Japan has announced plans to increase joint military activities with allies in South East Asia to counter Chinese dominance around disputed reefs in the East China and South China Seas. This includes deeper engagement with the US Navy’s “training cruises.” Tensions in the region have been on the rise after Beijing laid claim to the…
“Secret cables and reports by the U.S., Saudi and Israeli intelligence agencies indicate that the moment Assad rejected the Qatari pipeline, military and intelligence planners quickly arrived at the consensus that fomenting a Sunni uprising in Syria to overthrow the uncooperative Bashar Assad was a feasible path to achieving the shared objective of completing the…
The bizarrely intertwined events of the Syrian conflict are suddenly playing out in a less than logical manner, but in fact this big reversal for the Kurds – who make up about 10% of Syria’s population – is no surprise. Although they’ve not lost a single battle and have made real gains in their fight…
The world is by now accustomed to the provocative antics of US strike aircraft, drones, electronic warfare planes and nuclear-armed navy ships that zoom and roar and splash aggressively in so many regions of our conflict-ridden globe, but the latest little prank seemed designed to attract hilarity and resentment in equal measure. The wind-up involved…
The U.S. is one of the most depressed countries in the world, according to the World Health Organization. In terms of quality years of life lost due to disability or death – a widely adopted public health metric that measures the overall burden of disease – the U.S. ranked third for unipolar depressive disorders, just…
The Joint Sea-2016 started this Monday; that’s the fifth annual China-Russia naval drill, featuring stalwarts from both navies in action at the eastern waters of Zhanjiang, in Guangdong province, the HQ of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy Nanhai Fleet. Considering this is the first time that the Joint Sea is happening in the South…
