Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! As the site’s subtitle suggests, I’ll be writing primarily about military strategy – both nuclear and conventional – with an emphasis on the United States. I’ll also be discussing the various theories of international relations, such as realism and liberalism, and the various grand strategies that follow from them. 

Because nuclear strategy will be the main topic of this blog, I’ve decided to first describe what the goals of the US nuclear force should be. Any post about first/second strike capabilities, force structure, or related topics should be read in light of the goals outline below. 

Note that by “goals of the nuclear force” I don’t mean to exclude partial or total nuclear disarmament as valid nuclear strategies. While I have doubts about the effectiveness of these ideas, they could at least theoretically advance the goals discussed below. 

That being said, I believe the goals of the nuclear force should be as follows, in roughly this order:

1. Do not get everyone killed!
2. Maintain or advance the United States’ relative power 
3. Avoid killing massive numbers of enemy civilians
4. Prevent nuclear attacks on US allies 
5. Prevent conventional attacks on US allies 

I had initially planned to go into detail about all five of these goals in this post, but I’ve decided to take what I had written and integrate them into later posts where the ideas behind them could be better contextualized and explained. For now, I’ll simply make note of the fact that most of these goals are not controversial, with the exception of #3. 

For anyone interested in the future of this blog, here are the provisional titles for some of the posts I’ve been thinking about or working on, in no particular order: 

• Countervalue and No First-Use
• Should there be a defense?
• The end of engagement and the coming collapse of liberal foreign policy
• The supremacy of sea power 
• Rumors of the nuclear revolution have been greatly exaggerated 
• Forget about the Russians, Part 1: The INF Treaty 
• Realism and the debate between offshore balancing and selective engagement
• The ultimate weapon 

Thanks for reading!