October 1st began what could be one of the more interesting Chairships of the United Nations Security Council, with Russia taking over and being charged with a rather delicate balancing act: between conducting the numerous affairs expected to be covered by any standard Chair of the UNSC and deftly handling the ‘special’ relationship ...
Media outlets and government circles both cringe and squirm when the subject of Westerners leaving the West to go fight in Syria ... ... century, making its reach and scope far beyond anything the West could ever think plausible.
Against this backdrop, it is inexcusable that American agents find themselves at a loss to understand the appeal of that small percentage willing to abandon the ...
... has been unwise to ignore and the honest answers, based on previous American drone usage, probably carry some severe repercussions for American foreign and military policies:... ... 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... ... weapons. How does any country not feel that the U.S. is purposely compromising its own security and risking the lives of its people? Indeed, less than a year after the announcement...
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 ...
... 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 ... ... ease the far more standard approach to foreign policy formulation is to determine a country’s own national interests and security dilemma and craft an independent position that can best achieve optimal goals for said country.
And that, not ironically,...
... 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 ... ... intelligence that otherwise would not have been obtained. Well, alright, maybe I cannot prove that was actually the case, a direct causal link, but I am pretty sure SOME information EVENTUALLY came out because of the atmosphere created by that tor…I mean,...
...
Experts, whether academic or practitioner, need to move beyond ‘factor wars’ designed to show that one favorite causal factor is more important than another, concentrating instead on the combined and interactive effects of multiple factors.... ... promoting them.
The even bigger danger: as more schools have tried to develop degree programs focused on intelligence and national security, they have followed the military-friendly school model, poaching retired IC professionals to fill their programs with ...
... 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... ... 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... ... considered anathema to the Saudis and a potential danger to their sovereign national security interests in the Gulf and beyond. So while it is undoubtedly at least partially...
... 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 ...