In “What the QDR Should be asking, but isn’t: Lessons for leaders from the interwar years,” AFJ contributing editor Peter W. Singer writes, “When today’s leaders compare our turbulent times to the drawdown era of the 1990s, they’re missing the target for a more useful historical lens. In the years surrounding World War I, fundamental political transition was accompanied by a wave of technological progress that seemed to leap from science-fiction novels.”
Also at Brookings, Bruce Reidel says the recent embassy-closing terror alert is no less than an illustration that “15 years after its first attacks on America, Al Qaeda is thriving.”
“Why are nuclear weapons off the budget negotiating table?” asks Tom Z. Collina at Foreign Policy. “They’re where we should start.”
Writing at Zenpundit, Lynn C. Rees offers some interesting observations on intraservice negotiations, including “Fights over micropolitics will be more bitter than macropolitics” and “If you’ve been playing poker for a half-hour and can’t figure out who’s the patsy, you’re the patsy.”
Warlord’s Quote of the Day
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying all the wrong remedies.” — Groucho Marx
Contributed by Capt. (ret.) Rick Woolard, a former commander of SEAL Teams Two and Six. Woolard is a member of the Warlord Loop, a private email forum for national security experts.
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