... for Russia's position in Ukraine; they have the support of a significant minority in Ukraine (even a majority in many of the parts in which they are operating). It’s not like all of Catholic Europe will be sending holy warriors in a crusade to fight Orthodox Russia’s attempts to annex the ethnic Russian, Orthodox Christian sections of Ukraine.
Which brings us to the Middle East, and Syria. Perhaps you’ve heard of a place called Afghanistan? Perhaps you are familiar with ...
... 1988—near Damascus. Unlike previous reports, these highlighted an attack that was both of an unprecedented scale for this conflict—it killed about 1,400 people—and confirmed publicly by several major Western governments (including that of the United States), Human Rights Watch, and later by the United Nations. As to who was the culprit, as I pointed out at the time, the signs clearly pointed to elements of the Assad regime carrying out the attack.
To Strike or Not to Strike, That Was the ...
... pressure to Israel beyond speeches and meetings. Even while the Obama Administration was trying shore up support for the talks, Israel announced the construction of 1,600 settlement housing units to be built on illegally occupied, disputed land in East Jerusalem (which was occupied in 1967 along with the West Bank and Gaza and which Israel has held in defiance of multiple binding resolutions of the United Nations Security Council over the decades since, beginning with the unanimously-agreed-upon Resolution ...
... has pretty much every Middle Eastern country (including American allies like Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia) as well as the United States in recent decades. Iran has also cooperated with the U.S. against the Talbian, al-Qaeda, and, most recently, against ... ... of Israeli lives; a fight with Iran, a powerful country with a powerful and well equipped military, would very likely cost thousands of Israeli lives and could see serious destruction all across Israel major cities. There is no guarantee that war would ...
By Brian E. Frydenborg, February 26th, 2015 (updated February 27th-28th)
Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse here
If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at @bfry1981)
One of the sad things about looking at current commentary about Russia, America, and the state of their relationship is the lack of measured and reasoned...
... Israeli Jews. I will not claim here that slave-descent African Americans in America are the equivalent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. But there are important similarities between the recent violence in Ferguson and current violence in Jerusalem, between historical unrest in America among blacks and historical unrest among Palestinians under Israeli control, that are worth exploring.
Black in America: A Brief History
Unless you are a more recent voluntary immigrant from Africa or ...
When It Comes to U.S. Relationships in the Middle East, Expect a Lot More Change in Coming Years and Decades.
By Brian E. Frydenborg, originally published January 5th, 2015
If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at @bfry1981)
2014 has certainly been a year of change. While an ostensible explanation for this would be the...
... people in northern Iraqi Kurdistan had been allies with the U.S. for decades and they were under threat. And world oil markets and production were being threatened. Finally, and certainly not least among the reasons, ISIS was murdering and abusing thousands in ways that even al-Qaeda thought went too far. Christians, Yazidis, Shiites, other minorities, and even Sunnis that were not subscribing to ISIS’s rule and extreme, murderous, barbaric interpretation of Islam have been and could still be ...
... Obama has just made a rather lackluster speech to build popular support for an unpopular war that is trending toward becoming popular, which means congressional support for more defense spending.
Nobody can even agree on the name of the group the United States coalition is fighting. Obama calls it “ISIL”. The New York Times and USA Today call it “ISIS.” Others just call it “IS.”
Is’s all part of what an essay by Brookings, who work in Qatar among the private citizens who fund ISIS, calls the the “new Middle East Cold War”
ISIS, ISIL,...
Before the FIFA World Cup was given “sports diplomacy” status by pundits, academics and some among its own leadership, the ice hockey rivalry between the Soviet Union, the United States and Canada that developed during the 1960 Winter Olympic Games at Squaw Valley, California proved that competitive athletics could capture the hearts and minds of adversaries who were threatening each other with nuclear war. Thanks to hockey,...
