Outside the Beltway

Establishing a no-fly zone in Libya won’t stop the Civil War, and it’s likely to draw the United States further into a conflict that it needs to stay out of.

Intervening to “help” the Libyan revolt is very tempting, but it’s a temptation we ought to resist.

The situation in Libya continues to be grim as Gaddafi lashes out while power slips through his fingers.

Nine years into a war that seems to be without end, it’s time to declare victory and go home.

It’s a Republican meme that President Obama has “apologized” for America repeatedly. The one problem with the meme is that there aren’t any facts to support it.

Calls are coming from both sides of the aisle for the U.S. to do “something” about the situation in Libya. It would be better if we didn’t get involved.

The ongoing saga of piracy off the coast of Somali is about to get Americans’ attention again, as a yacht containing four U.S. citizens has been hijacked.

Stephanie Guttman, author of something called The Kinder, Gentler Military, takes to NRO to tell us how easy it is to cut the Defense budget. She inadvertently does just the opposite.

Does NATO membership serve a strategic purpose?

Joe Ratzinger, the future pope, lobbied hard against Turkey’s membership in the EU.

Sarah Palin has taken to her Facebook page to raise “Serious Questions about the Obama Administration’s Incompetence in the WikiLeaks Fiasco.” They’re more interesting than I’d expected.

A new round of Wikileaks documents is out, and it opens the door on diplomatic correspondence previously hidden from the public.

President Obama’s response to the outrage that has accompanied new TSA screening procedures at America’s airports is incredibly non-responsive.

NATO-Russia cooperation on missile defense is a welcome step forward.

The long awaited new strategic concept, launching what has been termed “NATO 3.0,” has been published under the banner “Active Engagement, Modern Defense.”

Afghans in two crucial southern provinces are almost completely unaware of the September 11 attacks on the United States and don’t know they precipitated the foreign intervention now in its 10th year, a new report showed on Friday.

Hamid Karazi says that the United States needs to reduce it’s military presence in his country. Perhaps we should listen to him.

According to reports, the Obama Administration is set to abandon the July 2011 withdrawal deadline that was set earlier this year.

Ivo Daalder, the US Ambassador to NATO, says that we are “seeing the corner and can peek around it in Afghanistan” and that a province-by-province handover of security responsibilities to the host government will “start in the first half of 2011.” But the final handover is not expected until “the end of 2014” and NATO forces will remain in an advisory capacity indefinitely. “The process will take years,” he emphasized.

World Politics Review has published a special issue on “NATO’s Identity Crisis” ahead of next month’s Lisbon summit and the unveiling of a new Strategic Concept. I contributed the lead essay, “NATO in an Age of Austerity.”

We already knew that Hamid Karzai was corrupt, now we know he takes bribes from the Iranians.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates acknowledged in a newly released letter that the Wikileaks Afghan War document dump wasn’t as damaging as the Pentagon initially claimed. So what was the uproar all about?

Daniel Larison’s “The Case Against NATO” makes compelling reading. In my New Atlanticist post “The Case Against the Case Against NATO,” I explain why it’s wrong.

While Americans concern themselves with domestic politics and mid-term elections, the situation in Pakistan seems to continue to get worse.

Pakistan yesterday blocked NATO’s primary supply line into Afghanistan in retaliation for an air strike that killed three Pakistani paramilitaries. Are the two countries truly allies?

Support for the Tea Party is at record levels but that movement does not have a coherent policy platform. Can the energy be harnessed to good use?

Yesterday’s NATO Beyond Afghanistan conference was a depressing day for fans of the most successful military alliance in history.

Regular readers know that I’ve long thought we’ve achieved all we’re going to in Afghanistan. But that doesn’t mean that our presence is therefore motivated by secret motives.

The media is now starting to look at it’s own role in the whole Koran burning story, but the truth is that there really wasn’t any way they could’ve ignored the story.

Lost amidst the welcome news of British-French cooperation on military cost-sharing in some tough talk from their ministers of defense on NATO.

Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has proclaimed, “The most significant threat to our national security is our debt.” Is he right?

Epic flooding in Pakistan is a humanitarian crisis which dwarfs the combined devastation of the 2004 Asian tsunami, the earthquake in Pakistan in 2005, and the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Why aren’t we paying attention?

The United States has promised $150 million in aid to flood-ravaged Pakistan. Should we have?

Either Obama’s Defense Secretary and commanding general are conspiring to undermine his July 11 deadline for withdrawal from Afghanistan or that they’re carrying out his intent.

Every new report out of Iran seems to bring us closer to the moment when Israel has decided it’s heard enough. What happens if that day actually happens ?

Holland became the first NATO member to pull out of Afghanistan. How long before the rest follow?

Three different ways they’re viewing the leaked “war logs” across the Pond.

The scumbags at WikiLeaks have published a huge trove of classified documents provided to them by one or more traitors in our military.

Daniel Schorr’s journalism career ended far too early, lasting a mere eighty-one years.

Now we’re doubling down on the Karzai government.