Noted for May 19, 2013 http://t.co/qaFSjLS9zJ
18 minutes ago
Category Archive: Defense
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Stop Paying the Egyptian Ransom
It is winter again in Cairo. Amid continued civil disobedience, backsliding by the military “transitional” government and souring attitudes, people rightly took time this week to celebrate the rising that ejected Hosni Mubarak’s despotic regime a year ago. But the country is in crisis. While political activists and military men debate the direction of the [...]
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Silver Linings, Golden Opportunities in US Defense Cuts
Artist’s concept of CVN-78, a new class of aircraft carriers. Photograph by U.S. Navy. Gloom and doom from one side, glee and visions of sugar plum fairies from the other: As usual, the Pushmi-pullyu beast that is America’s political elite has it exactly wrong as it weighs the dire (or wondrous) implications of “Draconian” cuts [...]
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Pentagon’s ‘War Over Future Wars’ Is Underway
As Republicans and Democrats engage in high stakes horse trading on the congressional deficit reduction “super-committee,” the generals and admirals are circling their wagons, preparing detailed arguments on how their particular specialty is the one capability 21st Century America cannot live without. The “super-committee” – officially the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction – emerged [...]
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Keeping Terrorism at Bay
References to GWOT – as the Rumsfeld-era Pentagon liked to refer to its Global War on Terror – today carry certain freight. Firstly, the misapplication of military force and grand strategy that is the primary foreign policy legacy of the Bush administration has discredited the phrase. With the exception of military and intelligence officials who [...]
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Drones on the Radar
After a few years of being one of the few people writing about the potential ethical implications of drone warfare, I’m happy to say that a serious scholarship is blossoming. Twice in the past month, The New York Review of Books, that gigantic, guilt-inducing pleasure to read, has done substantive reviews of recent work on [...]
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A Guide to the Crisis That Is Iran
When we imagine the problems that will vex the world in the coming decades, often there is an abstract quality to the exercise. What posture will a Chinese superpower adopt in Asia. Will Russia, post-Putin, take another shot at democratic reforms? Can Germany continue to defy economic gravity? Climate change is the classic in this [...]
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Taiwan: Time to Deal From a Position of (Relative) Strength
The egg-shell walk of American diplomats over the sale of what amount to spare parts for a portion of Taiwan’s air force should put to rest any question about where the island, regarded by China as a renegade province, is heading. As recently as 2007, American carriers hovered nearby and the RAND Corporation predicted in [...]
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U.S. Drawdown in Iraq and Afghanistan Masks Another in Europe
With the focus of the 9/11 events on the U.S. this weekend, it is also worth a look at how the U.S. military is recalibrating after 10 years of war. In Europe, the great withdrawal that never happened when Hitler was defeated is finally underway. The story below was published in GlobalPost.com. NEW YORK — [...]
