Recommended Reading

….Building off that theme, a second book, Steven Johnson’s The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution and The Birth of America, examines the life and work of Joseph Priestley, and his deep friendships with Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and his influence on those two Founding Fathers as well as John Adams.Priestley began as one of the leading and first modern chemists, whose main contemporary scientific rival was Antoine Lavoisier. Priestley had numerous discoveries, including providing key evidence for the existence of oxygen and its role in combustion and life itself, but what was new for me was his deep friendship with Benjamin Franklin. Franklin and Priestley met and corresponded with each other about science for many years prior to the American Revolution, and influenced each other greatly as far as the development of experiments, analysis and interpretation of data. Their letters show how they were onto the conceptual understanding of the cycling of oxygen and carbon dioxide for all of life, and how ecosystems work in terms of the flow and transformation of different energy types from one to another. These concepts were decades ahead of their time….

Shrinkwrapped – Fully Immersive Virtual Reality May Be Closer Than We Think

Don Vandergriff– Petraeus’s Last Stand?

Thomas Ricks –Why I don’t believe there is really such as thing as an ‘operational’ level of war

Out of my tattered Lands End attaché bag this week came Hew Strachan‘s article titled “Strategy or Alibi? Obama, McChrystal and the Operational Level of War,” which appeared last September in Survival….So far, so good. But then I think Strachan goes off the tracks a bit. Like a doctor whose diagnosis is spot on but who errs in prescribing the remedy, he argues that this sort of operational approach became problematic because it assumed the existence of strategy. But what, he says, if “strategy has been absent throughout the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan”? (166)

I actually think that may have been true in Iraq until late 2006 or early 2007, because until then, American generals tended to offer up aspirations rather than strategy. But I do think we had a strategy under the Petraeus/Odierno/Crocker team. What may have thrown Professor Strachan off the scent is that the strategy couldn’t be stated explicitly. I don’t think I really understood this clearly when I was writing The Gamble, and Strachan’s paper helped me think it through…

I understand Ricks’ point re: Iraq and find it reasonable, but I think there really is an “operational level” of war….at least in the institutional culture of some armies in some historical periods, including  today’s US Army. I’ve previously argued   similarly to Strachan here, albeit not as authoritatively or persuasively and – FWIW – I think China’s PLA is moving in that direction as well (though I’m willing to be corrected by Sinologists out there).

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