Nice piece in the NYT at the end of September pointing out that the primary impact of the Arab Spring is that, in giving people chances to rule themselves and not be subject to dictators, Islamic activists find themselves splintering from within:
The debates are deep enough that many in the region believe that the most important
…
In 2007, I wrote the first definitive piece for Esquire on the kernel code for Africom: namely, the Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa. Back then, I described it as essentially a non-kinetic force, or no “trigger pullers.” But the piece led off with a quick summary of a special ops event that occurred in conjunction with …
Interesting WAPO piece today on advances in drone technology, the basic line being, we’re not all that far from drones doing their killing on their own. Story leads with a description of a successful test wherein drones communicate with each other and zero in on a colored object. You can easily do the extrapolation to …
Philip Stephens of the Financial Times recently pens a rather pessimistic piece on what Libya said about “Britain’s pretensions of influence.” Noting that the “campaign has stretched the armed forces to their limit,” he calls it a “last hurrah.” Now, the underlying tone of the piece is his criticism of PM David Cameron’s desire to …
Nice NYT analytic piece (already cited by Mark Thompson) by Helene Cooper and Steven Lee Myers regarding the downstream legacy of the US involvement in Libya to date. Starts off by saying the Obama White House seeks no doctrine definition because it fears being pulled into inappropriate situations, but, of course, that’s what a …
Good book on the observation of a religious fault line between the predominantly Muslim north and the predominantly Christian/other south of Africa:
“Dispatches From the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam” by Eliza Griswold.
Find the book here on Amazon.
Find the NYT review here.
The militant Islamic group of north Nigeria, known as Boko Harum, takes credit for the deadly car-bomb attack on a police station in the capital city of Abuja yesterday.
You might not think of West Africa as a likely site for radical Muslim violence, but the map on the left, which I use in my current “global futures” brief, may …
That phrase, with its powerful imagery, was often tossed at me following the publication of my 2004 book, The Pentagon’s New Map. In it, I argued that globalization’s expansion was, and would continue to be, the primary cause of unrest and conflict in the world, as connectivity – in all its forms – extended itself into the …
It’s interesting to think back to the start of the global economic crisis, when there were a lot of assumptions voiced about how a rising quotient of international tension would inevitably morph into more conflicts and thus more traditionally focused defense spending – i.e., great powers hedging against one another versus, say, …
That’s how I like to describe it. Whether we like it or not – much less admit it, every time we show up somewhere in tumult, the Chinese are already there or soon to show up. They will be making the big investments (like that $3-4B on a copper mine in Afghanistan) and they will be winning the big extractive contracts (like with both …
My man Mark Thompson puts up a cheeky post yesterday that I most heartily approved of. In it he speaks of cyberwar worrywarts and rightly fears that, as the terror war recedes in some priority, new little piggies approach the DoD trough. And as these cyberwar advocates find such a prime target in China, I would note that their …
This post was co-generated with Michael S. Smith II of the strategic advisory firm Kronos
As al-Qa’ida leaders the world over signal their intent to stay the course — challenging assumptions that the integrity of their network has been perhaps irreversibly jeopardized by the death of bin Laden — national security managers …
NYT story on how the Defense Department suffered a massive loss of data during a hack last March. Pentagon won’t say which country is to blame, which makes it either China or Russia. Why tell us now? The cleared version of the new US cyber strategy is being released, as Mark just noted.
Odds are it’s China, because that’s what a …