Online Journal of Politics and Foreign Affairs
The United States is sending a warning to Iran not to play games with the Straits Of Hormuz: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is relying on a secret channel of communication to warn Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that closing the Strait of Hormuz is a “red line” that would provoke an American response, [...]
Apparently, people who work for the government are surfing the World Wide Web.
A new story out of Afghanistan is causing embarressment for the United States, and the Marine Corps: The U.S. Marine Corps is investigating a video that surfaced online today in which several Marines appear to urinate on the corpses of suspected Taliban fighters. The video, which is less than a minute long, appears to show [...]
A Washington Post fact check calls this “true but false.”
Michael Hastings has yet another credulous story attempting to smear the United States military.
The US intelligence community has more information at its disposal than ever. Unfortunately, it can’t efficiently process it and make the necessary connections.
We got another indication of how far out of step some of the Republican candidates for President are when it comes to public opinion during Saturday night’s debate when Rick Perry said he’d send troops back to Iraq: Rick Perry said he would send U.S. troops back to Iraq at a Republican presidential debate in [...]
Given the increasing tensions between the United States and Iran in the Straits of Hormuz, this is good to see: (CNN) — U.S. sailors from a carrier strike group whose recent presence in the Persian Gulf drew the ire of Iranian military officials have rescued 13 of the Middle Eastern country’s sailors from a hijacked [...]
Sarah Kiff makes an important point about one of the primary motivations behind the force restructuring that President Obama announced earlier this week at the Pentagon, basically we are nearing the point where the largest item in the military budget will be health care costs: About 9.6 million Americans are eligible for military health care [...]
President Obama’s Pentagon is planning for an unlikely war with China rather than the small wars America will inevitably fight.
Rick Santorum’s foreign policy positions are troubling in many respects.
If you watched Ron Paul’s victory speech last night, you likely caught the sight of Corporal Jesse Thorsen speaking on behalf of Paul, at Paul’s invitation. That invitation came about, apparently, because Thorsen’s interview on CNN earlier in the night, also in uniform, had been cut short for some reason. Here’s the video of Thorsen’s [...]
Despite the opposition of the SECDEF and Joint Chiefs, the latter expanded yesterday.
To Republicans, even thinking about engaging in diplomacy is enough to accuse the President of appeasement.
Many people seem to have a rather inappropriate view of their relationship to the President of the United States.
The first in the Navy’s new class of supercarriers is likely to end up costing a lot more than anticipated: The U.S. Navy has estimated a worst-case cost overrun of as much as $1.1 billion for the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, the service’s most expensive warship. The carrier is being built by Huntington [...]
For years, analysts have worried that Iraq’s tenuous hold on stability would collapse upon the withdrawal of US forces. We’re now watching it happen.
It didn’t take very long after the removal of American troops, for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki to begin trying to consolidate power: BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq’s Sunni vice president denied charges he ran a hit squad that killed government officials during the nation’s wave of sectarian bloodletting, accusing the Shiite-led government Tuesday of waging [...]
How can we know what happens next in North Korea when we didn’t even know Kim Jong-il had died?
82nd Airborne solider David Hickman was the 4474th American serviceman killed in Iraq. He should be the last.
Sometime around 5:00am Eastern time this morning, the final convoy of American troops crossed the border from Iraq to Kuwait: BAGHDAD — The last convoy of American troops to leave Iraq drove into Kuwait on Sunday morning, marking the end of the nearly nine-year war. The convoy’s departure, which included about 110 vehicles and 500 [...]
The Christian Science Monitor is out with a story that Iranian engineers are claiming that they were actually able to electronically take control of the RQ-170 drone captured last week: Iran guided the CIA’s “lost” stealth drone to an intact landing inside hostile territory by exploiting a navigational weakness long-known to the US military, according [...]
After 3,193 days and more than 4,000 lives, the American war in Iraq is officially at an end.
America’s greatest statesmen fear America’s political paralysis endangers our ability to lead the world.
Air Force personnel charged with transporting the bodies of American soldiers killed in action apparently finds dead American warriors funny.
Yesterday’s encounter between Jon Huntsman and Newt Gingrich was less than it could have been.
While unfortunate, the loss of an RQ-170 drone over Iran may not be the intelligence disaster some make it out to be.
Newt Gingrich’s foreign policy vision leaves much to be desired.
The scandal involving remains of American soldiers that were sent to landfills, which James Joyner wrote about last month, looks like it’s even worse on second glance: The Air Force dumped the incinerated partial remains of at least 274 American troops in a Virginia landfill, far more than the military had acknowledged, before halting the [...]
The costs of keeping the American war machine in Afghanistan rolling are pretty steep: Parachuting a barrel of fuel to a remote Afghan base takes sharp flying skills, steady nerves and flawless timing. It also costs a lot of money—up to $400 a gallon, by military estimates. But the Pentagon is stuck with the expense [...]
As part of the blowback from the accidental deaths of two dozen Pakistani soldiers in a NATO helicopter raid, the U.S. is leaving a base in Pakistan used in drone operations: In another sign of deteriorating relations with Pakistan, the United States is vacating an air base used to launch American drones in response to [...]
The Iranian military claims a U.S. drone was shot-down in western Iran, but all the United States is admitting is that plane is missing: A secret U.S. surveillance drone that went missing last week in western Afghanistan appears to have crashed in Iran, in what may be the first case of such an aircraft ending [...]
Don’t believe the fear mongering about the coming decreases in the growth of defense spending.
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 authorizes the President the authority to indefinitely detain persons, even American citizens arrested on American soil, without trial because they allegedly support the enemy.
It was just over two months ago that Sgt. Dakota Meyer stood in the East Room of the White House and received the Congressional Medal Of Honor from President Obama for his actions in Afghanistan. Now, he’s at the center of a very interesting legal dispute: Two months ago, Dakota Meyer was awarded the Medal [...]
Jon Huntsman has an editorial at CNN today on the subject of foreign and military policy that’s well worth your attention: America alone cannot police the world. We should increase burden-sharing for the protection of the global commons among countries that share our values and security objectives. Unfortunately, we are not the only democracy stuck [...]
Rick Perry wants a no-fly zone in Syria to prevent ground forces from harming civilians.
No doubt eager to shore up some semblance of foreign policy credibility, Rick Perry sat down with Charles Krauthammer and a few other Fox commentators yesterday and went further than any other Republican candidate when it comes to the uprising in Syria: In an appearance on Fox News Monday evening, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said [...]
Another sign that Newt Gingrich is now a first tier candidate, he’s hiring advisers: Former CIA director R. James Woolsey and Robert McFarlane, national security adviser to President Reagan, have joined Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign as members of his national security advisory team. (…) Other members of Gingrich’s advisory team are: David Wurmser, a senior [...]
With the Super Committee dead, 2012 is likely to see a fight over the defense cuts set to take place starting in 2013.
Thomas Ricks posts several recommendations for fixing the Army. Most of them are really, really stupid.
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the green beret as the official headgear of US Army Special Forces.
Herman Cain is not only proud of his foreign policy ignorance, he thinks it actually would make him a better President: “I’m not supposed to know anything about foreign policy. Just thought I’d throw that out,” he said, a dig at his critics. He defended his view that presidents and presidential candidates don’t need to [...]
The most disturbing part of Saturday’s debate came when most of the GOP candidates endorsed torture.
Last night, Herman Cain established that he simply isn’t prepared to be Commander in Chief.
The Republican candidates for President have been mostly silent about foreign policy issues. That changes starting tonight.
