Why ‘War and Power’ Is Oddly Cheering

[Oscar]

Why ‘War and Power’ Is Oddly Cheering

A new book showcases the limitations of incompetent leadership.

Crawford Kilian - December 26. 2025 - The Tyee

NEW BOOK: "War and Power: Who Wins Wars — and Why" - Phillips Payson O’Brien - Public Affairs (2025)

EXCERPT: "Phillips Payson O’Brien is a “revisionist” military historian. Rather than examine the conventional wisdom about modern warfare, he junks it and proposes a very different analysis of war itself.

While O’Brien deals with war since Napoleon and especially since the First World War, his ideas in his latest book, War and Power: Who Wins Wars — and Why, throw light on very recent conflicts like those in Ukraine and Gaza, and even Donald Trump’s threatened military actions against countries like Venezuela and Nigeria.

Rather than an epic clash of great powers winning or losing on the battlefield through sheer guts and firepower, war to O’Brien is a struggle of economies and societies, technologies and political systems. There are no “great powers,” he argues. But a “full-spectrum” power with a strong economy, a united society, advanced technology and a functional political system — plus good allies — has at least the potential to win a war.

The first element is an advanced economy capable of building advanced technology. . . . . ."

[ https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2025/12/26/W ... ign=261225 ]

[Oscar]

Why You Should Be Scared about Putin’s Next War

QUOTE: "The signs are mounting that Russia is preparing for another invasion."

Crawford Kilian - October 10, 2025 - The Tyee

EXCERPT: "In the last weekend of September, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy scared the hell of out me.

Reporting for the Guardian from Kyiv on Sept. 27, Luke Harding wrote that Zelenskyy claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin would soon attack another European country.

“Putin will not wait to finish his war in Ukraine. He will open up some other direction. Nobody knows where. He wants that,” Zelenskyy said.

Recent Russian drone sightings in Denmark, Poland and Romania were careful tests of European countries’ ability to detect and respond to violations of their airspace.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz scared me again when he said on Sept. 29 that Europe is not at war with Russia, but it is not at peace with Russia, either. That’s been the case ever since Putin first invaded Ukraine in 2014, and his full-scale “special military operation” in 2022 only widened the war.

Putin himself didn’t lower my anxiety when he said it was “nonsense” to suppose Russia planned to attack NATO. He had said almost the exact same thing early in 2022 before he invaded Ukraine.

A military attack on some other European country could lead to the first general European war since 1945, and perhaps to a third world war. It is in everyone’s interest here in the West to forestall such an attack. . . . . ."

[ https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2025/10/10/Y ... -Next-War/ ]