Most of you have probably noticed I’ve been on something like an indefinite hiatus for the past few months. This is not permanent, but it will likely continue for at least large parts of this semester as I help my daughter through some health issues. In the meantime, it is customary when a permanent contributor is on an extended hiatus to recruit a replacement, and since Amanda and Betcy are more than covering the human rights/NGO/humanitarian law angle, I thought what better than to bring someone on who can focus on military issues. And who better to do that than a member of our active duty armed forces with a boots-on-the-ground perspective on the issues of the day.

As luck would have it, one of my brothers, Major Edward H. Carpenter, USMC has offered to provide a viewpoint on those – and world politics at large – from the unique vantage point of Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. Major Carpenter or “Nuncle Ed” as my children call him, has served as a counter-terrorism instructor in Saudi Arabia, a logistician in Japan and elsewhere, and a Foreign Area Officer in Indonesia. At present he is part of the command team of a Marine Aviation Logistics Squadron deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. When neither soldiering nor nuncling nor winning rugby matches, he writes: he has contributed articles to Current Intelligence and the Air Force Research Institute, and is the author of military and fantasy fiction as well.

With a MA in Security Studies from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Ed is well versed in IR theory but unlike us Ivory Tower types he grounds his theoretical ruminations in the everyday praxis of life in the Marine Corps. Please keep an eye out for his posts on military affairs and foreign policy in the next days, and give him a warm welcome. Edward asked me to remind one and all that any opinions expressed here are his own, and do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Marine Corps, the Department of Defense, or the United States Government.