Wars
General Offensive-General Uprising
Intelligence “coups” are almost invariably the products of days and weeks and months of exhausting work by dozens, scores, and hundreds of people, most of whom have little or no sense of the depth or breadth of the project in which they are involved. Most often there is no “project” per se, just baskets, and reams, and rooms full of…
Most Recent
Lessons from a Lost War
The Finger of Blame As the last American advisers departed Vietnam in 1972, CORDS officials were cautiously optimistic. By their measures pacification had made steady progress for the past three years. Many provinces appeared free of violence while enjoying unprecedented economic prosperity. The Viet Cong seemed to have abandoned former…
Incident in Transylvania
Hungarian-Romanian War The Hungarian-Romanian War (Hungarian: Magyar–román háborĂş, Romanian: Razboiul romano-maghiar), was a military conflict fought between the Kingdom of Romania and Kingdom of Hungary between March 1, 1918 and June 15, 1920 over the disputed territory of Transylvania, which was ceded to Hungary in the Vienna Awards in 1940.…
Philippine-American War Begins
The Last Holdouts: General Vicente Lukban falls, Feb. 18, 1902. The Philippine-American War had two distinct phases. During the first, conventional phase, from February to November 1899, Aguinaldo’s soldiers operated as a regular army and fought the Americans in stand-up combat. In the absence of a coherent strategy—the revolutionary cause…
Carl Gustav von Rosen and Biafra
Count Carl Gustav von Rosen, the elderly Swedish nobleman who reformed the Biafran Air Force in 1969, is seen in the cockpit of a Minicon `light sporting aircraft’. Up to 18 Minicons were converted into light strike aircraft fitted with rocket-launchers and made a series of successful raids between May…
AFTER TAMERLANE
In 1401 the great Islamic historian Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) was in the city of Damascus, then under siege by the mighty Tamerlane. Eager to meet the famous conqueror of the day, he was lowered from the walls in a basket and received in Tamerlane’s camp. There he had a series…
The Wars of Shaka
This map illustrates the rise of the Zulu Empire under Shaka (1816–1828) in present-day South Africa. The rise of the Zulu Empire under Shaka forced other chiefdoms and clans to flee across a wide area of southern Africa. Clans fleeing the Zulu war zone included the Soshangane, Zwangendaba, Ndebele, Hlubi,…