The Donald Trump administration is planning to install a 30,000 strong armed “security force” in northern Syria along the borders with Turkey and Iraq. This presumably will tie together and support the remaining rag-tags of allegedly pro-democracy rebels and will fit in with existing and proposed U.S. bases. The maneuver is part of a broader…
Turkey is hoping for a quick victory in Afrin, but its soldiers and allied Syrian militiamen are facing counter-attacks by Kurdish forces on villages close to the border. The Kurds are reported to be readying reinforcements to join the battle from their bases in north east Syria where they have thousands of troops who until…
The US-Japanese missile deal is threatening to ruin the Russian-Japanese rapprochement. The island nation will be purchasing four SM-3 Block IIA anti-missile systems from the US for over $130 million in order to ostensibly defend against North Korea, though Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov openly suspected that the Americans might end up manning these units and…
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been left flailing as Washington desperately struggles to avoid being shut out of Syria by its own allies – following a crisis it helped provoke just days ago. For all the backpedaling and reframing the US officials are now doing, the chronology of the volte-face from Afrin to…
US Vice President Mike Pence will soon complete his four-day trip to the Middle East after visiting Egypt, Jordan and Israel. Pence, a devout evangelical Christian, was refused a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and a visit to Jesus’ birthplace in Bethlehem. After US President Donald Trump recognised Jerusalem as the capital of…
The National Defense Strategy unveiled by Pentagon chief James Mattis illustrates once again the revanchist Cold War mindset dominating Washington which is the inevitable expression of the US’ destructive addiction to militarism. More than a quarter century after the official end of the Cold War between the US and the former Soviet Union, Washington has…
