SECURITY, UNREST & WAR
Fragility of the modern Middle Eastern state system reflects a return to reliance on traditional societies. The minorities’ genie is out of the lantern throughout the entire greater Middle East.
SECURITY, UNREST & WAR
A Report on an Issue of Strategic Importance
PERSONNEL
GOVERNANCE & ELECTIONS
The Egyptian decision to remove Pres. Morsi was demonstrably no less “democratic” than the decision to remove Pres. Mubarak, but the latest events showed that the US could no longer determine outcomes in the region ...
STRATEGY & INTELLIGENCE
The Central African Republic has become a key player, working under Sudanese and Iranian direction, in jihadist action, geared to take advantage of the West’s declining influence in Western and Central Africa, even if it challenges the interests of Iran’s and Sudan’s traditional ally, the People’s…
DIPLOMACY, ALLIANCES & TREATIES
SECURITY, UNREST & WAR
The US White House, under President Barack Obama, was, by the end of May 2013, considering how to begin more direct engagement in the fighting inside Syria.
SECURITY, UNREST & WAR
The Biblical conversion of Paul to Christianity “on the road to Damascus” implied a turning point for the onetime antagonist of Christ. But now the road to Damascus is an unmarked and uncertain path, full of treachery and hidden motives ...
HARDWARE, WEAPONRY & TECHNOLOGY
RESOURCES
Napoleon said that an army marched on its stomach. But he lost most of his Grande Armée to disease, much of it the result of poor water and sanitation. The army marched on its stomach, but it was defeated by its water.
HARDWARE, WEAPONRY & TECHNOLOGY
STRATEGY & INTELLIGENCE
A butterfly flaps its wings at a nuclear test site in Punggye-ri in North Korea, and a political equation becomes a tidal wave in Tehran. It’s more complicated than that, but, yes, everything is related.