See Draconian Observations for his brief post on Anthony Cordesman and Antulio J. Echevarria on the Long War.
The below slide DO posted from Cordesman’s presentation is a statement of the obvious that’s absolutely revolutionary (plug: it’s nice to have real analysts agree with me, see the last paragraph here.)
DO’s summary is, of course, dead-on:
The Long War concept ties together the coming Shaping JOC, the SSTR JOC, AFRICOM and also – because of the holistic, true clausewitzian approach – points to the troubled division of labor between State and Pentagon. But that is another story.
Cordesman is on the ball. One hopes that whoever is in the White House in two years will notice him.
Stability only makes sense to the extent that destabilizing transformation doesn’t.The slide is less a series of truths than things whose opposites ticked off the authors, in a specific time and place.