While most international organizations and foreign states have made attempts to explicitly fuse drones and targeted killing to already established norms, ethics, and rules of war, the United States has focused more on drones being something of a semi-covert tool of political means. In other words, drone war is not necessarily the exact same thing as conventional war. Once you blur the line on this basic fundamental categorization ...
The surrealism of the Ukrainian conflict continued last week, with the 28 members of the NATO alliance meeting in a cozy golf resort in Wales, United Kingdom, to discuss all of the supposedly egregious and disconcerting Russian maneuvers against Ukraine and demanding that Russia stop inviting further sanctions and pressure against itself, as British Prime Minister David Cameron emphasized at the summit. All of this is well and good, of course, part of the pomp and circumstance of international organizations...
... third parties to choose sides, thus exacerbating the crisis rather than defusing it. All of this because of poor words chosen on purpose by the ‘leader of the free world.’ So far this of course ignores the true point and purpose behind this war of words: President Obama is quite frankly flummoxed that President Putin has dismissively laughed off his positions, his entreaties, and his sanctions. This in real terms is nothing more than a schoolyard standoff, with the two popular boys standing ...
... happening in the north of that country since 2004, meaning there has basically been war in Yemen as long as there has been war in Iraq. Most of the world actually didn’t... ... black-and-white scenarios and ‘good guy hats’ and ‘bad guy hats’ into foreign affairs: BOTH sides were right in their descriptions. The Houthi movement was... ... with Yemeni affairs. The Yemen government has always made connections and leveled accusations of Iranian involvement and support to the Houthis, what with the common Shia...
So many American politicians upset with the Israelis for the attacks on Gaza. .....Using weapons largely obtained through the United States... .....hmmmmm.....does that mean America is responsible for the Gaza deaths?
President Putin is on the phone. He would like an answer to that question.
... border.’ Of course, for those of us who have followed this conflict for the past half year, we have had heard this accusation at least half a dozen times. Sometimes there has been evidence to partially support the claim. Sometimes the claim has ... ... show pro-Russian rebel forces weakening, the concern in the West is that they will try to hunker down for ‘extended urban warfare.’ The irony of course is that the force in Eastern Ukraine so far responsible for hitting civilian buildings, incurring ...
... from post-conflict Iraq over the last decade, most of us that deal in academia with international relations have long known that it is a tricky and messy path to move from... ... these ghosts innate to post-conflict society-building that last long after battles and wars have ended and leave indelible wounds that are easily poked and prodded by radicalist... ... on the radical Sunni fighter.
So welcome one and all to the wonderful craziness of foreign affairs in the modern multipolar world. Where dire enemies can quickly become...
... do this in the modern era is by killing people. And unfortunately, these casualties cannot be universally declared as enemy combatants or unlawful separatists, despite authorities in Kyiv wishing to push that very scenario to their own people and outward to the rest of us in the West. There have been many civilian casualties in eastern Ukraine over the past two months. These people simply had the unfortunate circumstance of being born and living in eastern Ukraine while having no connection whatsoever ...
... are the counter-arguments that emphasize China's and Russia’s own perception of inability to operate effectively against the United States in a conventional military confrontation. Indeed, many Chinese and Russian actors suggest cyber warfare is considered an obvious asymmetric instrument for balancing overwhelming US power. This latter argument is more compelling based on the stark military realities:
In overall spending, the United States invests between five and 10 times as ...
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The Antithesis matrix is not a predictor of where revolutions will happen. It is a reminder that societies embedded with multiple forms of social media have the potential to facilitate protest and civil disobedience if other factors on the ground warrant such behavior. It is also a reminder that those regimes where it is likely to have those motivating factors in place should not feel too overconfident in their ability to constrain or co-opt that social media-inspired mobilization: for the matrix ...