From WAR ROOM —Online Journal of the U.S. Army War College History is replete with alliances among nations who were otherwise competitive with each other. For example, World War II brought together the U.S., Britain, France, and the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. Today, strategic competition between the U.S. and China offers similar constraints against ordinary military-to-military cooperation. However, it is not hard to […]
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Trump White House Gets Serious about EMP Threat
From In Homeland Security An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is one of the biggest threats to our national security, with worst-case scenarios showing a doomsday scene right out of an apocalyptic movie. However, President Donald Trump’s important March 26 executive order is a huge step toward making America prepared for an EMP. EMPs are not a […]
How Maduro’s Actions Could Influence Would-Be Dictators
From WAR ROOM —Online Journal of the U.S. Army War College “Observers figure that if the US, Mexico, or Brazil are unwilling to intervene in [Venezuela], they are presumably even less likely to care about dictatorships in countries with fewer resources.” The extraconstitutional power grab may have domino effects for other caudillos who want to retain power on the continent, despite unhappy populaces. The international community’s […]
Essay: Geography as the Cornerstone to Foreign Policy
From Claremont Review of Books The Dutch-American writer Nicholas Spykman observed in 1944 that “geography is the most fundamental factor in foreign policy because it is the most permanent.” Many thinkers treated geography and geopolitics as passé fields of study after America’s victories in the Cold War and against Iraq in the early 1990s. Instead, many U.S. policymakers […]
India and Pakistan in Military Standoff
From In Homeland Security Pakistan and India are once again locked in a military standoff. This standoff was triggered on February 14 when militants belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammed launched a suicide attack against Indian paramilitary forces in Gundipora that killed 44 Indians. It was the deadliest attacked suffered by Indian forces in Kashmir in nearly 30 […]
Analysis: India-U.S. Military Cooperation Complicated
From WAR ROOM —Online Journal of the U.S. Army War College The American national security bureaucracy is in love with India. Designating India as a “major defense partner” in 2016, then-defense secretary Ashton Carter noted this would allow “the United States and India to cooperate…in a way that we do only with our closest and most long-standing allies.” India’s prominence in the latest National Security Strategy, the […]
Border Fence Won’t Stop Top U.S. Drug Threat
From In Homeland Security There is an ongoing opiate crisis in the United States. Addiction rates and overdose deaths have been skyrocketing over the past few years, and few in law enforcement or elected office know what to do about it. President Trump has acknowledged this crisis, and believes that expanding the existing border fence is the […]
Facing Challenges of Swift Army Expansion
From WAR ROOM —Online Journal of the U.S. Army War College Portions of this essay are excepted from “The Total Army,” an Elihu Root Study by the 2016 Carlisle Scholars Program at the U.S. Army War College. It is time for the Army to innovate in meeting the challenge of rapid expansion. Since the early 1980s, the U.S. Army has generally preferred to […]
Perspective: The Meaning Behind Border Agreement
From In Homeland Security After two weeks of heated negotiations and multiple stalls, negotiators in Congress appear to have reached a potential deal that would avoid another partial federal government shutdown on Feb. 15. According to CNN, the details of this tentative agreement include $1.375 billion for border fencing and about 40,520 beds for housing border detainees. […]
Afghanistan Exit Must Be Gradual, Measured
The best strategy for the United States withdrawing troops and resources from Afghanistan is one that is cautious, measured, and phased according to a Feb. 6 report from the Center for Strategic & International Studies. “Absent a successful peace negotiation, a U.S. force draw-down should be tied to Afghanistan meeting performance and governance benchmarks and […]