"I must study politics and war in order that my sons may have the Liberty to study mathematics and philosophy and political economy... to give their sons the right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture..." John Adams, America's best political thinker.

I had the privilege of seeing the Life,… Read full post »

For MEB always, forever and ever.
In memory of a fallen Morican: John Tharpe.

I sold my childhood home today; or was it yesterday?

It depends on how you interpret the paperwork.

Actually, it wasn't just my childhood home, but California Don and my Dad's too, in an ownership sense,… Read full post »

The Poison King by Adrienne Mayor is a great read about an unjustly forgotten mortal enemy of the Roman Republic: Mithradates the Great.

Since he lost, the victors made him out to be the bad guy.

I have concluded that there are probably not so much good guys or bad guys… Read full post »

Wo xihuan zhongou ren. Zhongou ren hen keichi. Wo xihuan dao zhongou qu. Hui shuo yidian. Ni hao Helen Zhou ma (plaint?)?

It would seem that Sino-American relations are at an important crossroads because of the chicken coming home to roost in the interaction of the dollar as reserve currency of… Read full post »

(For MEB, always. I love you forever and ever. And for Harry Eckstein, and Culture)

The older and more mature I get,  the latter of which is a clearly a work in progress I shall grant, I try to take the world as it is, and not as I wish it… Read full post »

The recent announcement that Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, a.k.a. KSM, and other "detainees, "9/11 suspects, freedom fighters, jihaddist loonies, or whatever you wish to call them, would be moved to New York to be tried was a classic example of a politically motivated pointless exericse… Read full post »

Shroomberg News: November 17, 2009 2:00 EST.

Gophers Rule!

This just in from our Marine Gophers: Hua! Semper Phi Gopherus!

Our Lean, Green Killing Machine Marine Corps Gophers tell us the Corps has adopted a new cadence run at Paris Island.

This apparently is because the Power Elite/Usual Suspec… Read full post »

Picture John Madden dressed as Patton, in camo with a pearl-handled revolver, and all three hundred maniacally agitated pounds pacing before a whiteboard.

Madden:

Now, this week, we talk about the single most important position on the Battlefield that is Football: the Quarterback is the General.

Rem… Read full post »

Imagine Madden with a marker, whiteboard, and the following presentation;

The Advanced Laws of War for Dummies: Presentation One

Law One: Defense Wins Championships!

Now, I like that Napoleon guy.

http://www.ddg.com/LIS/InfoDesignF96/Emin/napoleon/images/personal/napoleon8.jpg

I mean, to dress l… Read full post »

For Britomart, as always forever and ever for MEB, and this Veterans's Week, in honor of the Nation's War Dead.

May those who return from this nation's wars always receive the welcome they deserve and have peace of mind, and may God grant the families of those who do not return… Read full post »

This is the culmination of thirty years of research on war, at the end of which I have distilled the writings of Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, and Musashi, and the practices of Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Wellington, and Rommel and Patton to a Few Simple Maxims.

MILITARY STRATEGY FOR DUMMIES

ONE… Read full post »

Ah, that basic existential question, why did the French Frog, the British Lion, the Russian Bear, and the American Eagle go over respectively the Pyrenees and the Hindu-Kush, and did they ever get back safely?

Not really.

The French Frog went over the Pyrenees thinking to make the world safe for… Read full post »

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33876408/ns/world_news-americas

Shroomberg News: November 12, 2009 1:45 EST

Gophers Rule!

This just in from our global gopher network.

After the failure of the U.S. B-52 strikes on Russian nuclear weapons, strikes which cost the lives of 79 very brave air crews, beca… Read full post »

The U.S. dollar has a right price, like Goldilox, not too high and not to low.

To high a price for the dollar, which is reflected at 8 yuan to the dollar for instance, and often like the price generated by Chinese central bank purchases, creates a trade problem and international… Read full post »

Jena-Auerstadt were signature moments in the history of the Prussian state's rise to Great Power status, the former being battles lost by Prussia to Napoleon and Davout in absolutely totally crushing fashion in October 1806.

The creator of Prussia as a Great Power, Frederick the Great, used… Read full post »

As I have continued my excursion into history this last four months, I have come to realize the role of nationalism in historiography, and the truth of post-modernism in certain aspects.

This is most evident in terms of the debate about WWI.

Since that war didn't go according to plan, 17… Read full post »

The point I have been trying to make, apparently with no success, is that nuclear doctrine of the Great Powers is dangerously removed from public thought, even within the level of the Power Elite.

In the 1950's, Kissinger made his name with Nuclear Weapons and American Foreign Policy, a frankly absur… Read full post »

 For MEB, forever and ever

There is a very intersting book recently out on war from an economists point of view by Juergen Brauer and Herman van Tuyll called Guns, Battles, and Bombs, How Economics Explains War, that is the subject of this contextual book review.

In essence, they give the r… Read full post »

First, no one in their right mind wants a war between two nuclear armed states: period.

The difficulty is that in a world that is characterized by the de-centralized control of physical violence, states try to maximize their power, which even in a nuclear world means that they can tempt fate.… Read full post »

This is the first development of a long research agenda into nuclear weapons doctrine.

It does not make for good cocktail discussion, although that is actually dangerous.

Why?

War is the continuation of politics by other means, hopefully never nuclear in character.

Nonetheless, the existence of… Read full post »

American and Russian history have an interesting synchronicity dating to 1812, on which I shall discuss more in other postings, although the focus of this one shall be on America and Russia as children of 1812.

Before the Napoleonic invasion of 1812, the Russian elite mainly spoke French, not Ru… Read full post »

For MEB, as always. 

A Failed Empire by Vladislov Zubok is a very timely analysis of Soviet foreign policy from Stalin to Gorbachev, from a Russian point of view, in effect.

Americans are not so great at taking in multiple interpretaions of events, and to be fair I think a real… Read full post »

For MEB

"I sold you

 and you sold me

under the spreading chestnut tree"  George Orwell, 1984

That is life among the Great Powers, I sold you, and you sold me, just like the rest of life, where your worst enemies are  the people who are supposed to love you, generally… Read full post »

This piece has more humor than usual, as a tribute to Professor Wuffle, a.k.a. some really prestigious professor at U.C.I. who has an alter ego named Wuffle that has a publication track that would earn tenure anywhere.

It is also quite serious as to the point about the nature of international… Read full post »

The phi theory is to take the market peak, which is always 20 per cent overvalued as the base, and mulitply by one, and then apply the following sequence: 1, .8,.61,.5,.39

That implies critical levels of

10,000 at .8

8300

7000

5400

where the latter means war.