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Jan 7, 2025 | 
realcleardefense.com | James Holmes
Don't Obsess Over 2027 on China The year 2027 is just a year. We should remain watchful as it approaches, lest the prophets of automatic warfare prove correct, but we should neither relax our guard in the meantime nor resign ourselves to a certain clash of arms. Read Full Article »
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Jan 6, 2025 | 
nationalinterest.org | James Holmes
Numerology is a potent force in human affairs. So is a deadline—especially when it’s clear fateful consequences will come to pass once the cutoff date arrives. The wry English wit Dr. Samuel Johnson was on to something when he quipped that “when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”But what happens if you talk yourself into believing a deadline is impending when it’s not? Maybe the executioner is not on a set timetable.
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Dec 21, 2024 | 
nationalinterest.org | James Holmes
So it appears the congressionally mandated National Commission on the Future of the Navy has commenced work at long last.
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Dec 10, 2024 | 
nationalinterest.org | James Holmes
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on LinkedIn Subscribe to RSS Print Topic: Security Region: Americas Blog Brand: The Buzz Tags: U.S. NavyNavyMilitaryDefenseRustUSS Green Bay The U.S. Navy’s failure to maintain a clean, rust-free appearance on vessels like the USS Green Bay risks undermining its strategic credibility. In the global competition for perceptions, visuals of professionalism inspire confidence among allies and deter adversaries.
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Dec 7, 2024 | 
19fortyfive.com | James Holmes
Imperial Japan guessed poorly at Pearl Harbor. It misjudged the impact of its actions on a peacetime strategic competitor, made a foe of that competitor, and set itself on the path to cataclysm. Carl von Clausewitz would smile. Military folk like to think of strategy, operational art, and tactics as a science. That attitude simplifies things, implying that battlefield success results from handling variables, equations, inputs and outputs, and whatnot.
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Dec 1, 2024 | 
nationalinterest.org | James Holmes
The War of 1812 is a mindbender among naval wars. Seldom does a society mistake defeat for victory and codify the loser strategy as the playbook for future conflicts. But so it was for the United States for most of the nineteenth century. Americans celebrated a stirring string of single-ship battles early in the war, confusing tactical triumphs with strategic and political results.
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Nov 18, 2024 | 
nationalinterest.org | James Holmes
Donald Trump Should Look South to Compete with China: China is still Mahanian. Twenty-one years ago I closed out my very first hefty journal article, over at Comparative Strategy, with an offhand observation that the works of Alfred Thayer Mahan, the fin de siècle American maritime historian and theorist, had found favor in a Communist China that had cast its gaze seaward in search of economic prosperity and martial clout.
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Nov 15, 2024 | 
nationalinterest.org | James Holmes
To Take On China, Trump Should Pivot to Asia - For Real: When he returns to the Oval Office come January, Donald Trump will inherit a very different Pacific strategic seascape than he knew during his first presidency. U.S.-China relations swerved toward competition during his first term, in part because a domineering China had started asserting itself, in part because of Trump policies aimed at decoupling the U.S. from the Chinese economy while curbing Beijing’s warlike excesses.
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Nov 10, 2024 | 
nationalinterest.org | James Holmes
What You Need to Know: Japan faced insurmountable odds in WWII against the U.S. due to America's industrial and military supremacy. However, Japan might have improved its chances by employing a more strategic approach.
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Nov 7, 2024 | 
nationalinterest.org | James Holmes
When should you hazard pricey, hard-to-replace capital ships in battle? That question has vexed wartime naval commanders as long as there have been navies to command. Nor is it hard to see why. Societies sink inordinate resources into ships of war. Cruisers, destroyers, and submarines are what economists term “lumpy capital,” costing taxpayers upwards—commonly well upwards—of $1 billion per copy. Aircraft carriers are the lumpiest of them all.
