Background – Command and Control – How and why the Joint Chiefs of Staff are being given the capability to manage individual firefights.

• StrategyPage: Micromanagement for Global War

Background – Counterinsurgency – Can the lessons of history help defeat the insurgency in Iraq? Peter Maass teaches the fine points of counterinsurgency by profiling a US Army officer who wrote his PhD thesis on counterinsurgency, and is now in the process of putting theory to practice in Iraq.

• New York Times Magazine: Professor Nagl’s War