Ideas
Moscow’s Moves in Syria Exploit Limits of Obama's Containment Strategy
Washington wants to shape the conflict from afar, but Russia is now shaping the facts on the ground.
Ideas
Military Experience Isn't Preparing Veterans for Private Success
It may be less about training and more about ethos. You already chose honor over money.
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More Action, Less Talk Needed On Chinese Tech Theft
While the US dithers, China is bleeding billions from our economy by stealing intellectual property. We have the solution.
Ideas
UN Peacekeeping Needs a Major Technological Update
The blue-helmeted troops often find themselves with far inferior gear than local fighters and even police.
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How China's Generals Already Gamed Xi's Meeting With Obama
China’s military hard-liners had a wish-list for today’s summit in Washington. Here’s what they wanted.
Ideas
We Never Thought Training Syrians Would Be Easy
When it comes to building capable foreign forces, one can have all the will, skill, money, and allies – but no guarantees.
Ideas
In Defense Of The ISIS Intelligence Whistleblowers
The entire profession is nervous about allegations that could mean top brass at a combatant command violated the sacrosanct professional code of intelligence.
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The Pope Is Lining Up to Ban Nuclear Weapons
Under Pope Francis the Catholic church is moving away from Cold War nuclear acceptance faster than Congress and the Obama administration.
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Give Troops The Pay and Benefits They Deserve
The Senate is all that stands between troops and the pay and benefits they actually deserve. Military families have done enough and the future force is at stake.
Ideas
How This US Navy Admiral Gives In to China Is Exactly What's Wrong With US Power Today
Authoritarian regimes are taking advantage of US passivity to gain territory, a phenomenon many thought extinct.
Ideas
Kabul's Mood Turns Toward Despair
From shopkeepers to university lecturers, the question of whether security is improving in an increasingly independent Afghanistan was met with just one response: Things are actually worse.
Ideas
Obama Needs an ISIS War Czar Before It’s Too Late
Obama’s ISIS fight looks more like Iraq in 2003 than in 2007, when military and civilian leaders were synced hip-to-hip.
Ideas
Want To Intervene in Syria? Answer These Questions First
Even as the cries for action rise, the mistakes of past interventions — in Libya, Iraq, and elsewhere — demand forethought.
Ideas
Today’s Terrorists Want To Inspire
How terrorism has—and hasn’t—changed, from the Algerian War to ISIS.
Ideas
What Drone-Strike Data from Yemen and Pakistan Says about the ISIS Fight
Washington's drone program has cost a great deal of blood and money with little to show for it. Absent a political strategy, the effort in Syria will likely fare no better.
Ideas
Why Xi Won’t Get What China Wants Most When He Meets Obama
The next summit is unlikely to give China the outcomes it wants most, because what it wants the United States is not prepared to give.
Ideas
The 'War of the Imagination' at the Heart of the Struggle Against ISIS
The true theater of war for the Islamic State is not on earth, but in the heavens, argues popular and controversial scholar of religion, Reza Aslan.
Ideas
The Islamic State's Recruiting Has Hit Britain Particularly Hard
British Muslims are caught in a pincer movement: with public and government suspicion on one side, and a seductive and supposedly empowering ideology on the other.
Ideas
Yemen's Refugee Crisis Is Spilling Over Into Somalia
There are now nearly 1.5 million displaced people in Yemen, though their plight is no less dire than those pouring out of the battlefields of Iraq and Syria.
Ideas