As with nuclear weapons, cyber-defense lags behind cyberwarfare.
Will Stuxnet Start Another Arms Race?
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North America
Law of the Sea Treaty Ratification Faces Unsettled Waters
Given the wide range of its supporters – everyone from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces to Greenpeace – one would think that Senate ratification of the 1982 Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) would be a slam dunk.
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.
The Brownshirts of the Arab Spring: Tunisia’s Salafists (Part 2)
Tunisia’s Arab Spring is looking more and more like the status quo disguised as a revolution.
The Failure of the Summit of the Americas VI
Dilma Rousseff interrupted the speech of Barack Obama. The President of the United States was speaking about the advances of various countries in Latin America, commenting that now there exists “a prosperous middle class” that represents a business opportunity for companies from his country. “Suddenly, they are interested in buying iPads, interested in buying planes from Boeing.” “Or Embraer,” interjected Dilma, yielding applause.
Quebec’s Student Revolt Goes Viral
The passage of an anti-protest bill finally attracted the attention of the United States.
The Price of Democracy
On health care and the military budget, no one can dispute that the United States spends exorbitantly. Whether we get our money’s worth is a matter of considerable debate. But there is one arena in which the United States is a world-class spender where you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who would argue that we get world-class results for our money. I’m talking about our electoral system, which has produced a legislature that attracted a historic low of 10 percent public approval this year, an administration still beholden to Wall Street and the military industrial complex, and (indirectly) a Supreme Court that tilts so far to the right that I’m surprised the building itself hasn’t fallen over.
When Old Hawks Retract Their Talons
It’s the rare retired general to whom the national security establishment will listen.
How to Forget on Memorial Day
It’s the saddest reading around: the little announcements that dribble out of the Pentagon every day or two — those terse, relatively uninformative death notices: rank; name; age; small town, suburb, or second-level city of origin; means of death (“small arms fire,” “improvised explosive device,” “the result of gunshot wounds inflicted by an individual wearing an Afghan National Army uniform,” or sometimes something vaguer like “while conducting combat operations,” “supporting Operation Enduring Freedom,” or simply no explanation at all); and the unit the dead soldier belonged to. They are seldom 100 words, even with the usual opening line: “The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.” Sometimes they include more than one death.