the newspapers bearable, 30 April 2008 — About General Petraeus.
  4. A neverending story: DoD’s attempts to stop cooking the books, 2 May 2008
  5. “America’s Greatest Weapon”, 25 May 2008 — About our people in uniform.
  6. An effective way to support our Troops: help the Blue Star Mothers of America, 8 June 2008
  7. One of the best geopolitical posts of the year, IMO, 12 August 2008 — “War is the great auditor of institutions”
  8. Time: “America’s Medicated Army”, 12 June 2008
  9. Stratfor: “The U.S. Air Force and the Next War”, 13 June 2008
  10. “VA testing drugs on war veterans” – The Washington Times and ABC News, 18 June 2008
  11. Nagl gives a profoundly wrong vision for the US military, 22 June 2008
  12. A lesson in war-mongering: “Maritime Strategy in an Age of Blood and Belief”, 8 July 2008
  13. Is post-traumatic stress disorder more common now than in past wars?, 17 July 2008
  14. The foundation of America’s empire: our chain of bases around the world, 8 September 2008
  15. America’s Defense Meltdown, now avilable for free download, 20 November 2008
  16. “What’s wrong with the US military?”, an interview with Winslow Wheeler, 10 December 2008
  17. The economic Death Spiral of the Pentagon, 7 February 2009
  18. A lesson for America – and an inspiration, 13 March 2009
  19. Something every American should read, 25 March 2009 — About torture.
  20. Suicides skyrocket among US soliders, 26 March 2009
  21. Blowback – could our military become a threat to America?, 7 May 2009
  22. Troops without proper equipment in 2004, troops without proper equipment in 2009 – where’s the outrage?, 20 May 2009
  23. “Shock and Audit” – MoJo dissects the defense budget so you don’t have to, 30 June 2009
  24. Another step in America’s Defense Meltdown – a guest post by Winslow T. Wheeler, 30 July 2009
  25. Another example of war advocates working their rice bowls, 24 December 2009
  26. Think-tanks bribe journalists to promote our wars, 24 December 2009
  27. A discussion about advanced education of military personnel, 10 January 2010
  28. The march of technology brings “The Forty-Year Drone War”, 26 January 2010
  29. Stratfor looks at “The Utility of Assassination”, 26 February 2010
  30. It’s not too soon to begin planning for the next war, 7 March 2010
  31. Who can we trust to defend our liberty? Will our culture’s rot spread to the military?, 17 June 2010
  32. About military leaders in the 21st century: “Theirs Is to Reason Why”, 1 July 2010
  33. Preface to Manning the Future Legions of the United States: Finding and Developing Tomorrow’s Centurions, 16 July 2010
  34. Training of officers, a key step for the forging of an effective military force, 17 July 2010
  35. Building a new generation of visionary leaders for the US military, 30 September 2010
  36. Killing Machines: Promises and Limits, 17 February 2011
  37. The limit to America’s power is our ability to pay for it, 18 April 2011

 

11.  About drones and UAVs

  1. “Filling the skies with Assassins” by Tom Engelhardt, 12 April 2009
  2. America’s dominance of the sky slowly erodes – inevitable or avoidable?, 22 September 2009
  3. The march of technology brings “The Forty-Year Drone War”, 26 January 2010
  4. James Bond is not just our hero, but the model for our geopolitical strategy, on the FM website, 18 May 2010
  5. America plays the Apollo Option: killing from the sky, Chet Richards (Colonel, USAF, retired), 26 August 2010
  6. Killing Machines: Promises and Limits, 17 February 2011
  7. The Psychology of Killer Drones – action against our foes; reaction affecting us, 28 September 2011
  8. Cyberwar: a Whole New Quagmire – When the Drones Come To Roost, 8 October 2011
  9. 450 Bases and It’s Not Over Yet – The Pentagon’s Afghan Basing Plans for Prisons, Drones, and Black Ops, 14 February 2012
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