Interesting WaPo piece on the future of the Libyan Army: “Creating a new army is not going to be by an official statement or resolution. It has to come after a negotiation,” said Anis Sharif, a spokesman for Abdulhakim Belhadj, an Islamist seen as the dominant militia leader in Tripoli. Reining in the militias is […]
Tag: civil-military relations
At WPR I revisit the military-in-autocratic-politics theme: Autocrats also take cues from events in foreign countries and build their institutions accordingly. Many observers of global politics are wa
My WPR column this week is really an elaboration of Charli’s post from last week: The integration of Egyptian soldiers into an international community of professional military officers has inevi
My new column on civil-military relations is up at WPR. I would also heartily recommend that everyone read (or re-read, as the case may be) Charles Dunlap’s 1992 article “Origins of the Coup of 2012.” Dunlap makes some predictions that go astray (including unification of the military), and he doesn’t get the symbolic role of […]
I went on the Alyona Show yesterday to discuss a book I haven’t read: To elaborate a bit, I think that it’s correct to say that the President could have de-escalated in Afghanistan if he&#
The general interest in healthy civil-military relations in the United States is more important than the outcome of the war in Afghanistan. Even were McChrystal absolutely critical to that effort (and
No President Petraeus: I thought I’d said no about as many ways as I could. I really do mean no. We have all these artful ways of doing it. I’ve tried Shermanesque responses, which everybody goes and finds out what Sherman said was pretty unequivocally no. I’ve done several different ways. I’ve tried quoting the […]