The Red Flag 14-1 cyber protection team works on defense procedures inside the Combined Air and Space Operations Center-Nellis during the exercise February 5, 2014, at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada.

Sept. 9, 2026

Cyberspace Collaborative Awareness: A Model for Unity of Effort in Homeland Defense

Α renewed wave of cyberattacks on critical infrastructure calls into question the United States’ ability to combat cyberspace threats to the systems the nation relies on most.

U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. John W. Troxell, Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, addresses General and Flag Officers at the National Defense University’s CAPSTONE Course on Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, DC, July 12, 2016.

Sept. 9, 2026

Boot Camp for the Mind: The Role of JPME in Developing National Security Strategists

Warfighting communities provide officers with the necessary skills to operate weapon systems and cultivate their experience to lead in combat, but once junior officers are promoted to higher ranks, they often lack the abilities required of senior national security professionals. Joint professional military education (JPME) plays a deliberate and pivotal role in an officer’s operational and strategic growth.

U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Idris Idris, center, a small unmanned aircraft systems specialist with U.S. Marines with 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, demonstrates the C100 drone capabilities to a Spanish marine during a company live-fire range as a part of Fleet Exercise 250 (FLEETEX) on Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, June 19, 2026.

Sept. 9, 2026

Building the Mental Golden Dome: Arming the Joint Force for Defensive Cognitive Warfare

Τhe decisive ground of tomorrow’s wars will not be a hilltop, a seaport, or outer space; it will be within the human mind. Victory will belong to forces that can rapidly discern truth from deception. Adversaries across the world weaponize information to fracture alliances and erode unit cohesion.

Sitting side by side, then-Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Ryan and recently fired Maj. Gen. John Lavelle testified before a House Armed Services subcommittee in 1972.

Sept. 9, 2026

Examining the Lavelle Affair 54 Years Later: An Injustice That Needs to Be Rectified Now

Οn December 20, 2010, the Senate Committee on Armed Services denied the Pentagon’s request, endorsed by President Barack H. Obama, for the posthumous advance of Air Force Major General John D. Lavelle to the retired list in the rank of general.

The USS Arizona (BB-39) burning after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

Sept. 9, 2026

Determining Operational Objectives

Full knowledge and understanding of the true meaning of operational objectives are the main prerequisites for sound planning and execution of major operations.

At the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force’s Officer Training School, civilians and prior enlisted Servicemembers with college degrees undergo a rigorous 60-day training program, culminating in their commissioning as officers.

Sept. 8, 2026

From Data to Victory: The Race for Analytic Superiority in Warfare

Αrtificial intelligence (AI) technologies have reached a tipping point after decades of development.

Col William T. Eliason, USAF (Ret.), PhD, editor in chief, NDU Press, faces the camera dressed in his Air Force uniform.

Sept. 8, 2026

Executive Summary

This October marks the 40th anniversary of what is easily the most important reform of the U.S military in modern times: the Goldwater–Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986.

Sept. 8, 2026

The Logic of America’s Defense Strategy

Secretary Hegseth has rightly tasked the nation’s military to refocus on its core and most essential function—fighting and winning our nation’s wars. This is the heart of his direction for restoring the warfighting ethos, and it carries important implications for institutions like the National War College. 

Cover of Joint Force Quarterly 120. Pictured is Lance Corporal Giancarlos Maldonado and a drone operator with Headquarters Company, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, poses for a portrait with a Skydio X2D on Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, Nov. 21, 2025.

Sept. 8, 2026

Joint Force Quarterly 120 (3rd Quarter 2026)

Secretary Hegseth has rightly tasked the nation’s military to refocus on its core and most essential function—fighting and winning our nation’s wars.

U.S. Navy SEAL secures deck of ship and conducts board, search, and seizure training with British Royal Marine Commandos and Ukrainian special forces in Odesa, Ukraine, June 21, 2021 (U.S. Army/Patrik Orcutt)

March 16, 2026

Joint Force Quarterly 119 (4th Quarter 2025)

While not all readers of this journal read my Executive Summary, they do read the results of my team’s work.

Cover of Strategic Assessment 2025

Feb. 25, 2026

Strategic Assessment 2025: Evolving Great Power Competition at Mid-Decade

The geostrategic framework of international relations at mid-decade remains heavily conditioned and shaped by Great Power Competition (GPC) between three rivalrous, globally dominant states: the United States, China and Russia. After more than two decades of mainly cooperation and collaboration, these Great Powers drifted into de-facto rivalrous competition at the end of the 2000s. By the middle of the twenty-tens, their undeclared but obvious rivalry intensified, and their major interactions shifted from those of cooperation and collaboration to competition, confrontation and preparation for potential armed clash.

Cover of Strategic Perspectives 45, Stable (green) and unstable (purple) manifold arcs associated with an Earth-Moon L1 halo orbit in the circular-restricted three-body problem (CR3BP), illustrating low-energy dynamical pathways used for cislunar transfer design.

Feb. 12, 2026

Understanding Space Frontier Areas

Distant reaches of space loom as a strategic horizon. The vast majority of space operations have, so far, been limited to a few families of near-Earth orbits. However, space beyond geostationary Earth orbit, or xGEO, is likely to become important for strategic purposes in the near future. This is especially true of cislunar space, that region of space in which the gravity of Earth’s moon is significant. This paper refers to xGEO and cislunar space as Space Frontier Areas, since missions there have not yet reached sufficient scale to cluster into patterns of use.

Soldier fights in tandem with various robotics in Human-Machine Integrated Formations during Project Convergence Capstone 5 experiment, March 15, 2025, at Fort Irwin, California

Jan. 9, 2026

Cognitive Warfare and Organizational Design: Leveraging AI to Reshape Military Decisionmaking

The military and economic dominance of the United States in the post-Soviet era compelled adversaries to shift their strategies away from largescale conventional warfare. Instead, they have increasingly focused on contesting American decisionmaking through cognitive warfare, leveraging psychological, informational, and technological domains to erode strategic advantage. Unlike traditional warfare, cognitive warfare shapes how individuals and organizations perceive reality, evaluate choices, and act on information.

U.S. Coast Guard members conduct a boarding of a fishing vessel in the Eastern Pacific, August 3, 2022.

Jan. 9, 2026

Combating IUU Fishing in the South American Pacific: An Opportunity to Counter Chinese Influence Closer to Home

In August 2022, USCGC James took evasive action to avoid a Chinese-flagged vessel that was attempting to ram the cutter in the Pacific Ocean. While most confrontations between the United States and China center around Taiwan or the South China Sea, this event took place off the coast of South America—nearly 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) from mainland China. The incident had little to do with Chinese territorial expansion. Instead, it focused on illicit fishing activity, the Chinese vessel being a member of China’s distant water fishing (DWF) fleet, the largest in the world.

Dr. Kevin Pollpeter, Director of Research for the China Aerospace Studies Institute, and Professor David T. Burbach, Ph.D., Director of the Naval War College Space Studies Group, answer questions during Naval War College’s Future Warfighting Symposium onboard Naval Station Newport, Rhode Island, August 7, 2025 (U.S. Navy/Connor Burns)

Dec. 30, 2025

Breadth or Depth: The Ongoing Battle in Professional Military Education

The subject of military history as taught in the U.S. Army’s school system is much in the air of late. The editors of Parameters chose in 1981 to reintroduce Michael Howard’s timeless article on military education writ large. Such an introduction could serve just as well some 40 years later, when the state of joint professional military education (JPME) remains a heated source of debate.

Cover of the book "The State and the Soldier" by Kori Schake. The cover features large orange and black title text over a black-and-white historical photograph of world leaders riding in an open military jeep, with uniformed officers saluting in the background.

Dec. 29, 2025

The State and the Soldier: A History of Civil-Military Relation in the United States

Kori Schake’s The State and the Soldier is an engaging, compact, and comprehensive examination of U.S. civil-military relations history.

U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Munro (WMSL 755) and the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Alex Haley (WMEC 38) steam alongside while patrolling the Gulf of Alaska July 5, 2025. Alex Haley relieved Munro as the Bering Sea cutter in early July. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Lt. j.g. Samika Lewis.)

Dec. 29, 2025

U.S. Arctic Sea Lines of Communication: The Imperative for a Maritime Complex and Corridor in the Bering Region

Maritime activity has been a constant feature of the world’s oceans since the development of seafaring capabilities.

Army UH-60L Black Hawk helicopter crew chiefs with Charlie Company, Detachment 2, 1-171st General Support Aviation Battalion, 57th Troop Command, New Jersey Army National Guard, conduct medical evacuation training with combat medics with 1st Battalion, 114th Infantry Regiment, 44th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, New Jersey Army National Guard, at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey, November 7, 2023

Dec. 29, 2025

What’s Old Is New: LSCO Casualty Evacuation in the 21st Century

An update and integration of our military medical strategy is needed before the next large conflict.

Senior Airman Chase Anderson, 168th Cyberspace Operations Squadron cyber warfare operator, Iowa Air National Guard, works on network defense during International Cyber Defense Competition, February 22, 2025, at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa (U.S. Air National Guard/Michael J. Kelly)

Dec. 29, 2025

The Cyber Deterrence Dilemma: Parallels Between Cyber and Intelligence Special Operations

In December 2020, the United States experienced one of the most sophisticated cyber espionage attacks in its history: the SolarWinds supply chain breach.

An unarmed Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile launches during an operational test at 12:01 Pacific Time May 21, 2025, at Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. ICBM test launches demonstrate that the U.S. ICBM fleet is ready, reliable and effective in leveraging dominance in an era of strategic competition.

Dec. 29, 2025

Political Objectives, Nuclear Forces, and the Enduring Value of U.S. Intercontinental-Range Ballistic Missiles

Intercontinental-range ballistic missiles (ICBMs), or missiles that fly over 5,500 kilometers (approximately 3,400 miles), have been a key component of the U.S. nuclear triad since the 1960s.

U.S. Marines with 1st Battalion, 3d Marines, 3d Marine Division fire a Javelin shoulder-fired anti-tank missile while conducting squad attacks during Fuji Viper 22.3 at Combined Arms Training Center, Camp Fuji, Japan, Feb. 17, 2022

Dec. 22, 2025

Ukraine, the U.S. Defense Industrial Base, and the Elusive Crisis-Era Munitions Production Surge

A growing chorus of U.S. defense analysts, lawmakers, and military officials has emphasized that the United States lacks the munitions production capacity to meet the demands of the contemporary strategic environment.

Noah Benton, Titan Dynamics chief technology officer, prepare a 3-D-printed unmanned aerial system for flight during a demonstration April 25, 2024 at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.

Dec. 22, 2025

Fabrication at the Tactical Edge

In 1945, General Henry “Hap” Arnold observed that in the future, “science and research will have the same relative importance as pilot training.”

Cover of the book Spies, Lies, and Algorithms

Dec. 22, 2025

Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Amy Zegart has long been intrigued—and often confounded—by America’s obsession with what she calls “spytainment”: the blending of espionage and entertainment.

Cover of the book Collusions by Michael Kimmage

Dec. 22, 2025

Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability

Collisions by Michael Kimmage offers a timely contemporary history of the conflict in Ukraine in which he argues that the war is the culmination of three different yet overlapping geopolitical “collisions” between Russia and Ukraine, Russia and Europe, and Russia and the United States.

Ukrainian special forces exit truck before UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter flight during exercise Combined Resolve 14 at Hohenfels, Germany, September 24, 2020

Dec. 22, 2025

A Primer on Ukrainian Special Forces: Beyond Joint

Special operations forces (SOF) are significant contributors to joint warfighting. In Ukraine, this truism is on display through headlines like “Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces Destroy Russian Buk-M3 Surface-to-Air Missile System Worth US$45 Million” and “Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces Kill 21 and Injure 40 North Korean Soldiers in Fierce Battle in Russia’s Kursk Oblast.”

Air Force B-1B Lancer aircraft flies in formation alongside NATO Allied fighter jets over Monument of Freedom in Riga, Latvia, during Bomber Task Force Europe exercise.

Dec. 22, 2025

Influence by Design: A Network Strategy for Integrated Deterrence

The 2022 U.S. National Defense Strategy (NDS) and National Security Strategy place integrated deterrence as the centerpiece of U.S. strategy. Integrated deterrence—which “entails working seamlessly across warfighting domains, theaters, the spectrum of conflict, all instruments of U.S. national power, and [America’s] network of Alliances and partnerships”—is to be tailored to specific circumstances and applies a coordinated, multifaceted approach to reducing competitors’ perceptions of the net benefits of aggression relative to restraint.

Dr. Jeffrey D. Smotherman (left) receiving the Joint Distinguished Civilian Service Award from Dr. William T. Eliason.

Dec. 22, 2025

Executive Summary

While not all readers of this journal read my Executive Summary, they do read the results of my team’s work.

Cover of China Strategic Perspectives 20

Sept. 15, 2025

Taming the Hegemon: Chinese Thinking on Countering U.S. Military Intervention in Asia

This report assesses recent Chinese thinking on countering U.S. intervention in Asia, specifically in a Taiwan contingency.

First page of Cover of Strategic Forum 313, "Drone Delivery of Bioweapons: Responsibilities for Force Readiness" by Dr. James Giordano and Dr. Diane DiEuliis

July 22, 2025

Drone Delivery of Bioweapons: Responsibilities for Force Readiness

The U.S. National Drone Association recently sponsored the inaugural international U.S. Military Drone Crucible Championship to provide a venue for American and allied military drone training, advanced piloting, operational utility, and countermeasure capability.

Title page of Le Petit Journal, October 20, 1907, with original caption translated as, “The Apache is the sore of Paris. More than 30,000 prowlers against 8,000 city policemen.”

July 15, 2025

A Framework for Countering Organized Crime

States continue to struggle in their efforts to counter organized crime. Despite states having scored successes at the operational level, organized crime has proven too adaptable and too resilient to be seriously affected. Instead, ground has been lost politically, societally, and even territorially to armed gangs, cartels, and other illicit structures. The result is a steady erosion of the rule of law, of norms of sovereignty, of governance, and of human security.

Two military personnel analyze satellite imagery on a computer monitor. One woman, wearing glasses and a fleece jacket, points to a section of the map displayed on the screen, while the other, in camouflage uniform, observes attentively. The setting appears to be a military or intelligence operations room equipped with computers and monitors.

July 15, 2025

Intelligence Reform at 20: How Joint Military Intelligence Lost Its Groove and How to Get It Back

In a 2015 Joint Force Quarterly article, several analysts from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) proposed a vision for how the Defense Intelligence Enterprise (DIE) would lead analytic transformation into what we now call “strategic competition.”

Book cover of The Insurgent's Dilemma: A Struggle to Prevail by David H. Ucko. The cover features a black-and-white historical photograph of a man standing on horseback, aiming a rifle, with others around him. The title is in bold red and blue text at the top, and the author's name appears at the bottom in white. The image conveys a theme of guerrilla warfare or armed rebellion

July 15, 2025

The Insurgent’s Dilemma

As an expert on insurgency in Latin America, my investigations of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) led me to observe an interesting dilemma: The FARC adopted methods that made it militarily strong yet undermined the popular base it was trying to mobilize.

Book cover of Space Warfare: Strategy, Principles and Policy (Second Edition) by John J. Klein. The cover features a cosmic scene showing Earth from space with illuminated city lights on the surface, and a large celestial body, possibly the Moon, rising above the Earth's horizon with a glowing light behind it. The background is filled with stars. The title and author’s name are prominently displayed below the image, with the Routledge logo in the bottom right corner.

July 15, 2025

Space Warfare

The second edition of Space Warfare: Strategy, Principles and Policy, John Klein’s landmark work on spacepower, is a substantial expansion and update to the original.

Book cover for Human, Machine, War: How the Mind-Tech Nexus Will Win Future Wars, edited by Nicholas Wright, Michael Miklaucic, and Todd Veazie. The image shows a pilot in a futuristic cockpit with glowing digital controls and displays, looking out at a landscape filled with advanced aircraft and holographic interfaces, suggesting a fusion of human and machine capabilities in warfare.

July 15, 2025

Human, Machine, War

The U.S. military is often criticized for emphasizing the application of exquisite and ever more expensive technology over other factors in its conception of future warfare.

B-21 Raider hovers above desert ground while conducting flight testing.

July 15, 2025

The Long Pivot: The Development of the Joint Warfighting Concept

The final withdrawal of troops from Iraq in December 2011 left most U.S. military leadership with the desire to shift their focus from counterinsurgency—which had achieved a position of intellectual dominance in the U.S. military during the war on terror in the late 2000s—back to conventional warfighting.

U.S. military personnel in camouflage uniforms work intently at computer stations in a command center. One service member points at a screen while others focus on their monitors. The environment suggests a high-tech operations or cyber defense setting.

July 15, 2025

A Conditions-Based Look at a Cyber Force

The 2022 U.S. National Security Strategy explicitly calls to “deter cyberattacks from state and non-state actors and will respond decisively with all appropriate tools of national power to hostile acts in cyberspace, including those that disrupt or degrade vital national functions or critical infrastructure.”

Medical professionals provide intensive care unit skills training. Three individuals, wearing face masks and protective clothing, including one in an Australian Air Force uniform with a red cross patch, work together using a manual resuscitator. The image is framed from a low angle, possibly through medical equipment, emphasizing the urgency and teamwork in a clinical setting.

July 15, 2025

Revive: Getting Medical Supplies and Expertise Right in Distributed Maritime Operations

In the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military medical enterprise achieved historical highs for saving lives and treating extreme injuries.

An F/A-18F Super Hornet from the "Fighting Redcocks" of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 22 launches from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68) in the Philippine Sea, April 22, 2025.

July 15, 2025

Increasing Operational Access: A Strategy for the Western Pacific

The geostrategic challenge posed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the Western Pacific is a contest that the United States must counter with the collective implementation of the instruments of national power in pursuit of improved operational access for the U.S. joint force.

SpaceX’s Starship SN8 prototype shortly after liftoff from Boca Chica, Texas.

July 15, 2025

T-BIRRD: Transforming the Future of Military and Humanitarian Logistics

The adage “amateurs discuss tactics, professionals discuss logistics” resonates more profoundly than ever in an age of rapid technological advancements and global challenges.

A woman is shown with facial recognition technology overlaying her face. On the left side of the image is a digital rendering of her smiling face with facial landmark points connected by lines, and on the right, the actual woman’s face is covered by a shaded facial map with similar landmarks. Blue rectangular frames highlight both the rendered and actual faces, indicating biometric analysis.

July 15, 2025

Finding Deepfakes: A Tabletop Exercise About AI, Decisionmaking, and Algorithmic Performance

Early in the scenario, participants discover algorithmic limitations in an artificial intelligence (AI)-based deepfake detection tool.

Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC

July 15, 2025

The Philosophical Foundations of the Civil-Military Relationship

It is not uncommon to hear the phrase “civil-military relations” used as shorthand for “subordination of the military to civilian authority.”

U.S. Air Force Special Tactics Operators assigned to the 24th Special Operations Wing, U.S. Army Special Forces Operators and Ukrainian Special Operations Forces execute a bi-lateral military free fall from a U.S. Air Force MC-130J Commando II assigned to the 352d Special Operations Wing near Vinnytsia, Ukraine

July 15, 2025

Building Strategic Lethality: Special Operations Models for Joint Force Learning and Leader Development

The resurgence of Great Power competition as a dominant feature of the international environment brings a measure of certainty to the joint force.

U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Raylin Carter, an aerial observer from Oklahoma with Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 362 (Reinforced), 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, participates in flight operations with AH-1Z Viper pilots during a strait transit, Jan. 9, 2023.

July 15, 2025

From High Seas to Highlands: Framing U.S. Defense Strategy With Southeast Asia’s Geography

The 2022 U.S. National Security Strategy prioritized competing with China, and this focus seems likely to continue with the new administration.

People’s Liberation Army Air Force J-10 fighter jet under Southern Theater Command fires rockets at simulated ground targets during live-fire flight training exercise.

July 15, 2025

Rightsizing the PLA Air Force: Revisiting an Analytic Framework

Modernization of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) has been an important priority for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) due to the strategic importance of airpower in modern military campaigns.

Supreme Court of the United States

July 15, 2025

Is Mobilization a Major Question?

It is early 2027, and Chinese provocations in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait continue to escalate, as they have since 2018.

Representatives from the 469th Combat Support Sustainment Battalion overseeing administration for mobilizing Soldiers calculate unit throughput during the Level 1 Mobilization Tabletop Exercise, July 16-17, 2022, Fort McCoy, Wis.

July 15, 2025

Executive Summary

Having been a part of joint professional military education (JPME) for nearly 20 years and editor of this journal—dedicated to the joint force and the concept of jointness—for a decade and a half, every day I see the power that our war colleges and this journal give to our students, our graduates, senior leaders of the joint force, the interagency community, our partners and allies, and the interested public around the globe.

Soldier moves across rope during Wolf Blitz 25 at Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany.

July 15, 2025

Joint Force Quarterly 118 (3rd Quarter 2025)

This issue of Joint Force Quarterly addresses key strategic, operational, and doctrinal questions shaping the future of the joint force.

"The German Defense-Industrial Zeitenwende: Implications for Transatlantic Security" by Brett Swaney, part of the Strategic Perspectives series (number 44) from the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS). The top section features the INSS logo and publication details. Below, a dramatic image shows industrial workers in heat-resistant suits working near a large foundry furnace with molten metal and sparks flying. The bottom includes the seal of the National Defense University and credits the INSS Center for Strategy and Military Power.

June 30, 2025

The German Defense-Industrial Zeitenwende: Implications for Transatlantic Security

The Zeitenwende, or “watershed moment”—announced by Chancellor Olaf Scholz in February 2022, days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—outlined a set of policy shifts, including the development of Germany’s first-ever National Security Strategy, that appeared to signal a greater role for Germany in the defense and security of Europe.

Cover page of the publication titled "China's Military Diplomacy" by Phillip C. Saunders and Melodie Ha, part of China Strategic Perspectives 19. The cover features a photograph of a formal meeting between Chinese military officials and foreign military representatives seated around a long conference table, with Chinese flags and a traditional landscape painting in the background. The bottom of the cover credits the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs, part of the Institute for National Strategic Studies at National Defense University.

June 23, 2025

China's Military Diplomacy

Chinese military diplomacy serves both strategic and operational goals. The main strategic goals are supporting Chinese foreign policy and shaping the strategic environment; operational goals include supporting People’s Liberation Army (PLA) modernization and collecting intelligence on foreign militaries. Military diplomacy is a tool for building foreign relations and an indicator of the quality of China’s bilateral relationships. When relations are strained, military-diplomatic engagements decrease or stop; when relations are good, engagements tend to increase.

Book cover titled "The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power" by Robert D. Kaplan, best-selling author of The Revenge of Geography. The background features a dark, stormy, abstract texture with gray and black tones, evoking a somber and contemplative mood. The title and author’s name are displayed in large, serif font across the center of the cover.

May 29, 2025

The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power

Robert D. Kaplan’s early 2023 book, The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power, is the latest of his nearly two dozen books over the past 35 years.