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(Disclaimer: Naval Institute Press provided me with a review copy of On Operations by B.A. Friedman) „What are the levels of war, and why are they important?” was one of the first questions I asked myself when I started to study war and human conflict. I found conflicting answers and could not make sense of it until someone explained it to me like this: Imagine you are the leader of a group of teenagers. You decide to TP* a teacher’s house. You pick the TP team, others are sent to procure a specific amount of toilet paper. All this is the strategic level. You makeRead More →

Combat Mission Cold War

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In: Tactics, Wargames
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(Disclaimer: Battlefront was kind enough to provide me with a copy of Combat Mission Cold War for this review) Decision-making in a tactical environment is key to the success of military forces. Usually, life or death decisions must be made in split seconds with minimal information. The lack of information, often called the fog of war, is the differentiator between military (and crisis) decision-making and decision-making in the civilian world. This skill has to be regularly trained to maintain and improve on it. However, one recurring theme of military life is the lack of such training: oftentimes military forces are burdened with a myriad ofRead More →

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In: COIN, History, Strategy
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(Full Disclosure: Oxford University Press provided me with a review copy of The Other Face of Battle in Ebook format) For historical sciences, the cultural turn in social sciences signified the final stage of a development that had started with political history, in German often derided as Ereignisgeschichte (history of events), had led to structural history and finally culminated in Kulturgeschichte, the history of cultures. Whereas political history is often concerned with great persons (often men), significant events (hence the derisive name) and states as amorphous but very much alive actors in history, structural history is about structures, their historical development and how they influencedRead More →