Defense and the National Interest

Two ways to answer this question:

Deploy the Mark I Ouija board
Study what his closest associates are writing.

I can’t help you much on Alternative 1, but if you’re interested in the second, I recommend Chuck Spinney’s piece in today’s Counterpunch.  Here’s a short sample:
The information suggests the Taliban’s strategic aim is to wear down their adversaries [...]

by Chuck Spinney
Anchored off Marmaris, Turkey
29 March 2009
Version 2
Over the course of my 33 year career in the Defense Department, first as an Air Force officer, then as a civilian, the central thrust my efforts evolved without design into a focus aimed at understanding why the Pentagon bureaucracy, the American military, the Congress, and the [...]

by William S. Lind
15 December 2008
America’s Defense Meltdown is the title of a new book on military reform, edited by Winslow Wheeler and published by the Center for Defense Information. In it, some of the leading figures from the military reform movement of the 1970’s and ‘80’s update their work and relate it to [...]

Chuck Spinney
10 December 2008
My good friend Pierre Sprey forwarded this amazing quote by Vice Admiral Bill Gortney. Pierre’s comments are in BLUE and Vice Adm Gortney’s comments are in italics. My comments follow and are so marked.
An utterly convincing testimonial, from an expert witness with flawless credentials, regarding the benefits of quality over quantity for [...]

The Family Business Exec MBA program is now underway, and time is becoming a fond and distant memory.  I did check James Fallows’ blog today and found a most interesting post by my old friend Chuck Spinney.  Chuck is sailing somewhere in the eastern Med but I guess he’s found a marina with good Internet [...]

Chuck Spinney voices his opinion on this subject, and proposes a thought experiment, in Counterpunch.
Here’s the premise:
At the heart of this question is the nature of the conflict in Afghanistan, specifically the question of whether or not it has mutated into something that is more akin to a classical guerrilla war as opposed to being [...]

by Chuck Spinney
A recent article by Thomas Powers in the New York Review of Books is a very good analysis of why Mr. Bush’s impulse to attack Iran before he leaves office is sheer madness. And at a deeper level, it well illustrates how perverted the militarization of US grand strategy has become at [...]

Chuck Spinney
Marmaris, Turkey
13 April 2008
The administration’s theory and practice of grand strategy can be summarized by the sound byte, “You are either with us or against us.” But the art of grand strategy is far more subtle than this. The late American strategist, Col John R. Boyd (USAF Ret) evolved five criteria [...]

By Chuck Spinney
More than seven years after 9-11, it ought to be clear from (1) the senseless destruction of Iraq, (2) the deteriorating war in Afghanistan, and (3) the increasing potential for chaos in nuclear-armed Pakistan, that George II has gomered up the so-called war on terror (WOT).

By Chuck Spinney
[DNI Editor’s note: An increase of even a few degrees in world average temperature over the next several decades could drown populous coastal regions, reduce the world's stock of arable land, and perhaps accelerate the rise and intensify the effects of pandemics. Any of these could increase the likelihood of armed conflict [...]