History

(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 →

(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 →

I usually don’t comment on current affairs because commenting on them is time-critical and I don’t have the time nor do I feel inclined to fire-off an article under that pressure; I like to take my time and really work that article. However, recent events do force me to comment on a very particular issue, an AI just beat a fighter pilot and some people think this is the end of military aviation as we know it. Nevermind that such sweeping generalizations on the military are usually wrong, it is an interesting development. It is especially interesting for me, since I have a background inRead More →