Washington, D.C. area auto service shop G&C Auto Service previewed its new parts delivery system today, April 1, 2014. And here’s why we’re writing about it on a foreign policy blog: It’s a drone, specifically a DJI Phantom. According to owner Gregg Caldwell, it started with an Amazon Prime account. Soon, G&C were official “testers” for […]
On the evening of Saturday, March 29, people around the world are being asked by campaigners to switch off the lights for an hour to celebrate “Earth Hour”. The question is whether this helps the climate and the challenges it faces around the world. “Global warming is a real problem, but Earth Hour is not […]
After an overwhelming majority of China’s urban centers failed to meet environmental standards in 2013, Premier Li Keqiang declared a “war on pollution,” promising to improve the country’s blanketing smog endemic. In his report to parliament on Mar. 5, Premier Li Keqiang said he would fight to eliminate the air pollution problem that shrouds 95 […]
Hosted by Sarwar Kashmeri, the Foreign Policy Association’s Great Decisions podcast series will headline issues together with the leaders whose decisions today will mold the foreign policy of tomorrow. Each podcast will tackle a different Great Decisions topic in the 2014 series, a list of which can be found here. The Great Decisions podcasts can also be found […]
When discussing the Pacific region, a frequently mentioned concern on the part of Department of Defense and other government officials is China’s lack of transparency about its military modernization. During a presentation given at the AFCEA West Conference last month Captain Jim Fanell, head of the Navy’s Pacific Fleet Intelligence Staff, remarked , “he didn’t know […]
Ever since Moscow decided to up the ante and invade the Crimean peninsula, shale gas reentered journalist lingo. Many have chipped in the debate, including Speaker of the House John Boehner who has argued that American gas is the sole remedy for Russia’s dominance of the European energy market. His diagnosis was that since natural […]
On March 12, Congressman Adam B. Schiff’s op-ed “Let the Military Run Drone Warfare” ran in the New York Times, pushing an agenda that’s been on the lips of a number of wonks and politicians ever since Obama’s May 2013 “drone speech”: Transfer the U.S. drone program from the Central Intelligence Agency to Joint Special […]
Young eyes pull upward, searching for the man buried beneath thick matted grass. A soldier stands encircled by a small crowd draped in a sniper’s woodland ghillie suit, a disguise useless against the dusty soil of Horse Guards Parade. But that’s the point. For on a brisk London day last October, among parachuters and fly-overs, […]
One of the first experiments in the United States with remotely-controlled aerial warfare wasn’t in the ’90s or ’00s: It was back in World War II. During the London Disarmament Conference in 1935, Admiral William Standley, then Chief of Naval Operations, learned of the United Kingdom’s experiments with remotely-powered aircraft like the DH82B Queen Bee. […]
One of my all-time favorite movies is “Task Force” starring Gary Cooper. It came out in 1949 and details the birth of naval aviation. There’s a scene, where Cooper attends a fancy Washington, D.C. soiree. He’s uncomfortable and clearly out of his element. Matters are only made worse when a Senator comes up to him […]
There is always a danger in economies that are heavily dependent on one commodity to become states where conflict and power vacuums arise due to the concentration of power in one industry, and that industry having control of a large part of a national economy. External pressures for countries that are oil producers are the […]
The U.S. cannot address today’s Russian military threat against Ukraine without addressing what military resources we have to back our diplomacy and to deter hostile moves backed by force. Currently, no U.S. discourse guides policy makers toward an answer. The public expects a strong defense when we are afraid or when we are outraged […]
Following the release of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s new energy plan, nuclear reactors are set to restart across the island nation three years after the Fukushima disaster, leaving many fearing another radioactive plume. Citing economic and environmental concerns, Abe unveiled his government’s 20-year Basic Energy Plan on February 25, which aims to restart at […]
Like many other African countries, Mozambique has enormous potential, but there are many gaps to fill. Led by its natural resources, the economy has been booming with real GDP growth reaching 7.4 percent in 2012, seven percent in 2013 and is predicted to reach 8.5 percent between 2014–16, according to the World Bank. London based […]
Gareth Porter, author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold History of the Iranian Nuclear Scare, is a renowned investigative journalist and historian on U.S. national security policy. Porter was the 2012 winner of the Gellhorn Prize for journalism awarded by the Gellhorn Trust in the U.K. His previous book was Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and […]