Hitting a century
100 articles published since retirement from the Army
In cricket, a game that I love, reaching 100 runs in a single innings is known as ‘getting a century’. It requires long hours of concentration and mental resilience. My readers in Australia, Great Britain, India, New Zealand and the other enlightened nations that play cricket will understand what I am talking about.
The reason I raise this sporting analogy is because I recently passed one hundred published articles and opinion pieces since my retirement from the Australian Army at the end of February 2022. Almost all of these have been about the war in Ukraine, although from time to time I have also commented on Australian national security issues, including the recently released Defence Strategic Review.
The vast majority of my articles have been published in the Sydney Morning Herald, Australia’s most widely-read daily newspaper. The count of my articles in the Sydney Morning Herald is 52, the largest number for any single publication I have written for. You can find all my articles here.
I have also written a large number of articles, just over 40, for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). It is a government-funded public broadcaster in Australia, and I normally publish one article each fortnight (although I was writing one per week for the first few months of the war in Ukraine). You can access my articles on the ABC website here. As a bonus, the link also includes many of the weekly TV interviews I have done with the ABC as well.
To round out the 100, I have published seven articles with Engelsberg Ideas. This is a terrific site, full of interesting and thought-provoking ideas. I have really enjoyed writing for Engelsberg, and will continue to do so when the subject is right. You can read my articles for Engelsberg Ideas here.
To be quite honest, while I had an idea that I wanted to write more once I retired from the Army, I never imagined that I would be producing quite so much. And I haven’t included articles for The Economist, Foreign Affairs or the publication of my recent book, White Sun War!
It had been a hectic 15 months, and I have learned much about writing for different audiences - and doing it quickly - over that time. I have benefited from the advice and guidance of some wonderful editors at the Sydney Morning Herald, the ABC and Engelsberg Ideas. Friends and family have been patience and have provided very frank feedback on my drafts! I trust the quality of my analysis and writing has improved over that time. I certainly aim for continuous improvement.
Anyway, I just wanted to celebrate this minor professional milestone. Feel free to browse my previous writings. It is a good way to assess how good (or otherwise) my assessments have been since the Russian large-scale invasion of Ukraine commenced last year.
Sir: from the US--the planning and strategic truths combined with sound reasoning that underlie all of your work fills a void in military professionalism successfully translated to literary audiences outside of state militaries. I pre-preordered your and look forward to reading it. Importantly, when the war in UKR ends--as all wars do, there’s a rumor of war much closer to your home which deserves extensive analytic development. So much work to do; so little time. Most Respectfully, COL Vince Alcazar, USAF, ret.
Sir, first my congratulations and second, some shameless sucking up.
So, I congratulate you on your century; quite honestly, I envy your new avocation. Just to ensure that I was using my words correctly, I researched the difference between vocation and avocation and, surprise!, I had it right. A vocation is work you do because you have to - your career as a soldier, perhaps - whereas an avocation is what you do for pleasure, not pay. That is not to say that you write for free - I certainly hope not - but it is obvious from it's quality that you do enjoy writing. Very clearly, your writing has been well researched and is very clearly expressed; I am terrifically happy to have subscribed to your prior Substack and now to this updated version of that product.
That was the first item; now for the second. Today I finished reading White Sun War and, quite honestly, I was terrifically impressed by the book. I am of an age (I also am retired, but am "senior" to you) where I have read many new authors. One that comes to mind is Tom Clancy; not for his later thrillers - although I did enjoy them as well - but for his first great success, The Hunt For Red October. It was said at the time of it's publication that the US Navy was upset at all of the technical detail in Clancy's book and wondered about the security breach that allowed him the information. Of course, the information was all open source and Clancy simply took the time and trouble to seek it out. [Truthfully, I always thought that claim was simply publisher's hype.]
I found your White Sun War to be full of technical information, some of which (I presume) is a bit (only a bit) "creative" but it is my thought that far, far and away the majority of the technical material actually exists currently or is a very logical and planned extension of current technology.
In any event, I was terrifically taken with the book.
End of shameless sucking up.
Again, congratulations on your century. [Even in Canada where cricket is a very, very minor sport I am aware of the significance of a century in cricket.]