Maritime and naval history serve the needs of several “audiences” in and around the Navy. However, the service’s approach to naval history is “disjointed, sporadic, [and] inconsistent.” Despite various initiatives and widespread interest, the Navy lacks an integrated policy for employing naval history, and high-level interest will be required to make history the valuable resource it could and should be.

Fighting at and from the Sea
A Second Opinion
Frank Uhlig, Jr.

Certain classic functions of navies have disappeared (for the time being at least), others have changed, and a few new ones have emerged. In the new conditions, navies at war will strive to make sure that friendly ships and aircraft can get where they are needed when they are needed, and that those of the enemy cannot do these things. Furthermore, as occasion demands, navies will land forces, when possible in friendly ports, if necessary on or over hostile shores, and support them then and thereafter with fire and logistics.

Ethics and Law in Time of Conflict

The Challenges of American Imperial Power
Michael Ignatieff

The United States—the most carefree, happiest empire in history—now confronts the question of whether it can escape Rome’s fate. The challenge can be localized, for a moment in Afghanistan, then in Iraq, but it is global in character. This nation has no choice but to exercise its imperial power, and how it does so will shape the emerging world order and test its own legitimacy as a democratic society.

Targeting after Kosovo
Has the Law Changed for Strike Planners?
Colonel Frederic L. Borch, U.S. Army

Regional commanders and their staffs must be vigilant to ensure that they attack only targets that are legal under the law of war, and only in legal ways. They must be equally vigilant, however, against nongovernmental activists who would so reinterpret the law as to make their tasks much more difficult, even impossible.

Network-centric Warfare and Transformation

Small Navies and Network-centric Warfare
Is There a Role?
Paul T. Mitchell

The ability of Canadian warships to operate in U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups demonstrates that coalition network-centric naval warfare is possible. It has also shown, however, that the price of admission for coalition navies is high, in terms of technical interoperability, professional trust, and policy—above all, with respect to information transfer.

Transforming How We Fight
A Conceptual Approach
Major Christopher D. Kolenda, U.S. Army

Technological improvement is important but, pursued in isolation, will lead only so far. If we focus exclusively on technology, we will fail. Technological and conceptual change must be integrated in a manner consistent with the enduring nature of war—characterized by essentially dispersed information, chaos, complexity, nonlinearity, and uncertainty.

Research & Debate

Still Worth Dying For: National Interests and the Nature of Strategy
P. H. Liotta

At their most abstract, U.S. national interests are simple: to ensure the security and prosperity of the American people in the global environment. But distinguishing core strategic interests—those for which Americans would be willing to die—from significant interests that might require commitment of treasure, blood, time, and energy is almost never easy.

In My View

Book Reviews

The War against the Terror Masters,
by Michael A. Ledeen
reviewed by Jan van Tol

Homeland Security: A Competitive Strategies Approach,
by Frank G. Hoffman
Protecting the American Homeland: A Preliminary Analysis,
by Michael E. O’Hanlon, et al.
reviewed by Warren M. Wiggins

Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World,
by Ralph Peters
reviewed by John A. Kunert

The United States in the Asia-Pacific since 1945,
by Roger Buckley
reviewed by Bruce A. Elleman

The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050,
edited by MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray
reviewed by Brian R. Sullivan

Why the North Won the Vietnam War,
edited by Marc Jason Gilbert
reviewed by Charles E. Neu

Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909–1941,
by Mark R. Peattie
reviewed by Robert Cressman

Lost Subs: From the Hunley to the Kursk, the Greatest Submarines Ever Lost—and Found,
by Spencer Dunmore
reviewed by Frank C. Mahncke

The U.S. Army War College: Military Education in a Democracy,
by Judith Hicks Stiehm
reviewed by Bill Brown

Dictionnaire de Stratégie,
edited by Thierry de Montbrial and Jean Klein
reviewed by Carnes Lord