Will Drones Push the Middle East Past the Point of No Return?
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Will Drones Push the Middle East Past the Point of No Return?

Unmanned aerial systems (UASs) or drones, both armed and unarmed, have altered how states and insurgents conduct warfare in the Middle East. The widespread proliferation of these weapons, combined with the range of capabilities they confer and their potential to alter the logic of escalation between states, may cause significant inter-state conflict to occur.  An…

Displaced by a US Invasion? Don’t Imagine You’ll Be Welcomed to Breathe Free

Displaced by a US Invasion? Don’t Imagine You’ll Be Welcomed to Breathe Free

In Afghanistan on 22 September at least 40 civilians attending a wedding party were killed in a raid conducted by Afghan soldiers and supported by US airstrikes. Four days earlier a US drone attack killed 30 civilians and injured 40 others while they were resting after collecting pine nuts in a forest. The insurgents in…

New Weapons and the New Tactics Which They Make Possible: Three Examples

New Weapons and the New Tactics Which They Make Possible: Three Examples

There are probably hundreds of books out there about the so-called “Revolution in Military Affairs”, some of them pretty good, most of them very bad, and a few very good ones (especially this one). For a rather dull and mainstream discussion, you can check the Wikipedia article on the RMA. Today I don’t really want…

How Yemen’s Houthis are Bringing Down a Goliath

How Yemen’s Houthis are Bringing Down a Goliath

“It is clear to us that Iran bears responsibility for this attack. There is no other plausible explanation. We support ongoing investigations to establish further details.” The statement above was not written by Franz Kafka. In fact, it was written by a Kafka derivative: Brussels-based European bureaucracy. The Merkel-Macron-Johnson trio, representing Germany, France and the UK, seems…

The Black Swan Is a Drone

The Black Swan Is a Drone

Predictably, the mainstream media is serving up heaping portions of reassurances that the drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities are no big deal and full production will resume shortly. The obvious goal is to placate global markets fearful of an energy disruption that could tip a precarious global economy into recession. The real impact isn’t…