Queen Victoria’s 6th Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, oversaw the British Empire at a time when it was nearing its greatest power (a total of 16 years as Foreign Secretary and 9 years as Prime Minister). Palmerston was quite willing to engage in all sorts of foreign actions, sticking the British “nose” into virtually every corner […]

Imagine a US Army force of 13,500 soldiers, cornered by a much larger enemy force, on the other side of the world. What should we do to rescue them? Is there any cost too high to pay to get those Americans out of the way of the enemy buzz saw? In Syria the Turkish army […]

George Santayana, the brilliant, Spanish-born American philosopher, is well remembered for having said (among a host of other things) that: “those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” Indeed. We need to remember the past, and learn from history, we need to learn from the mistakes of others. But we also need […]

Editor’s Note: Happy (Fiscal) New Year! At midnight, some of us will time-travel to FY 2020. Bureaucrats, bag-men and contractors across The Swamp and celebrate the arrival of new truckloads of taxpayer cash arriving in the capital and will have a sip of bubbly before going back for each other’s throats. Could be an interesting […]

I had a commanding officer who used to regularly quote Vice Admiral Buckeley, his favorite one being: “I’ve seen clean ships that couldn’t fight, but I’ve never seen a dirty one that could.” Bulkeley, who commanded Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 3 in the Philippines at the start of WWII, would go on to have 11 […]

Henry Ford famously noted that: “History is bunk.” Hmmm… On 14 September Houthis rebels (from Yemen), a de facto proxy force of the government of Iran, attacked the largest single oil refinery complex in the world – the Abqaiq complex in eastern Saudi Arabia, about 40 miles southwest of Dhahran. The specifics are still not […]

If saving the world involved killing all the elephants, would we do it? Or, what if a cure for leukemia was developed but it somehow required killing every dog and cat on the planet? While you ponder that, consider this: How much methane does a head of cattle produce? That is important because it’s going […]

I think one of the more entertaining productions of the last decade or so has to be “Downton Abbey,” which follows the lives and fortunes of a fictitious British Earl, his family and their household over a decade and a half, from just prior to World War I to shortly before the Great Depression. The […]

There’s a lot of talk about Hong Kong. As I write this the protests continue. And as I write this people are debating what if anything the US (and President Trump) should do about the PRC’s actions. It has generated commentary that US actions could lead to a military confrontation with Beijing. Hmmm… A few […]

Everyone is worried, concerned that society is tearing itself apart, split by social and cultural differences that appear impossible to bridge. What’s the real problem? And is there, if not a ready solution, a path ahead that might bring us to some solution? Beginning in the late 1800s political free-thinkers and academicians sought to change […]