The rise of the Islamic State* has engendered a full-blown foreign policy crisis in Washington, DC. After more than three years of an extended “Mission Accomplished” victory lap following the death of Osama Bin Laden at the hands of U.S....
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Obama’s Big Fat Intel Scandal
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POTUS and the Latte Thing
I occasionally wade into U.S. domestic politics, usually to castigate excessive partisanship, often of a rigidly ideological cast, which I think is making Americans stupid. Customarily I get a lot of “but the other guys are the stupid ones” kind...
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What If Everything You Know About Terrorism Is Wrong?
One of the points I consistently try to get across in my writings and talks is that international terrorism is a good deal more complicated than most portrayals of it would have you believe. In many movies — and official...
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Erdoğan’s Turkey and Iranian Intelligence
Western concerns have mounted in recent years as Turkey, once a NATO stalwart, has drifted into an increasingly Islamist orientation, in both foreign and domestic policy, under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has been prime minister since 2003...
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Fixing Pentagon Intelligence
The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), that vast agglomeration of seventeen different hush-hush agencies, is an espionage behemoth without peer anywhere on earth in terms of budget and capabilities. Fully eight of those spy agencies, plus the lion’s share of the...
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Is Islamist Radicalism Rising in Serbia?
The Sandžak region of southwestern Serbia — what the Serbs call Raška — is home to most of the country’s Muslims, where they form about sixty percent of the population. They call themselves Bosniaks, just like their neighbors and co-religionists in Bosnia-Hercegovina,...
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The Isonzo and the Madness of War
Today Pope Francis denounced war as “madness” in a moving homily delivered at Redipuglia, at a vast monument to the dead of the First World War located in northeasternmost Italy, a stone’s throw from the Slovenian border. The pontiff did...
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Arctic Move: Russia Gets Its Own NORTHCOM
In an important sign of Russia’s increasing militarization of the Arctic, a development with troubling implications for several NATO countries, the Kremlin has announced the establishment of a new military command that will be responsible for the country’s north and...
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Time for a Counterattack on the Kremlin
It’s my pleasure to offer an insightful guest post from Johan Wiktorin, former Swedish Military Intelligence and a Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences. Follow him on Twitter: @forsvarsakerhet In Ukraine, the cease-fire is on the ropes with...
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Defeating the Islamic State: A How-To Guide
Last night President Barack Obama addressed the nation, explaining his plan to degrade and defeat the Islamic State. I liked much of what I heard, with the “better late than never” caveat, but I long ago grew skeptical of Obama’s...