David H. Ucko

Maj. Kenneth J. Burgess, U.S. Army, has an excellent piece in the latest issue of Military Affairs, where he discusses the possible changes that are needed to align U.S. Army force structure to the requirements of today’s operating environment. He cleverly flips the Army argument against force specialisation on its head by pointing out that [...]

The U.S. Naval War College has released videos from its conference in September, entitled ‘Irregular Warfare: Nasty, Brutish but Not Short’.
The conference brought together some of the sharpest minds on this topic and also some experts not usually associated with the ‘COIN community’ who were able to lend valuable perspective on some of its unquestioned [...]

Lt-Col Michel Goya, director of studies at the new Institut de recherche stratégique de l’Ecole militaire, in France, has published an article on the U.S. military’s ‘Vietnam Spiral’ in Afghanistan. The text is in French but struck me as somewhat out of key with other articles, footage and anecdotes on the U.S. military’s efforts in [...]

Andrew Exum of the Center for a New American Security featured The New Counterinsurgency Era on his blog, Abu Muqawama. He asked me some very important and very difficult questions about the U.S. military’s learning of counterinsurgency, and where I see this process going in the next few years. You may also be interested in [...]

Bruce C. Jones, Shepard Forman and Richard Gowan, all of the Center for International Cooperation, New York University, have published a great edited volume on the changing U.S. relation to multilateral institutions since the Cold War, with particular emphasis on the changes brought on by the 9/11 attacks and by the events that they provoked. [...]