On 31 January 2009, a new conflict started in Somalia when the al-Qaeda branch in Somalia, al-Shabaab, decided to step up its military operations against the Somali Federal Government once again. This time the conflict was fueled by the unrest in the Middle East and an unannounced alliance with a new Somali radical Islamic group…
If national-security reporters are ever replaced by robots writing boilerplate stories, blame it on the fact that U.S. military policy has become so predictable and repetitive. Consider this New York Times story from 2011: “The Central Intelligence Agency is building a secret air base in the Middle East to serve as a launching pad for strikes in Yemen…
Conflicting reports have sprung up about a supposedly violent riot in the Eritrean capital of Asmara that allegedly took place late last week. All that’s known for certain is that a crowd gathered to unsuccessfully protest the closing down of an Islamist school over the weekend that had long flouted the government’s orders to secularize…
The Strategic Review on Defense and National Security for 2017, published in mid-October by the French Ministry of Defense, says a lot about the current state of international affairs. Firstly, it confirms that the system of international relations is deeply destabilized and harbors many risks and threats to international security. According to the authors of the report,…
`Take up the white man’s burden’ Rudyard Kipling, poet laureate of British imperialism The British Empire, which at the end of the 19th century ruled one quarter of the earth’s land surface, is long gone. But its robust successor and heir, the United States, has set about enlarging it. As I sought to explain in…
The details about US military presence in Africa happened to be a surprise even for members of the Congress. On October 4, four American soldiers were killed by militants linked to the Islamic State in Niger. The incident thrust the issue of US military presence in Africa into the spotlight and drew the attention of senators tasked with military…
