Bringing Turkey's Border Strategy Into Focus

Satellite images taken at the Turkey-Syria border corroborate what Stratfor predicted weeks ago: that Turkey, now partnered with the United States, will strike at Islamic State-controlled territory adjacent to the Turkish border. The Turks reportedly began to reinforce their southern border with troops and equipment as early as July 3. But according to these images, which were taken July 26, we now know that that equipment includes Turkish-made main battle tanks and support units poised in a defensive position on the Turkish side of the border.

Strategy in Real Time: Dueling with an Enemy That Moves

Strategy is a two-way street. But many commentators act as though formulating a strategy is the same as solving a chess problem. Chess problems are artificially constructed arrangements on a chessboard where the goal is to find a series of moves that leaves the other side no room to evade a checkmate within three or four turns. The sorts of conflicts bedeviling us these days, however, are more like the game of chess itself, in which there is no determinate, continuous series of moves that will guarantee victory every time. Each new contest depends on the actions of the other side, how we react to them, how they respond to our reactions, and so on.

Ignoring this aspect of strategy seems to contribute to the widespread view that victory in warfare amounts to the destruction of the enemy, a facile assumption that is all too unthinkingly held. "Defeating the enemy" may be the definition of victory in football, or even in chess for that matter, but not in warfare. Victory in war is the achievement of the war aim, and if, after Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, we still think that victory is simply the devastation of our adversaries, we have a lot of reflecting to do.

How to Stop a Nuclear War

As he ponders how to respond to the military bluster of North Korea, President Obama is learning a lesson that was driven home to John F. Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis: When it comes to a possible nuclear confrontation, pre-delegating authority to the generals can be a big mistake.

Operation Mincemeat and spycraft in World War Two

Operation Mincemeat was one of the most successful deceptions of the enemy by the British during World War II, when a dead body carrying faked secret documents was set adrift off the coast of Spain in May 1943. While the real landings were planned to take place in Sicily as Operation Husky, the documentation carried by the corpse contained plans which detailed landings in southern Europe. Thousands of Allied lives were spared when Germany diverted its forces from Sicily to defend Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balkans. Later estimates put the number of lives saved as being in the order of 30,000.