On the evening of 4 August, there were two explosions in Beirut’s port area. The first was relatively small and was caused by ignited fireworks, which the fire brigade went to extinguish. Enormous clouds of smoke attracted a large number of onlookers, who caught the second explosion on camera. This one was like the detonation…
On 21 July, the US Air Force published its Arctic Strategy. The release of the document itself is a first, since the Arctic has never been a separate area of focus for the US Air Force. The Defense Department’s 2019 Arctic Strategy contained a vision of the Arctic as a whole, and it talked about…
I recently spent 12 months in Kabul as an adviser on policing. After seventeen years of NATO’s mission to bring peace and security, it’s sad to say that the country’s probably in a worse state than ever. Our terrible failure in Afghanistan, with lives wasted despite billions spent, has produced only one winner: organised crime….
The continued presence of tens of thousands of American military personnel in Europe seventy-five years after the end of the Second World War is rarely questioned either by politicians or the mainstream media. Currently there is little recollection of how, after the war ended, soldiers from Britain, France, the U.S. and the Soviet Union occupied…
One noisy theme in the Donald Trump Disruption Show in an otherwise chaotic assemblage of messages has remained fairly constant: winding back US troop commitments. The US has fought its complement of wars, bloodied and bloodying. Time to up stakes and head home. It was a message that sold in 2016 across the aisles of…
According to many observers, the Libyan conflict is nearing its climax due to the number of players it now involves, a turning point which will be nothing short of crossing the Rubicon. Tensions are mounting in Libya today, and not only along the front line where the eastern and western centers of power clash, but…
