Search: Foreign Affairs,War (34 materials)

 

Washington's Perceptions about Russian and Chinese Cyber Power

... 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 ...

01.06.2014

Spies Don't Tweet: Why Social Media is Only a Grassroots Tool

... 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 ...

21.05.2014

Putin-Mongers

... internal perception in Russia that the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was not just a historical and political transition to a new stage or new evolution for the state as a whole. Since the dissolution took place within the context of the Cold War and the ideological ‘war’ that was capitalism versus communism, with communism losing, most of the world felt the dissolution was also an ERASING of history. As in, nothing that took place from 1918 to 1991 was worth remembering, commemorating,...

14.05.2014

The Unintended Consequence of Maidan

... in long-term Ukrainian political affairs. Those responsible for leading the Maidan revolution were equally blind or presumptuous: while they are quick to lay blame on Russia now, it is obvious going back two months that they were completely caught unaware and off-guard that anyone on the outside would have words or actions for their behavior other than simple congratulatory phone calls. Obviously, this has proven to be a rather large mistake. A second aspect to play out from the Maidan revolution ...

10.05.2014

Reluctant Dragon: The Chinese Intelligence Condition

... 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 state, and the chief imperative of ...

03.05.2014

The Folly of Sanitized Cyber War

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 ...

25.04.2014

Cold War Residue in Syria

... of authoritarian regime change where radical Islam already exists. While the West has been comfortable viewing the Arab Spring as a groundswell of grassroots democratic ideals and sought to actively encourage and support its development, Russia has warily seen it as a potential ‘Great Islamist Revolution.’ Keeping in mind the new regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and Libya are not exactly blossoming with democratic institutions and stability and the Russian skepticism about Arab Spring ...

11.04.2014

Eco-Conflict and 'Green Spies'

... If China does seek to meet its water demand through the use of transboundary waterways, the country will have to deal with discontented neighbors that rely on these waterways for their own livelihoods. This may very well spark the beginnings of water wars in the region and is a prime example of where intelligence communities at the regional level will begin to reorient their local priorities. NILE RIVER BASIN (NRB) Over the last quarter century, many civil conflicts were fought within and among ...

07.04.2014

The Drone Tipping Point

... given the way the United States has developed weaponized drone technology, made legal discussions about norms and ethics opaque and aribtrary, and employed drone attacks in some cases outside the standard conventional rules of engagement and laws of war, the belief that no country – as it develops increasingly sophisticated and fully weaponized drone tech for itself – would ever have a desire or consideration to use it against America or American interests/targets is founded upon, quite ...

05.04.2014

Putin and the West: To Dance or Not to Dance?

... isn’t about how horrible it was for Russia to ‘annex’ Crimea (with Crimean consent) and do it basically without any violence. What is most horrible to these rather dull thinkers still stuck in and/or pining for the return of a Cold War environment full of purpose and dire circumstances is that they won’t get the chance to beat Russia back or deliver a diplomatic defeat of the same intensity that they feel they just received themselves. Thus, this situation CANNOT be just about ...

01.04.2014
 

Poll conducted

  1. In your opinion, what are the US long-term goals for Russia?
    U.S. wants to establish partnership relations with Russia on condition that it meets the U.S. requirements  
     33 (31%)
    U.S. wants to deter Russia’s military and political activity  
     30 (28%)
    U.S. wants to dissolve Russia  
     24 (22%)
    U.S. wants to establish alliance relations with Russia under the US conditions to rival China  
     21 (19%)
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