Over at The Harding Project, Brian McAllister Linn notes that, while both the US Army and American military journals paid enormous attention to the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), the same institutions neglected the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) that followed. (For an excellent overview of the latter, see the report published by the Carnegie Endowment in 1914. For a guide to the short pieces on various aspects of the conflict published by this newsletter, see Articles about the Balkan Wars.)
A piece published earlier this year by Dennis Kucinich, late of the US House of Representatives, described a proposal for the automatic registration of young American men for mandatory military service as an artifact of scheme for ‘global war’. Reading this article sent me down a rabbit hole, where I discovered a recent report (dated 23 October 2024) on the subject of automatic registration. Published by the Congressional Research Service, this tour d’horizon makes no reference to plans for planet-wide conflict.
The same search made me aware of the work of Hope Seck, a writer for Sandboxx News who has much to offer readers of The Tactical Notebook. In addition to writing a splendid piece about automatic registration, Miss Seck, who specializes in military manpower, has produced a handy overview of the current state of efforts to obtain volunteers for the US Armed Forces.
If you are building a playlist of podcasts for your holiday travels, be sure to include this interview from The Connecting File, in which Major Zach Schwartz (late of the Case Method Project) and signal management maven Lucas Scher discuss ways folks who find themselves on modern battlefields can avoid shining like a new dime.
The Distro has published a call for a National Day of Remembrance to honor the Americans who served, suffered, and died during America’s longest war.
More Milstack
More Tactical Notebook
How to fix the military recruitment crisis… find Combat Vet with Tats who H8s GOFOs, who (anonymously) denounce his lack of Credentials…
And already recruitment picks back up -
https://x.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1860706698861678951