Center for Strategic Communication

Israeli Bombs and American Qualms: Assessing Syria

The recent Israeli airstrikes in Syria, through which the Israeli Air Force appears to target weapons shipments bound for Hezbollah, provoked an important debate among those concerned about a U.S. military intervention in Syria. Given the prominence of concerns about...

Dependable Expendables?

While cheap precision weapons, supposedly expendable drones, and invulnerable standoff fires continue to fascinate publics and intrigue policy makers, we should be careful before subsuming these developments into a coming “new way of war.” As a recent RAND study...

Protecting Boots on the Base

When over a dozen insurgents attacked Camp Bastion’s airfield with explosive vests, automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades and possibly truck-borne mortars, they inflicted the greatest loss on VMA-211 since December 8, 1941, when the unit – then designated...

Twilight of the Carriers?

Robert Haddick has a provocative post at Foreign Policy suggesting that the rise of strategic air power and anti-ship weaponry might render carriers obsolete, and cause major inter-service conflict to boot. He might be right about the second part, but I have strong...

No-Fly Zones and Dangerous Labels

The French Defense Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, recently stated that France is willing to help impose a “partial” no-fly zone in Syria, pending international legitimacy and participation, and so long as it was not a full no-fly zone, since that would be “tantamount...