If you spend some time listening to reputable news shows all across the West you will start to notice several recurring ‘interpretations’ that explain all things Russian and Vladimir Putin. Rather than being enlightening about this complex country and perhaps even more complex leader, a series of increasingly incredulous ‘pop-psychology-analyses’ emerge instead. What follows are just five of the most commonly touted, with subsequent breakdowns for those who wish to read more...
Oh how fickle and strange ‘revolutions’ can be. Perhaps the Western academic world can be forgiven for its presumptuousness: after all, it has been nearly a generation since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and subsequent march of ‘democratic revolutions’ all over the globe. Well, actually, that is partially true. What has erupted all over the globe has largely been the triumph of democratic language: most regimes, whether they truly resemble democratic best practices or...
The complexity of India’s foreign policy and domestic power dilemmas has led to many Western states inaccurately judging the country’s approach to intelligence strategy. India’s intelligence challenges break down most effectively into the categories of domestic, regional, global, and emerging:
Indian domestic aspects of security:
Political fragmentation
Domestic insurgency
Indian regional aspects of security:
Neighbor dysfunction
New ethnic groups and movements
Secessionists...
This piece investigates the unique peculiarities of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Instead of being a Eurasian counterpart to the EU, an additional IO bridge between East and West, or even influenced by organizations like ASEAN, the SCO is dominated by micro-agendas that work in opposition to the theoretical literature explaining international organization purpose. Consequently, this particular IO is not only failing to become a nexus for globalization, democratic respect, or the fight...
While China has accepted human security as a new framework to study modern security challenges, it has been very busy trying to show how the implications of human security can be intrusive and even invasive of state sovereignty. Indicative of its confidence in projecting its own power outward across the global community, ‘non-traditional security’ includes not just people and populations but actual state security as well. Thus, China definitively inserts the rights and obligations of...
The debate over the applicability or non-applicability of international law to cyber war and the need for a cyber-specific international treaty might be irrelevant. Both camps, pro and con, argue about the need for cyber war to have the Law of Armed Conflict or some new international legal project properly cover the cyber domain. Both camps, however, misread how the structure of the cyber domain precludes strategically ‘piggy-backing’ on conventional norms of war. International laws on...
Though Syria has somewhat fallen off the media radar in the West because of a Malaysian plane crashing into the Indian Ocean and Crimean referendum consequences booming across Europe, an on-going conflict and crisis continues in a critically important region of the world. The problems in Syria remain poorly understood in the West across the board, but especially so when it comes to understanding Russian strategy on Syria vis-à-vis the United States. The common US position has simply dismissed...
Ecological dilemmas are moving beyond the realm of local environmental, health and human population studies to a more dangerous transnational aspect of globalization – intelligence operations. It is in opening up an interaction between environmental studies’ liberal domain and intelligence studies’ realist domain, projecting onto geopolitics, that ‘green security’ morphs into ‘ECOINT.’ While issues of water, energy, climate change, pollution, and deforestation...
American drone utilization is predicated upon the exclusive and exceptional ability of the United States to dictate terms to all other countries and to assume that such technical dictatorship will continue on in perpetuity, thereby eliminating the need to be concerned about the lack of uniformity, transparency, and logical consistency in international norms and ethical standards. A cursory investigation reveals just how presumptuous this position may be: 2013 seemed to be a stellar year for drone...
These are the days of garment-rending. At least, this is likely the lament privately voiced by many in the corridors of American and European power. Obama’s recent trip to Europe to shore up greater resolve and commitment for strengthening sanctions and isolating (or is it shaming?) Russia after the Crimea annexation (or is it secession?) was fairly uneventful. The fact of the matter is no one in Europe seems to be all that eager to truly push violent confrontation with Russia as long as Russia...
