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   STANFORD, Calif.--(Business Wire)--The Hoover Institution launched today a new online journal, Strategika, whichassesses ongoing issues of national security in light of conflicts of the past.Strategika is published by Hoover`s newly formed Working Group on the Role ofMilitary History in Contemporary Conflict, which examines how knowledge of pastmilitary operations can influence contemporary public policy decisionsconcerning current conflicts. Led by Hoover`s Martin and Illie Anderson SeniorFellow Victor Davis Hanson, the working group brings together a diverse group ofdistinguished military historians, security analysts, current militarypractitioners, and veterans. Every few weeks, Strategika will offer two short opinion editorials on a currentcrisis or controversy in the news-sometimes offering quite differentconclusions-followed by a longer background historical essay. From time to time,members of our working group may provide additional commentary. The journal willconclude with suggestions for further study and discussion questions foreducators on issues that arise from the posted essays. An interactive poll willbe included with each new issue. The poll in this inaugural issue questionswhether the US should intervene in Syria. "Our board of scholars shares no ideological consensus other than a generalacknowledgment that human nature is largely unchanging," says Hanson."Consequently, the study of past wars can offer us tragic guidance about presentconflicts-a preferable approach to the more popular therapeutic assumption thatcontemporary efforts to ensure the perfectibility of mankind eventually willlead to eternal peace." The inaugural issue concerns the Syrian civil war: Should the United Statesintervene? Mark Moyar, senior fellow at the Joint Special Operations University,authors the background essay. Kimberly Kagan, founder and president of theInstitute for the Study of War, makes the case for intervention, and AngeloCodevilla, professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University,makes the argument against involvement. Hoover fellows Victor Davis Hanson andKiron Skinner provide additional commentary. Upcoming issues will address thethreat of a nuclear Iran and women serving in frontline combat units. The careful study of military history offers a way of analyzing modern war andpeace that is often underappreciated in this age of technological determinism.Yet the result leads to a more in-depth and dispassionate understanding ofcontemporary wars, one that explains how military successes and failures of thepast can be germane, sometimes misunderstood, or occasionally irrelevant in thecontext of the present. For a list of members of the Institution`s Working Group on the Role of MilitaryHistory in Contemporary Conflict, click here. For more information on the HooverInstitution, go to Hoover.org or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Scribd(keyword: Hoover Institution). Sign up here for email notification regarding newissues.  Office of Public AffairsHoover InstitutionStanford University650-723-0603 Copyright Business Wire 2013