The abrupt collapse of the U.S.–North Korea Agreed Framework has triggered mounting international concern over the longer-term consequences for the global nonproliferation regime.
It has also exacerbated the most serious tensions in the fifty-year history of the U.S.–Republic of Korea alliance, quite possibly laying the groundwork for a major regional crisis unparalleled since the Korean War. How and why did this major policy breakdown occur?

China’s Manned Space Program
Sun Tzu or Apollo Redux?
Joan Johnson-Freese

Sun Tzu’s adage of “bearing down on the enemy” seems to encapsulate the current approaches of both the United States and China to their space programs. China does not have to be an enemy of the United States, but it is certainly destined to be a competitor, if the United States continues to exploit the obvious military advantages of space and China feels compelled to respond.

China’s Closing Window of Opportunity
Justin Bernier and Stuart Gold

American civilian and military leaders must dismiss the fatally flawed theory that time is on China’s side in the struggle over the fate of Taiwan. The real danger of a PRC attack is in this decade, when Taiwan is most vulnerable, not in the next. Closer military ties with Taiwan, more cautious dealings with China, a strengthened U.S. naval and air presence in the western Pacific, and complementary nonmilitary measures are needed.

Transformation and Strategy

Is the U.S. Navy Being Marginalized?
Admiral Stansfield Turner, U.S. Navy (Retired)

The U.S. Navy’s traditional missions are generally less relevant today than in recent decades, because of advances in technology and changes in the global environment. To meet the radically altered requirements now placed upon military forces, the Navy must transform itself, mission by mission. It is a tall order.

Transforming the Navy
Punching a Feather Bed?
Peter J. Dombrowski and Andrew L. Ross

Judged against the expectations created by President Bush and his defense team, the Navy’s transformation enterprise falls short. However, no compelling strategic rationale for military transformation has yet been articulated. A revolution in military affairs is not required for the maintenance of U.S. military dominance specifically or American primacy generally, or for fighting and winning the global war on terror.

From Kadesh to Kandahar
Military Theory and the Future of War
Michael Evans

The problems facing strategists and military professionals in the early twenty-first century have changed dramatically and decisively. Military power and capability have expanded into a network of transnational interconnections. As a result, preparing for armed conflict is no longer only a matter of simply assembling battlefield strength to destroy defined adversaries.

In My View

Book Reviews

War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning,
by Chris Hedges
reviewed by Jon Czarnecki

Foreign Policy for America in the Twenty-first Century: Alternative Perspectives,
edited by Thomas H. Henriksen
reviewed by Sam J. Tangredi

Out of the Red: Building Capitalism and Democracy in Postcommunist Europe,
by Mitchell Orenstein
reviewed by Edward Wagner

The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power,
by Max Boot
reviewed by Richard Norton

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated,
by Gore Vidal
reviewed by Matthew Morgan

The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War,
edited by Ali Ahmad Jalali and Lester W. Grau
reviewed by William C. Green

Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers,
by Daniel Ellsberg
reviewed by Ken Hagan

Stalin’s Ocean-Going Fleet: Soviet Naval Strategy andShipbuilding Programmes, 1935–1953,
by Jürgen Rohwer and Mikhail S. Monakov
reviewed by Willard C. Frank, Jr.

The Penobscot Expedition: Commodore Saltonstall and the Massachusetts Conspiracy of 1779,
by George E. Buker
reviewed by James B. Goodman

The Pepperdogs,
by Bing West
reviewed by William E. Turcotte