... actions within the country as “barbaric”. Russia, never one to back down from a challenge, whether physical or verbal, responded rather forcefully through the personage of Maria Zakharova, the official spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Some of the highlights of her comments were rich in both imagery and dismissiveness: · When Samantha Power says something, then one wants to cry out in fear for the future of the world, considering this future is subject to these ...
Media outlets and government circles both cringe and squirm when the subject of Westerners leaving the West to go fight in Syria and Iraq with the Islamic State arises. While acquiring data and calculating accurate numbers wildly diverges from source ...
... evidence seems to indicate that might be the biggest mistaken assumption of all. China and Pakistan Most discussions of an immediate drone rival to the United States begin and usually end with China. At last count China supposedly had over 900 different ... ... militaries and sought the right technical/financial budgetary investment to develop their own programs. The basic principles of foreign affairs dictate that America could easily be sucked into regional conflicts where its interests figure prominently. It ...
There is no stronger example of the schizophrenic nature of American foreign policy toward Russia than comparing statements written in the formal National Security Strategy (NSS) of President Obama with actual testimony given by the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. In 2010 the NSS asserted that the U.S. would endeavor to ‘build a stable, substantive, multidimensional relationship with Russia, based on mutual interests.’ What’s more, the NSS called Russia a 21st century...
... numerous think tanks, both in the United States and Russia, which are deeply concerned about the state of Russian-American relations. Places like the Moscow Carnegie Centre or the Brookings Institution in Washington DC are regular go-to places for the media when seeking expert opinion and analysis. However, these centers of independent knowledge production have had a decided slant in allocating blame for the poor bilateral relations to the Russian side, with the explanations ranging from the fairly ...
... because in some ways this just highlights how dementedly odd Americans can be about their own people, country, government, and its foreign affairs. Let's just break this down in simple terms: we are talking about torture. There really cannot be surprise ... ... than the public incredulity on American torture techniques after 9/11 is the bogus semantics game being played out with the media now in the report’s aftermath. “Yes we did torture. No. Sorry. We did ‘EITs.’ Yes there were measures ...
Anyone who has worked through post-mortems on the Iraq war is familiar with the pitfalls associated with ‘groupthink’ and preconceptions. Indeed, it is perhaps one of the few modern examples of consensus across American partisanship. Some have argued such assumptions emerged from an administration not interested in counter-arguments and alternative information. Others pointed to embedded preconceptions within the Intelligence Community itself, making it impossible to jump off the analytical...
Common complaints within Intelligence Studies about the examination of foreign intelligence communities, especially those not residing in the west, run the gamut from being too historically driven to being completely ahistorical and thus nothing more than a simple organizational review of facts and details to being too often inevitably compared against a standard framework that uses either the United States or the United Kingdom as the backdrop. While these analyses are all important, they have failed...
Despite Hollywood romanticizing about Bonds and Bournes, one of the most prevalent forms of modern intelligence activity is also arguably the least emphasized: economic and industrial espionage. Aimed at garnering a financial and innovation advantage for countries seeking greater influence in a highly globalized world, this activity is not just about economic policy but serves as de facto proxy military rivalry: states maneuver to outperform, outwit, and ‘outstrategize’ across all spheres...
... disappoint all those who like to force 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 begun and initially run by a radical Shia ... ... drones are used in Yemen also tend to not know exactly who the strikes are aimed against. The only sustained message given in the media, coming from the government, is that America is lending weapons and logistical support to the Yemeni government against ...
