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 ... ... opposition groups: not just the fact that they suffered from horrific internal dissension, but that there were far too many radical Islamists mixed in liberally with so-called “moderate Arabs”. Because of the torturous hell that was the Chechen ...
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 to source, there is no doubt that ANY number simply makes countries like the United States uncomfortable and perplexed: in short, how could anyone want to leave the land of the free, the tolerant, the open, the just and go fight for a group that represents...
... Pakistan considered itself an ally to the U.S., fighting the same fight and challenging the same enemies as America, but was deemed unworthy of having the same advanced 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 of the China-Pakistan deal, the chief of Pakistan’s military proudly announced the deployment of the Burraq and Shahpar, the country’s first domestically ...
... adore principles of freedom and more conservative societies that not only don’t trust their own people, the leaders clearly don’t trust themselves either. In this particular context, the adaptations and reinterpretations made by particular radical Islamist groups that feel emboldened to kill civilians, to take incredible leaps of logic from the Koran to everyday decisions in real life, and to feel justified in forcing their interpretation of what is right and just and proper on to all others ...
So the United States Senate has released its report highlighting extreme and supposedly ‘abhorrent’ techniques used on terrorist targets after 9/11 to glean greater intelligence and information. Since that release there has been an orgy of oscillating condemnation/hand-wringing with rationalization/chest-beating, depending on whom you speak with. What strikes me more is the whole surreal ridiculousness of this false debate.
I say false debate because in some ways this just highlights...
... unintentional cognitive closure that damages intelligence analysis. My argument leans heavily in many ways on the fine work of Desch in Security Studies, who cogently brought to light over fifteen years ago how ultra-popular cultural theories were best utilized ... ...
Let’s take two very distinct ‘quick glance’ cases to illustrate all of this high-minded theory: the rise of radical Islam in the 1990s and the conflict in Eastern Ukraine today. There are TONS of scholarly, diplomatic, and journalistic ...
2014 is starting to look and sound and feel an awful lot like 1964. If you find yourself sitting at home wondering how 50 years could go by with so much historical change and global shifting and yet still end up basically back at the starting point of a quasi-Cold War between the United States and Russia, then please allow me to offer one slightly unique explanation as to how this has all come to pass: it’s my fault.
Well, alright, it’s not exactly my personal fault, for I am a member...
... Wahhabists running Saudi Arabia have long harbored resentment and competition with Shias running Iran. Any potential Shia emergence in the Gulf would most certainly be 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 true that Iran has been quietly trying to support the Houthis, you can equally bet the Saudis have taken every behind-the-scenes opportunity to work against the Houthis....
... news organizations and commentary shows on television you would think Iraq has already fallen completely into the hands of a radical Islamist terrorist group called ISIS. While it is true the military and strategic gains achieved by the group so far this ... ... 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 ...
