For the past eight decades Saudi Arabia has been careful. Using its vast oil wealth, it’s quietly spread its ultra-conservative brand of Islam throughout the Muslim world, secretly undermined secular regimes in its region, and prudently kept to the shadows while others did the fighting and dying. It was Saudi money that fueled the Mujahedeen in […]
It’s long been a mystery what President George H.W. Bush thought of President George W. Bush’s response to the Sept. 11 attacks and the subsequent invasion of Iraq. Bush 41, of course, had stopped short of ousting Saddam Hussein; Bush 43 had gone ahead and done just that. But what was said behind closed doors […]
Without Congressional permission, public debate, or any attempt to rally the American public’s support, President Obama has ordered U.S. ground troops to a war zone, his most flagrantly unconstitutional war-making since he unlawfully helped to overthrow Muammar al-Qaddafi. Read Here – The Atlantic
Pakistan has a nuclear weapons stockpile of 110 to 130 warheads, an increase from an estimated 90 to 110 warheads in 2011. With several delivery systems in development, four operating plutonium production reactors, and uranium facilities, the country’s stockpile will likely increase over the next 10 years, but by how much will depend on many […]
After deploying its ground and air assets across Syria, Russia entered into an agreement with the Shiite leaders of Iran and Iraq to coordinate military efforts. At the podium of the United Nations, Russian President Vladimir Putin looked as if he had pulled off a masterful power play in the Middle East. But Putin seems […]
Among today’s geopolitical risks, none is greater than the long arc of instability stretching from the Maghreb to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. With the Arab Spring an increasingly distant memory, the instability along this arc is deepening. Indeed, of the three initial Arab Spring countries, Libya has become a failed state, Egypt has returned to authoritarian […]
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 […]
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 […]
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
Stratfor Global Intelligence
looking beyond borders 