Afghanistan And The Next US President

It now appears that — barring some truly exceptional circumstances — Barack Obama has made his last decision regarding Afghanistan as president of the United States. The current force of about 10,000 U.S. service members will remain through the end of 2016, when it will quickly draw down to a force of about 5,500. The […]

Rate this:

War Is Exposing Cracks In Russian Society

Having discovered that the use of force in another country does not necessarily lead to wider sanctions and deepening isolation, Russia has nevertheless learned that military operations of that sort involve a tremendous number of recurring, growing and unpredictable risks. And the main risks in this war might not be military, diplomatic or even macroeconomic in nature. As happened 100 years ago, war does not always rally the people […]

Rate this:

Russia Is Entering A Long And Pointless War

It is worth asking whether Russia achieved the strategic goals that the Russian president announced at the UN. That is: Did Moscow’s unannounced and uncooperative air strikes in any way help lay the foundation for the broadest possible anti-terrorism coalition? Judging by the reaction of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, the answer is “no.” What’s more, it did nothing to end Russia’s international isolation. Read Here – Moscow […]

Rate this:

Iran Is Double-Edged Sword For Russia

From the political point of view, strengthening contacts with Iran enables Russia to, first of all, demonstrate its well-known solidarity with countries that have found themselves out of favor with the West at one time or another; second, assert the right of peoples to choose their own special path of national development; and third, defend Syria’s “sovereignty,” thereby showing its opponents that there are forces capable […]

Rate this:

Bashar al-Assad And The Devil’s Endgame

ISIS is murdering and enslaving across Syria and Iraq. Russia is deploying dozens of aircraft to support the regime in Damascus. Huddled masses have been tempest-tossed into Europe. At the eye of the storm, Bashar al-Assad is pursuing a cynical, brutal, and risky strategy to cling to power. Read Here – The Atlantic

Rate this:

Return Of The King

Whether its central claim is an inscrutable dream of religiously legitimated sovereignty or a malleable delusion, the appeal of ISIS is easily abstracted from motives available to outsiders. It is, in the incisive words of the New York artist Molly Crabapple, a ‘cosplay Caliphate’, a dress-up festival of blood-soaked nostalgia whose very pretensions to antiquity […]

Rate this:

The Islamic State’s First Year

The fall of Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, was both the culmination of a blitzkrieg campaign IS had started in winter 2013 in Iraq and in Syria, seizing the city of Raqqa in May of that year, and the prelude to a wider strategic phase to deepen and expand the group’s dominance. Over the […]

Rate this:

Forgetting Afghanistan

Afghanistan was once the good war. Seeking righteous vengeance for 9/11, nearly 90 percent of the American public initially backed a crusade to topple the Taliban regime in Kabul and purge the country of al-Qaeda. For years, Barack Obama described Afghanistan as the center of gravity in the struggle against international terrorism. In 2009, Obama […]

Rate this: