It all started with a Twitter thread. Matthew Ford set his trap with a few sly comments about the ever controversial S.L.A. Marshall (SLAM) and three intrepid historians couldn’t help themselves but to jump into the fray. Listen now to part 2 with Matthew, Robert Engen, Rob Thompson and our DUSTY SHELVES editor Tom Bruscino. The four of them debate the merits and pitfalls of SLAM’s works, the different approaches they each use in their research, the role of rhetoric in military change and just a general ribbing back and forth between historians and journalists.
Author Archives: Thomas Bruscino
SLAM-FEST: A DISCUSSION OF S.L.A. MARSHALL’S WORKS – PART 1
It all started with a Twitter thread. Matthew Ford set his trap with a few sly comments about the ever controversial S.L.A. Marshall (SLAM) and three intrepid historians couldn’t help themselves but to jump into the fray. The result is a 2-part podcast with Matthew, Robert Engen, Rob Thompson and our DUSTY SHELVES editor Tom Bruscino. The four of them debate the merits and pitfalls of SLAM’s works, the different approaches they each use in their research, the role of rhetoric in military change and just a general ribbing back and forth between historians and journalists.
PAST VISIONS OF FUTURE WARS
A BETTER PEACE welcomes Adam Seipp to discuss the world of Cold War literature. Adam’s previous article in our DUSTY SHELVES series reviewed Sir John Hackett’s 1978 best seller, The Third World War: August 1985. Hackett, deemed both the heir to Pat Frank and Neville Shute and also the ancestor of Tom Clancy and so […]
MILITARY GEOGRAPHY AND MILITARY STRATEGY
Military strategy depends on geography to a far greater degree than what is currently practiced or taught. One of the effects of the diminished attention to military strategy as warmaking has been to focus the efforts of military strategists on crafting or sorting out objectives. The favorite gripe of military professionals, even in military strategic […]
REFLECTIONS ON MILITARY STRATEGY: KILLING ANNIHILATION VS. ATTRITION
There is no good reason to think that there are only two forms of strategy, or that they are annihilation and exhaustion. It is long past time to kill the idea that the basic strategic approach is between annihilation and exhaustion or attrition. For Americans, the problems started with a single chapter in an edited […]
START WITH BOOK THREE: FINDING UTILITY IN CLAUSEWITZ’S ON WAR
The problem, due in large part to Clausewitz’s meandering style, is that too many influential commentators have treated those books as how-to manuals. Carl von Clausewitz’s text, On War, ascends to the status of sacred text in many circles. Military leaders and politicians quote him, and it is rare to find a professional military education […]
THAT NEVER HAPPENED: A WATER COOLER DISCUSSION ABOUT MOVIES
If he didn’t do that, he should have. If you’ve ever spent any time with historians you know that they are the worst people to watch a movie with. Custer never said that, Roosevelt didn’t jump up from his wheelchair, there was no grass on that battlefield in 1917. A BETTER PEACE gathered three of […]
THE LEAVENWORTH HERESY?
Operational art had become all-encompassing, because the Joint community called all war making at the national and theater level ‘campaigns.’ Ten years ago, Australian defense experts Justin Kelly and Michael Brennan published scathing critiques of American strategic thinking in Alien: How Operational Art Devoured Strategy and “The Leavenworth Heresy and the Perversion of Operational Art”. […]
BOOK LOVERS NEED APPLY: A DUSTY SHELVES PODCAST
One of the things we’re trying to do is encourage people…to start talking about older books, older readings, older things that are lost or never really well known that really should have been. A BETTER PEACE welcomes WAR ROOM editors Tom Bruscino and Jon Klug to explain the drive and desire behind the DUSTY SHELVES […]
DUSTING OFF THE DUSTY SHELVES
We are looking for new and updated looks at old books, articles, chapters, speeches, conference panels, curriculum, documentaries, and so on. First things first, I sort of hate the name of this series I’ve agreed to edit. It sounds like antiquarianism: knick-knacks that we keep for sentimental reasons and unread old books that are there […]