Damascus promised to destroy its entire arsenal, but the world’s chemical weapons watchdog suggests Assad may have squirreled some away. The world’s chemical weapons watchdog has repeatedly found traces of deadly nerve agents in laboratories that Syria insisted were never part of its chemical weapons program, raising new questions about whether Damascus has abided by…
While the granting of the use of the Iranian airbase in Hamedan to the Russian Aerospace forces was greeted with a lot of coverage, the recent departure from Hamedan of the Russian Tu-22M3 has attracted much less attention. The official Russian line on this was very neutral, as shown by this article in Sputnik. What…
North Korea fired a submarine-launched missile on Wednesday that flew about 500 km (311 miles) towards Japan, a show of improving technological capability for the isolated country that has conducted a series of launches in defiance of UN sanctions. Having the ability to fire a missile from a submarine could help North Korea evade a…
Among US analysts, war with China is no longer a taboo subject. RAND Corporation has now tackled the issue head on, publishing a lengthy analysis titled: ‘War with China: Thinking through the Unthinkable‘. So far, Paul Dibb and Mike Scrafton have provided two excellent assessments on what this means for Australia. This review evaluates RAND’s…
Since September 2001, the Pentagon has listed $40 billion worth of contracts for small arms intended for Afghanistan and Iraq, supplying 1.45 million guns to both countries while only accounting for 3 percent of them, says a new report by a British NGO. The London-based nonprofit Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) pored over 14 years’…
The US State Department has urged Americans in the Gaza Strip to leave the area “as soon as possible.” The announcement follows an escalation between Palestinian militants and the Israeli military over the weekend. “Gaza is under the control of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization. The security environment within Gaza and on its borders is…
