Adam Carrier

“The details you don’t give in your orders are as important as the ones you do. With all hands aligned to your goals, their cunning and initiative unleashed, you need only transparent sharing of information (What do I know? Who needs to know? Have I told them?) to orchestrate, as opposed to “control” or “synchronize,” a coordinated team.”
― Jim Mattis, Call Sign Chaos

“The problem with a foreign policy driven foremost by Never Again! is that it ignores limits and the availability of resources. World War II had the secondary, moral effect of saving what was left of European Jewry. Its primary goal and effect was to restore the European and Asian balance of power in a manner tolerable to the United States—something that the Nazis and the Japanese fascists had overturned.”
― Robert D. Kaplan, The Return of Marco Polo's World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-first Century

“Related lessons: Don’t go hunting ghosts, and don’t get too deep into a situation where your civilizational advantage is of little help.”
― Robert D. Kaplan, The Return of Marco Polo's World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-first Century

“America is learning an ironic truth of empire: You endure by not fighting every battle. In the first century A.D., Tiberius preserved Rome by not interfering in bloody internecine conflicts beyond its northern frontier. Instead, he practiced strategic patience as he watched the carnage. He understood the limits of Roman power.”
― Robert D. Kaplan, The Return of Marco Polo's World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-first Century