Craig Singleton, FDD
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed major weaknesses in the international community's pandemic surveillance system and raised important questions about China's efforts to flout global health standards. At the center of these debates sits the World Health Organization (WHO), a specialized UN agency with a history of prioritizing political over technical considerations, often resulting in slow, ineffectual responses to outbreaks of deadly infectious diseases. These breakdowns... Читать дальше...
Carter Malkasian, Foreign Affairs
What a U.S. Withdrawal Means for Afghanistan
Thomas Gibbons-Neff, New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan — A female high school student in Kabul, Afghanistan's war-scarred capital, is worried that she won't be allowed to graduate. A pomegranate farmer in Kandahar wonders if his orchards will ever be clear of Taliban land mines. A government soldier in Ghazni fears he will never stop fighting.
Fazelminallah Qazizai, Newlines
An Afghan journalist visits Helmand, the land the U.S. failed to tame, as Afghans brace for postwar uncertainty.
Eli Lake, Bloomberg
Michael Rubin, 1945
On April 11, 2021, a blackout struck Iran's Natanz nuclear enrichment facility causing it severe damage a day after President Hassan Rouhani inaugurated new, more advanced centrifuges in contravention of Iran's nuclear agreements. Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif...
Eliot Cohen, The Atlantic
In important aspects of foreign and national-security policy, the Biden administration is really the Trump administration but with civilized manners. In no respect is that more true than in the president's announcement of a complete military withdrawal from Afghanistan by September 11 of this year, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that brought the United States to that country's stark mountains, fruitful valleys, and dusty towns.
George Beebe, Russia Matters
What kind of impact can Russia have on U.S. attempts to prevent large-scale or sustained terrorist attacks on the American homeland, a vital national interest for Washington? This primer assesses this question by reviewing the past history of U.S.-Russian interaction in the counterterrorism domain and looking ahead to near-term terrorism challenges that the U.S. may face, and Russia may influence, one way or another. Its key judgment is that although combatting... Читать дальше...
Anthony Cordesman, CSIS
So far, most of the debate over the JCPOA agreement has been a repetition of the original debates that took place while the current agreement was first being negotiated. The public side of this debate focused almost exclusively on preventing Iran from getting enough fissile uranium and plutonium for a nuclear weapon, and it made no effort to describe what kind of nuclear weapon or nuclear force posture would be involved, what delivery systems would be involved, or... Читать дальше...
Michael Rubin, National Interest
There is a dynamic in government where officials believe it sophisticated or useful to distort history or elide current tragedy for the sake of short-term diplomatic necessity.
Andrew Selee & Ariel G. Ruiz Soto , FA
sudden surge in migration across the U.S.-Mexican border has presented U.S. President Joe Biden with one of the toughest political challenges of his new administration. In the month of March alone, U.S. Border Patrol agents encountered 172,000 unauthorized migrants, primarily from Central America and Mexico. That was an increase of more than 70 percent from February and a 20-year high (although a fair number of these migrants may have sought to cross... Читать дальше...
Tobias Schneider, GPPI
In the early hours of 7 April 2017, a senior pilot and squadron commander of the Syrian Arab Air Force (SyAAF) prepared to take off from Shayrat Air Base in central Syria. This flight marked his third mission carrying lethal Sarin in just over two weeks. The pilot's precise routine set off alarm bells for the opposition activists who had tuned into Syria's radio towers in anticipation of the near daily air-raids:
Rina Bassist, Al Monitor
Israel's embassy in Amman yesterday congratulated Jordanians and King Abdullah II on the occasion of 100 years since the founding of their state. A post on the embassy's official Facebook page said, "The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, under the leadership of King Abdullah II, is a key player in the region and a key and strategic partner of Israel, promoting values of peace, moderation and tolerance. We wish The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan a prosperous future and will... Читать дальше...
Zachary Kallenborn, The Bulletin
In October 2016, the United States Strategic Capabilities Office launched 103 Perdix drones out of an F/A-18 Super Hornet. The drones communicated with one another using a distributed brain, assembling into a complex formation, traveling across a battlefield, and reforming into a new...
Susan Thornton, Lowy Interpreter
The future of the grouping might well be determined by China's behaviour.
Joseph Bosco, Taipei Times
US President Joe Biden's first news conference last month offered reassuring and concerning insights regarding his administration's approach to China.
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Sarosh Bana, ASPI Strategist
The transforming geopolitical landscape is driving preparations the world over for future wars that will be waged less with the bullet than with cyber technology, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, quantum computing, augmented and virtual reality, robotics, big-data analytics, unmanned drones, small-satellite constellations for 5G and 6G telecommunications, information acquisition, 3D printing, nanomaterials and human augmentation devices.
Douglas Macgregor, The American Conservative
Conflict with Russia may be inevitable. Kiev's strident threats to resolve the crisis in Eastern Ukrainewith force of arms, combined with Washington's refusal to acknowledge that Moscow actually has legitimate national security interests in Eastern Ukraine, makes...
Joseph Bosco, The Hill
The Biden administration continues to impress advocates of a strong, clear-eyed U.S.policy on China and Taiwan — and to anger Chinese communist officials who had planned for a return to the accommodationist policies of the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations.
