If the United States disarms, will states considering developing nuclear weapons, give up their nuke dreams?
Disarmament’s Cause and Effect Relationship With Nonproliferation — or Lack Thereof
read more
War & Peace
To ISAF, Committing Atrocities Means Only Having to Say You’re Sorry
The definition of insanity is continuing air and drone strikes and expecting the results to be different each time.
Pivoting Toward the South China Sea?
The highly publicized dispute between China and the Philippines over the Scarborough Shoal in recent weeks has become yet another reminder of the ongoing tensions in the South China Sea. The upheaval began when a former U.S. coast guard ship refitted by the Philippines navy attempted to detain Chinese fishermen off the shoal.
Review: Eclipse of the Sunnis
The destruction of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003 created a power vacuum in the center of the Middle East. Nearly a decade of sectarian warfare and chaos ensued as militants from various communities fought mercilessly for control of Iraq. Ethnic, tribal, and religious divisions proved to be stronger than any unifying national Iraqi identity after the Ba’athist regime collapsed. Ultimately, the Shiites, who comprise 60-65 percent of Iraq’s population, won control of the state.
Will Stuxnet Start Another Arms Race?
As with nuclear weapons, cyber-defense lags behind cyberwarfare.
The NATO Afghanistan War and US-Russian Relations: Drugs, Oil, and War
I delivered the following remarks at an anti-NATO conference held in Moscow on May 15, 2012. I was the only North American speaker at an all-day conference, having been invited in connection with the appearance into Russian of my book Drugs, Oil, and War. As a former diplomat worried about peace I was happy to attend: as far as I can tell there may be less serious dialogue today between Russian and American intellectuals than there was at the height of the Cold War. Yet the danger of war involving the two leading nuclear powers has hardly disappeared.
Praying at the Church of St. Drone The President and His Apostles
Be assured of one thing: whichever candidate you choose at the polls in November, you aren’t just electing a president of the United States; you are also electing an assassin-in-chief. The last two presidents may not have been emperors or kings, but they — and the vast national-security structure that continues to be built-up and institutionalized around the presidential self — are certainly one of the nightmares the founding fathers of this country warned us against. They are one of the reasons those founders put significant war powers in the hands of Congress, which they knew would be a slow, recalcitrant, deliberative body.
How West Africa Helped Win World War II
In June 1940, when France fell to the German invasion, Italy seized the moment to attack British positions in Egypt, Kenya, and Sudan. By the end of March 1941, German Major-General Erwin Rommel’s mechanized troops had driven the British out of Libya and back into Egypt. In late spring, German and Italian aircraft were pummeling Britain’s sea stations in the Mediterranean, making it difficult if not impossible for supply ships to reach British forces in the Middle East. The remaining sea route by which to deliver supplies to Egypt was via Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, but that was a protracted journey of three to four months, a luxury of time that Britain simply did not have.
If the NTC Can’t Control Tripoli’s Airport. . .
The militia left the airport but the commander wasn’t released.
E-War
The Pentagon has traditionally presented cyber war as “their hackers” against “our defenders.” Out there, especially in China, a faceless horde of anonymous computer users are arrayed against the United States in an updated version of the “yellow peril.” In 2010, the Pentagon complained publicly for the first time about the Chinese government deploying civilian hackers to go after U.S. targets. These cyber attacks date back at least to 1999 when, after NATO bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Chinese hackers launched a slew of “denial of service” attacks that, among other results, shut down the White House website for three days.