Outside the Beltway

A warning to North Korea.

It’s not at all clear that there is a useful strategy at work here.

A new Pentagon proposal would place more discretion in the hands of field commanders, removing the need for Presidential approval.

Reports indicate that President Trump will seek to increase military spending. We don’t need to, and we can’t really afford it.

A military judge has rejected a motion to dismiss the case against Bowe Bergdahl based on comments made by Donald Trump when he was a candidate for President.

Could Donald Trump’s comments about Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl on the campaign trail lead to the case against Bergdahl being dismissed? A military judge will have to decide.

With two votes last night, President Trump’s Cabinet is coming together.

Three of the top four national security positions in Donald Trump’s Cabinet will be filled by retired Generals. This isn’t necessarily a good thing.

My latest for War on the Rocks.

President Obama will leave office as the first two term President who presided over eight years of war. It didn’t start with him and it won’t end with him.

The Dallas shooting spree ended with police killing the perpetrator with a drone. I’m okay with that.

American forces will continue to stay in Afghanistan well after Barack Obama leaves office thanks to a new policy announced today.

Marines, especially female Marines, will be allowed to be heavier in the new year.

My latest for The National Interest has posted.

Unlike previous civil rights changes, this one came without much fanfare, fight, or even discussion.

The Marine Corps has removed the word “man” from nineteen of its military occupation specialty titles, leaving only a handful of iconic instances intact.

The Senate has passed an amendment to a military spending bill that would require women to register for the draft.

A respected scholar has an interesting suggestion for fighting the Forever War.

Bowe Bergdahl’s Court Martial has been delayed until 2017, which raises the possibility that comments by Donald Trump could result in Bergdahl getting off scot-free.

My latest for War on The Rocks, “Professional Military Education and the Rigor Problem, has posted.

My latest for RealClearDefense, “The Forgotten Veterans of Desert Storm,” has posted. The headline belies the argument.

A month after raising $6,000,000 for “the troops,,” questions are being asked about where the money Donald Trump raised for veterans causes actually is at this point.

The U.S. is poised to send troops to the front lines of yet another war we have no reason to be involved in.

Michael Hayden notes that many of Donald Trump’s foreign policy positions are illegal.

It’s hard to caucus away from home.

American forces will be deployed to a combat area in southern Afghanistan, reversing current policy and calling the President’s promised withdrawal date into even further doubt.

It’s been suggested that subjecting women to a possible draft would make leaders less likely to go to war. Unfortunately, there’s no reason to believe this is true.

The Army Chief of Staff and Commandant of the Marine Corps told Congress that women should be required to register for the draft just like men are.

Get ready for an expansion of the war against ISIS into Libya, because it’s probably not far away.

The United States and South Korea are hinting at increased military cooperation in the wake of last week’s North Korean nuclear test.

Donald Trump displays some appalling ignorance about an important part of America’s military, but his supporters are unlikely to care.

Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will face a Court Martial for the circumstances that led to his being capture and held captive by the Taliban for five years.

The British Parliament has approved expansion of that countries airstrikes into Syria, but it’s unclear just how much of an impact that will have on the ground.

Hillary Clinton’s recently announced policies toward the ISIS fight are as incoherent and misguided as President Obama’s and those of her Republican opponents.

A potentially big complication in an already complicated situation.

Disturbing reports over the weekend that American leaders may not be getting the kind of unbiased intelligence analysis about ISIS that they need to make decisions.

In the wake of the attacks in Paris, there’s a strong impulse to do “something,” but that doesn’t mean we should do something utterly foolish. And a no-fly zone would be utterly foolish.

President Obama is set to sign a military spending bill that effectively guarantees that his 2008 campaign promise to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba will go unfulfilled.

Ben Carson’s campaign now admits that he fabricated a key portion of his biography.

President Obama came to office inheriting the legacy of one unnecessary war, and another that had faded from memory. He will leave office with Iraq and Syria in crisis, Europe uneasy, Yemen and Libya unstable breeding grounds for terrorism, and China doing whatever it is they’re doing.

Another day, another military escalation in the Middle East.

President Obama is reportedly considering a plan that would put American forces much closer to the ground war in the war against ISIS.

The U.S. and Russia have reached a much-needed deal to avoid inadvertent confrontations over the skies of Syria.

The plan to withdraw nearly all American forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2016 is being put on hold.

In which I change my mind on an important topic.