Blog Posts

"The Senate on Thursday approved legislation to end the U.S. military’s support of the Saudi-led coalition in the war in Yemen, dealing a blow to the White House and a longtime strategic ally in the Middle East."

The Trump administration has unveiled a new strategy toward Africa, saying that U.S. interests and priorities must come first in all dealings with the continent.

"The U.S. is cutting 10 percent of its counterterrorism troops in Africa. Will China and Russia fill the gap?"

"There are reasons that coming wars will be more, not less, deadly. As weapons systems become increasingly accurate through satellite positioning, surgical strikes on military targets will seem more viable. But the blood-soaked history of “smart bombs” show that they have only been as smart as the intelligence used to deploy them."

"One year on, there appears to be little to show for U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s strategy for Afghanistan. The administration needs to implement this strategy in a way that creates an opportunity to end the war in Afghanistan while advancing core U.S. interests of defeating terrorism and demonstrating that a moderate Islamic state, aligned with the international community, can succeed."

"A technology company bidding for a Pentagon contract to store sensitive data has close partnerships with a firm linked to a sanctioned Russian oligarch, the BBC has learned."

Via Ariana News - "The outgoing American ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley says Pakistan continues to harbour terrorists that turn around and kill American soldiers, asserting that Washington should not give Islamabad even a dollar until it addresses the issue."

"Disinformation campaigns now emanating from Russia are of a different breed, said intelligence officials and analysts. Engineered for the social media age, they fling up swarms of falsehoods, concocted theories and red herrings, intended not so much to persuade people but to bewilder them."

The sixth annual Global Terrorism Index, published by the Sydney-based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), said terrorism deaths decreased globally by 27 percent in 2017, which is the third consecutive year of declining death tolls. Terrorism, however, remains a major threat to global peace, the report said. The report also showed that most terrorist attacks affect countries where political violence is rampant.

In places formerly controlled by IS, locals say they are more worried about their future than the past. Militants may have lost almost all of their territory, but attacks continue and residents fear the group will once again rekindle its campaign of all-out violence.

"Just over a year ago, four U.S. Special Forces soldiers, outgunned and ambushed, lost their lives in Niger fighting against members of the Islamic State."

"A year after it was routed from Iraq in a devastating war that left entire neighborhoods and towns in ruins, the Islamic State group is fighting to hang on to its last enclave in eastern Syria, engaging in deadly battles with U.S.-backed forces."

"Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was livid last month when he summoned top military officials to a video conference at the Pentagon to press them about an investigation into a 2017 ambush in Niger that killed four Americans on a Green Beret team. His anger, Pentagon officials said, came from seeing news reports that junior officers were being reprimanded for the botched Niger mission while the officers directly above them were not."

"President Trump is expected to choose the head of the Army to become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tapping a voluble and unconventional combat veteran to become America’s top military officer, individuals familiar with White House plans said on Friday."

Ashley Roque at Jane's 360 - "Nearly 11 months after the release of the new National Defense Strategy, it is still not clear if DoD leaders have a firm grip on what the shift means."

"An election complaints agency on Thursday invalidated all of the votes cast in Kabul Province in October’s parliamentary election, more than a million in all, over fraud allegations, pushing the country toward another political crisis just as a top American diplomat arrived to build momentum for peace talks with the Taliban."

Thomas Joscelyn at The Weekly Standard - "Trump was right in 2014 when he decried the Obama administration’s decision to exchange the Taliban Five for a traitor. Yet now his administration is negotiating with these very same killers."

Secretary of Defense James Mattis on Monday called for the international community to help end the war in Afghanistan and aid regional leaders in their efforts to bridge longstanding disagreements, saying that conflicts in Afghanistan have now gone on for “40 years.”

“The way the Army fights its future battles will require formations geared toward multi-domain operations and driven by real-world threats to U.S. global military superiority, according to an updated version of Army warfighting called Multi-Domain Operations 2028.”

"A fresh effort by the Trump administration this week to seek Pakistan’s help in arranging Afghan peace talks has produced no signs of progress but suggests that the chill between the longtime security allies may be starting to thaw."

"Afghanistan became the world’s deadliest terrorism hot spot in 2017, due to the escalation of the war and fewer incidents elsewhere, a new report said."

"Fifteen years after NATO took the lead on international security efforts in Afghanistan, the military alliance’s foreign ministers on Wednesday reaffirmed their commitment to stay the course despite mounting Afghan casualties and the slow pace of peace efforts."

“Now, after U.S. Special Operations Command has been entrenched in the Global War on Terror for going on two decades, Congress is calling on a Defense Department review of the entire organization, from its operational load to ― notably ― the state of its professionalism and ethics programs.”

"The United States should remember Islamic militants are playing the long game. Like three of his predecessors, U.S. President Donald Trump is now reportedly seeking Pakistan’s assistance in bringing Afghanistan’s Taliban to the negotiating table."

"The nominee to lead U.S. Special Operations Command told lawmakers Tuesday that the unrelenting pace of operations may force the elite organization to pass some missions off to conventional combat units."