War & Peace Archives - Page 294 of 673 - Foreign Policy In Focus

Missile Defense: Pie in the Sky

by Tom Sauer | Aug 12, 2010

What to do with a defense instrument that does not work in practice, agitates neighboring regional powers, and costs a lot of money in times of economic crisis? Common sense would suggest you abandon it. NATO, however, has a different idea. As part of the NATO Strategic Concept Review to be finalized at the end of November at the Lisbon Summit, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has proposed to adopt missile defense as a mission.

START Now

by Frida Berrigan | Aug 12, 2010

After 65 years, is there anything new to say about nuclear weapons? Their immense and almost incomprehensible destructive power is well known. Their tenacious endurance as the weapon, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, is an unavoidable fact as nine nations currently stockpile these world menacers. Their super-power allure to emerging states remains untarnished despite international treaties discouraging proliferation.

Where Does the Administration Get Off Calling Missile Defense “Proven”?

by Russ Wellen | Aug 12, 2010

Calling missile defense “proven” is not only a disingenuous move by the Obama administration, but a dangerous one.

A Unified Security Budget for the United States, FY 2011

by Lawrence Korb, Miriam Pemberton | Aug 12, 2010

Somewhere on the list of 2010 milestones should be this: It was the year that unified security budgeting won the endorsement of the U.S. executive branch’s top leadership. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton first made this endorsement in May, during the Q&A following her speech supporting the new National Security Strategy. Joining her in the endorsement, she said, were Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Adm. Mike Mullen, who both “wrote really strong letters to the House and Senate leadership and the appropriators and the budgeteers to make the case that we have to start looking at a national security budget.”

Serial Denialists and the State of Permanent War

by Gareth Porter | Aug 11, 2010

The refusal to face up to reality that the United States cannot succeed in Afghanistan, despite all evidence to the contrary, suggests that the political elite is desperately clinging to the American system of global military hegemony.

Whose Hands? Whose Blood? Killing Civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq

by Tom Engelhardt | Aug 10, 2010

Consider the following statement offered by Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a news conference last week. He was discussing Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks as well as the person who has taken responsibility for the vast, still ongoing Afghan War document dump at that site. “Mr. Assange,” Mullen commented, “can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family.”

The Curious Case of Omar Khadr

by M. Junaid Levesque-Alam | Aug 9, 2010

As a child, I sometimes browsed magazines in my doctor’s waiting room. One day while flipping through the pages I came across a photograph of a beaming young woman enjoying a picturesque view of a meadow. Underneath the photo in a small box was a message in black and white — issued, I thought, by a general who performed surgery in his spare time: “SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: Smoking by Pregnant Women May Result in Fetal Injury, Premature Birth, and Low Birth Weight.”

Whose Nukes Are You Calling Loose?

by Russ Wellen | Aug 9, 2010

The Russian nuclear weapon program has become synonymous with the term “loose nukes.” Might that apply to the United State as well?

Burma’s Ethnics: Score One for the Good, er, No-So-Bad Guys

by Russ Wellen | Aug 9, 2010

Successful recent ambushes by Karen forces against the army of Burma’s junta have breathed new life into the ethnic group’s independence movement.

60 Second Expert:The Srebrenica Massacre, after Fifteen Years

by David Gibbs, Anna Kalinina | Aug 6, 2010

This summer marks the fifteenth anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, where 8,000 Muslims, mostly men and boys, lost their lives in the single worst act of genocide in Europe since the 1940s. For many, the key lesson of Srebrenica is that the United States should have used military force against the Serbs sooner than they did. For others, Srebrenica is a painful reminder of the overstated value of military intervention as a solution to a humanitarian crisis which in reality, could have been avoided through diplomatic means.