According to the Department of Defense’s dismally short sighted vision for the Arctic, U.S. strategic interests were best maintained not by cooperation with Arctic partners, by rather by belligerent sabre rattling under the guise of “competition” with nations who have continuously professed a desire to work with the west as allies. In recent weeks, this…
Frankly, I have never considered USN carrier strike groups as a “Cold War capable” element of the US Navy. Yes, in theory, there was the notion of forward deploying these carriers to “bring the war to the Soviets” (on the Kola Peninsula) before they could flush their subs and aircraft through the GUIK gap and…
“You can’t handle the truth,” Jack Nicholson screams at a crucial moment in a silly 1992 film called, “A Few Good Men.” Nicholson was addressing Tom Cruise for reasons no one can bother to remember. But he may as well have been addressing Donald Trump, who is equally helpless when it comes to the truth…
I am interested in the way that narratives that shape individual events are crafted, curated and disseminated, because ultimately there is a tendency to focus mostly on specific events and ignore the wider context. Ultimately, we end up with being presented with a series of disjointed events, not really understanding the history or the detailed…
A number of reports have appeared in both U.S. and foreign media in recent weeks pointing to the apparent eclipse of U.S. naval supremacy by an ascendant China. While these reports are largely overblown and sensationalized to pique the interest of the audience, the long-term trend is clear. China is on pace to achieve regional…
Those following the news from Russia have probably heard that Russia’s only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov (official name: Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Kuznetsov), was put into dry dock for major repairs and retrofits. Things did not go well. First, the dry dock sank (it was Russia’s biggest) and then a…
