In May this year the Carnegie Endowment for Peace assessed that “The security environment in Afghanistan is still precarious… the government remains heavily dependent on foreign aid… the combination of a weakening Afghan regime and an unchecked Taliban resurgence could lead to the catastrophic collapse of the Afghan government and state…” It is essential that a policy…
Poland announced that it will purchase $10.5 billion worth of anti-air Patriot missiles from the US. Technically, the official news event is that the State Department approved the possible sale and that Congress has 30 days to block it, but for all intents and purposes it’s widely considered that the deal will go through as…
The conviction of former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) reminds us of a brutal conflict in which atrocities were committed by all contending parties, including the West with a NATO air assault of 78 days’ duration in which hundreds of civilians were killed. As nobel-prize…
In theory, the global financial system is supposed to help every country gain. Mainstream teaching of international finance, trade and “foreign aid” (defined simply as any government credit) depicts an almost utopian system uplifting all countries, not stripping their assets and imposing austerity. The reality since World War I is that the United States has…
North Korea test fired a long-range missile today that appears to have the range to potentially hit most parts of continental United States, including its capital Washington DC. The test took place amid high tensions on the Korean Peninsula stoked by the Trump administration’s threats to use military force to destroy North Korea’s nuclear and…
According to news reports in the British press, Russian President Vladimir Putin has instructed Russia’s industries to prepare themselves to be able to make a quick switch to war production. Read about it here. Clearly, the Russian government would not make such an announcement unless it was convinced that the prospect of war with the…
