The main question after strikes on Syria: How does Russia respond?

For President Trump, choosing targets and launching cruise missiles to punish the Syrian regime for using chemical weapons this week may have been a relatively clear-cut decision. The big problem is what comes next. The military had been preparing options for a strike against President Bashar al-Assad since well before 2013, when the Syrian dictator […]

Chinese fighter jet sighting on artificial island in South China Sea

For the first time this year, a Chinese fighter jet has been spotted on the runway of an artificial island created by China in the South China Sea. The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI), which is part of the larger think-tank, Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, reports that a Chinese J-11 fighter was […]

Japan PM Abe says he, Trump agree North Korea missile launch a ‘serious threat’

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Thursday that he and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed in a telephone call that North Korea’s latest ballistic missile launch was “a dangerous provocation and a serious threat.” Abe also told reporters at his official residence that he was watching to see how China would respond to Pyongyang […]

NATO leader says Germany must increase military spending

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has joined calls for Germany to spend more money on its military. Stoltenberg insists the move is not to “make the U.S. happy,” but because “Europe is much closer to the crises and threats than the U.S., closer to Russia, closer to Syria and Iraq.” Diplomatic tensions between the United States […]

UN ambassador Nikki Haley alludes to US intervention in Syria after chemical attack

UN ambassador Nikki Haley seemed to hint at a possible US intervention in Syria on Wednesday during a UN Security Council meeting. During her address to the council, Haley harshly condemned the gas attack in Syria that killed dozens on Tuesday. She slammed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime as “barbaric” and said Tuesday’s attack had “all the hallmarks […]

Bannon removed from security council as McMaster asserts control

President Trump on Wednesday removed controversial White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon from the National Security Council, part of a sweeping staff reshuffling that elevated military, intelligence and Cabinet officials to greater roles on the council and left Bannon less directly involved in shaping the administration’s day-to-day national security policy. The restructuring reflects the […]

Proxies and guerillas: Delaying armageddon

Guerrilla warfare is nothing new. Neither is proxy war. China’s history of using indirect methods to erode and undermine their enemies without battle goes back to the earliest treatises on warfare written by the general T’ai Kung. (Sun Tzu’s admonition that supreme excellence is found in victory without fighting has nothing to do with pacifism […]

Iraqi investigation lays the blame on ISIS car bomb for March 17th civilian casualties

A coalition air strike in Mosul, Iraq on March 17th of this year created an international uproar when it was reported that the civilian casualties that resulted could exceed a hundred dead – prompting human rights groups and international opponents to levy serious criticisms toward the United States and its policies regarding when and where […]