Clik here to view.
Green-on-green: a new development in insider attacks?
On Friday, October 19th, a firefight between Afghan policemen in Jaji Maidan, Khost resulted in three deaths. According to local officials, the firefight broke out as a result of a dispute between...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Balancing Rivals: India’s Tightrope between Iran and the United States
Julie Meyer Super, my fellow War Studies alum, just published her first journal article on India’s relations with the U.S. and Iran in Asia Policy. Check out the advance release copy (pdf). Below is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Afghan policewoman involved in the latest green-on-blue attack
In the first green-on-blue attack in the month of December, an Afghan policewoman named Nargis (also spelled Nargas in some sources) reportedly shot and killed an ISAF civilian contractor at Kabul...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Designing an insurgency wargame – Part 1: The Basics
Ever since completing my first wargame, Fardh al-Qanoon, I’ve been eager to tackle the topic of insurgency once again with a more complex manual simulation. Fardh al-Qanoon simulated a local...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Designing an insurgency wargame – Part 2: The Environment
In my previous post, I discussed in general terms my objective in designing a new manual insurgency wargame and some of the basic concepts it should seek to simulate. I know this is a very belated...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Designing an insurgency wargame – Part 3: Political Mechanics
(Read parts one and two) In this post, I’m going to discuss what is perhaps the most essential element of an insurgency/counterinsurgency wargame: political mechanics. Most wargames understandably...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Must-read blogs by US Foreign Service Officers
Whether you’re interested in joining the US Foreign Service or want to gain a better idea of what life is really like for American diplomats, reading blogs written by FSOs and their families provides...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Snowden & Wikileaks: Activists or Stateless Spies?
I wrote a post asking whether Edward Snowden and Wikileaks can be considered non-state spies on Joshua Fost’s State of Play collection on Medium.com. Here’s an excerpt: Since the fall of the Soviet...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The cost of sea power, then and now
Infantry, cavalry, armor, and air power come and go in importance as technology and tactics change, but sea power is the perennial king of interstate warfare. Even the Romans, famous for their...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Iran & the Great Game: 2012 Edition
The Great Game (not to be confused with the Game of Thrones) is no longer a game for two. The imperial powers of prior ages have been replaced with coalitions of nations at least loosely aligned in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fardh al-Qanoon simulation, version 1.1
UPDATE 8/15/12: It’s come to my attention that Scribd requires an account to download documents, so I’ve added a link to download the Rules directly from Google Docs. I’ve made some tweaks to my rules...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fardh al-Qanoon displayed at Connections Wargaming Conference
I’m excited to report that my Baghdad counterinsurgency simulation, Fardh al-Qanoon was displayed at the Connections Wargaming Conference held at the National Defense University last week. While I was...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Battling the beast: models of insurgency in Afghanistan
The insurgency in Afghanistan has defied the United States and ISAF’s attempts to quell it for almost a decade, and to some extent has even defied attempts to understand it. The academic literature...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A fault line or faulty information? The Taliban, reconciliation, and...
A Royal United Services Institute report co-authored by Michael Semple, Anatol Lieven, Theo Farrell, and Rudra Chaudhuri (the latter three from my alma mater, KCL), contains a rather amazing claim:...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Viewing the 13th Century Inquisition as a Papal counter-insurgency campaign
The Cathars being expelled from Carcassonne (Wikimedia Commons) The Cathar movement in southern France posed the greatest threat to Papal authority and the Catholic Church up to that point in history....
View Article