ML Cavanaugh
Los Angeles Times
United States
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Past articles by ML:
Opinion: Compensating kidney donors could save 100,000 lives immediately
There's an ethical way to pay donors for kidneys. The National Organ Transplant Act should be modified to allow it. → Read More
Op-Ed: Biden's new World War II national monument is actually honors 'a better peace'
Camp Hale, in the heart of the Rockies and straddling the Continental Divide, is where the 10th Mountain Division was founded. → Read More
Op-Ed: How does the war in Ukraine end?
Handicapping the outcome would amount to strategic malpractice. But we now know how the road to peace must be built. → Read More
Op-Ed: Russia's got 'shock and awe' down, but can Putin outlast Ukraine's resistance?
There's every reason to believe that the occupation of Ukraine would bleed the Russian state even more than the sanctions will. → Read More
Extreme Takeover, Russian Edition: How to Salami Slice Off Your Own Little Piece of Europe
Real estate’s expensive these days. It doesn’t matter where you are. But if you happen to be in one of the thirty-eight countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, home prices surged nearly 7 percent from 2019 to 2020. It was the fastest year-over-year growth in the past two decades. So why pay […] → Read More
Op-Ed: The cavalry saved me, and 18 years later, I was the cavalry — with a kidney donation
My 'non-directed' donation, to someone I don't know, saved one life and then some. → Read More
From Kabul to Kyiv: Strengthening Deterrence Amid Questions About American Resolve
Deterrence smells like tank exhaust and feels like an earthquake. Hundreds of armored vehicles rumbled over streets, thousands of troops marched in formation, and dozens of planes flew overhead as Ukrainians cheered during their Independence Day parade on August 24. Kyiv’s main boulevard—Khreshchatyk—filled to the Maidan as the city bathed in blue and yellow. Ukrainians […] → Read More
America the Undefended: The Flawed Assumption at the Heart of US Homeland Defense
Just before COVID-19 shuttered the world, I submitted an essay to a publication. The editor kindly dismissed the essay in large part over my inclusion of one historical fact about New Zealand. I had written, New Zealand hasn’t always been safe. Many have chosen to forget, but Aotearoa (the Maori term for the land today […] → Read More
A crooked Christmas tree for a crooked year
For one family, a bent Christmas tree serves as a metaphor for 2020, and points the way toward better days. → Read More
Op-Ed: A crooked Christmas tree for a crooked year
In Pike National Forest, the ponderosa pine seemed like a perfect metaphor for an awful year. We fell in love with it. → Read More
Op-Ed: Retired military leaders shouldn’t endorse presidential candidates. America is divided enough
More than 200 retired military officers have endorsed Trump. Another group will likely endorse Biden. But politicizing the armed forces helps no one. → Read More
The Strategist and the Virus Crisis
The world’s in crisis, and it’s time for strategists to earn their paychecks. It’s long been well-known that shifts and shocks produce opportunities that never would have existed otherwise. In car racing, this notion is reflected in the adage that you “win in the turns.” In politics, it goes by “never waste a crisis.” In … → Read More
War Books: Colin Gray’s Enduring Contribution
Colin Gray—who shaped strategic studies as much as anyone—died last week. And as difficult as it is to know he’s gone, he left us with a body of work that will live on in the minds of strategic practitioners for generations to come. I knew him well late in his life. In 2013 I had … → Read More
Deterrence, Fast and Slow
Two centuries ago, Napoleon embodied warfare’s changing character. This conqueror of Europe took advantage of new ways of thinking about warfare and its organization to bend Europe to his will. Of course, it wasn’t just the French emperor driving these changes, all by himself. But he’s become the focal point, his name attached to an … → Read More
Remember, Remember the Fifth of November: Radicalization and Insurgency Lessons from 1605
Once you’ve seen a person hung, drawn, and quartered, you’ve seen it enough. Mostly because you never want to think about it again. Yet the BBC/HBO miniseries Gunpowder, starring Kit Harrington (of Game of Thrones fame) as Robert Cateseby, draws us into a turn-of-the-seventeenth-century world from the victim’s view. And being on the wrong side … → Read More
The Military Shouldn’t Shave Its Numbers
Allowing beards could help bolster the ranks, and at no cost too. → Read More
What the Saudi Oilfield Strike Says about Modern Deterrence and Homeland Defense
A little over a week ago, two of Saudi Arabia’s major oil facilities, Aramco’s Abqaiq and Khurais, were hit by a series of strikes. A Houthi rebel group in Yemen (aligned with Iran) claimed responsibility for the attack. Although Iran continues to loudly deny accusations of its complicity from the United States and Saudi Arabia … → Read More
Dispatch from London: Field Notes on the State of the Special Relationship
Ernie Pyle in England is an old, dusty book, but one that still has a lot to say. Legendary war correspondent Ernie Pyle rushed to London during the Blitz to see the what the war looked like up close. From afar he’d read the bombings were “a trial of souls” and “a spiritual holocaust.” But … → Read More
How the Military Murders Meritocracy
“It is meritocracy in action,” President George H.W. Bush said of the military in a speech at West Point two weeks before leaving office. A few years later, I was a junior in high school when I first saw that clip of the former president touting the military’s high regard for merit. I believed in … → Read More
On the Perils of Placebo Strategy
A wartime military hospital in a combat zone is without morphine—a tragedy-in-waiting. Patients flow in, and with no other acceptable choice, the hospital’s leader, a colonel, tells his doctors to give placebo painkillers to incoming patients. “Here’s the formula,” he says. “If we believe it, they believe it. Otherwise they’re only taking sugar pills.” The … → Read More