In today’s Washington Post, an Army lieutenant colonel writes a lengthy opinion piece criticizing an embryonic Marine policy to use a “velvet gloves” approach in the Sunni Triangle, in contrast ...
Author: Peter Maass
I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post.
The Counterinsurgent
John Nagl was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University who wrote his PhD thesis about counter-insurgency. He read every classic book on the issue, his favorite being T.E. Lawrence’s “Seven Pillars of Wisdom,” which warns that fighting a guerrilla war is “messy and slow, like eating ...
The Counterinsurgent
The New York Times Magazine
Major John Nagl was a leading military scholar on how to fight a resistance. But could he make his ideas work on the ground in Iraq?
January 11, 2004
Maj. John Nagl approaches war pragmatically and philosophically, as a soldier and a scholar. He graduated ...
The Wars in Photos
If you want to be stunned by war photography, and in the process reach a deeper understanding of what war means and does, the VII photo agency has just published an amazing book. It’s entitled War: ...
The Ground They Fight On
War: USA, Afghanistan, Iraq
January 2004
The following essay was published in the book “War: USA, Afghanistan, Iraq,” which features the work of photographers from the VII photo agency.
Wars, like people, have many expressions. The Iraq conflict involved a diplomatic war at the United Nations ...
New Deal
The New Republic
On North Korea, the United States needs an alternative to the hawks’ belligerent rhetoric and the doves’ optimistic engagement. Fortunately, one is available.
December 22, 2003
It was a perfect day for a provocation. In late August, Norbert Vollertsen, ...
North Korea to Iraq
My latest stories include a political piece about North Korea, in The New Republic, as well as two brief stories in the Ideas issue of The New York Times Magazine.
Enemy Combatants
The New York Times Magazine
Ideas of 2002
December 15, 2002
Should an American who is suspected of having links to Al Qaeda have the right to a lawyer and the right to not answer questions about coming attacks? The U.S. government has been holding two Americans incommunicado at military ...
Thunder Run
The New York Times Magazine
December 14, 2003
A convention of military strategy is that you do not rush tanks into the center of a hostile city unless you wish to lose them. In 1994 the Russians learned this fatal lesson when they sent an armored column into Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, ...
Project Eyes
The New York Times Magazine
New tools for an occupation.
December 14, 2003
During the invasion of Iraq, the American military displayed amazing technological superiority, firing missiles that flew nearly 1,000 miles before hitting their targets precisely, with a margin of error of ...