... West feel it was essential to launch new action? The Pentagon announced that Russian troops were ‘building up along the 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 seemed utterly baseless. But what has been universally consistent across all of the accusations of Russian troop build-up along ...
... will see ISIS as a risk to its foreign-policy strategy in the region but also perhaps as a direct threat to its own national security goals, given the open declarations from ISIS that it wants to create something akin to a de facto Sunni caliphate. It ... ... capable of truly challenging and taking 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 roommates and sworn adversaries suddenly ...
The interplay between Ukraine and Russia when it comes to gas geopolitics goes far beyond economic negotiations and development. It lies at the heart of what has been fairly inaccurate or uninformed media reporting in the West. This aspect of the conflict has been so poorly documented in the West, while being exhaustively reported in Russia, that it is time to provide some English language background to this underappreciated aspect still powering the conflict in negotiations between Ukraine and Russia...
Not that anyone would notice, but there is a disturbing and quite frankly depressing reality taking place in eastern Ukraine. While it is true the conflict that rages has been largely downplayed now and shoved off the media spotlight in the West, whatever coverage does emerge tends to be giving a relative free pass to Ukrainian police forces, special operation forces, and the military as they seek to reinstitute control over their national territory. At first glance this does not sound particularly...
... plaguing both the academic and intelligence communities that illustrate a perception challenge in the United States. Failure to overcome these problems will result in a failure to produce the necessary professionals and could compromise American national security for generations to come.
Problem 1: A Tradition of Suspicion
The relationship between academia and the intelligence community (IC) has always been problematic. This awkwardness is partly explained by a long-existing tension between traditionally ...
... chasm. The Chinese military took days to reach survivors after the devastating Sichuan earthquake in May of 2008, because it had so few helicopters and emergency vehicles.
With this state of military affairs, a Chinese and Russian perception of insecurity is not surprising. Even more logical is the Chinese and Russian resolve to evolve its asymmetric cyber capabilities: such attacks are usually inexpensive and exceedingly difficult to properly attribute. It is even more complex for states, where ...
The Intelligence Community, regardless of regime type, has famously always tried to co-opt and ultimately adopt advancements and evolutions in technology, especially in terms of media. Newspapers, radio, and television have long been appropriated in order to influence, massage, and outright manipulate messages and events important to the national interest. Often the question is not so much whether a country’s intelligence community engages in such activity but rather how explicit and open will...
... Democratic failure of 2004, when Vietnam war veteran, Purple Heart winner, and long-time Foreign Affairs Senate stalwart John Kerry lost to Bush. A Democrat could always criticize... ... tank in 1988). It seems clear that Democrats are always quick to overreact to such accusations and criticisms. They are even quicker to line up to show the chevrons symbolically... ... President Obama. But no states, in terms of their substantive foreign policy/national security interests, have radically altered their positions just because Obama said so...
... why the West won’t as well.
Putin is violating international law by interfering with Ukrainian affairs.
One of the most successful movie franchises in history, The Pirates of the Caribbean, is actually a fantastic teaching tool for this accusation. In the very first film, when Elizabeth was taken aboard the Black Pearl to face the dreaded Captain Barbosa, she was dismayed to learn he was not going to follow the so-called holy Pirate’s Code. To which, rather bemusedly, Captain Barbosa ...
... because the West and Kiev wants that question obliterated from the news doesn’t mean it is any less relevant to the actual people in the eastern half of the country.
And so here we sit. Eastern Ukraine remains unsettled. More casualties mount. Accusations fly about Russian subterfuge as authorities in Kiev violently struggle to preserve its larger territorial mass. How it will all play out, for better or for worse, is beyond anyone’s guess. But in the meantime I will wonder if this Ukrainian ...