U.S. Congressman Mike Rogers chairs the House of Representatives’ panel on intelligence, which this week overwhelmingly approved a new cyber security bill designed to enhance data sharing between the government and private industry to protect computer networks and intellectual property from cyber attacks. Yet the day before it passed, Rogers had a more novel idea […]
I’ve been off the blogosphere because of a recurrence of back problems which didn’t allow me to spend much time seated. I mention this because in a recent talk, the new Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel made the following comment: “In many respects, the biggest long-term fiscal challenge facing the department is not the flat […]
Update to 26 of March entry, “Will a New Arms Trade Treaty Be Approved?”: On 2 April, the U.N. General Assembly passed the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) – the first binding international treaty designed to regulate the $70 billion cross-border conventional arms trade, and create a standard to protect peace and security. Countries will be […]
Kosovo has been a hotly contested region of the Balkans for many centuries. Adversity has often devolved into violence, especially since the collapse of Yugoslavia in early 1990s. Kosovo declared itself an independent state in 2008, and is recognized as such by many countries. Yet Serbia, which lays claim to the territory, refuses to […]
The modern workplace and the requirements of jobs in the high-technology era have brought what was an outlying issue in the past to the forefront of the debate on employment arrangements. Some major technologically inclined corporations have come to different conclusions. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer banned telecommuting arrangements via a memo and Google CFO Patrick […]
This past month has seen some well-written policy briefs being published on NOREF’s (the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre’s) website. As the name might suggest, a major theme running through the collection of articles is peace — and also how women can contribute. I’ve just chosen three to focus on in this post, however there are […]
According to a new Gallup survey, more than two-thirds of the U.S. public has a positive impression of India, a score that even edges out Israel’s traditionally high favorability rating. This is the latest indicator of how decisively American perceptions about the country have changed. Not too long ago, India was regarded as the very […]
Not so long ago, after twelve hours in the air, I found myself stranded at an international airport at 2 in the morning. The flight had been delayed—my pre-arranged pickup had abandoned his mission or just not shown up, and there was one taxi about to pull out and head home for the night. I was still 90 miles from my room for the night, and offered him twice the normal rate to take on one last fare, which he pointed out, wasn’t even close, direction-wise, to his own waiting bed. But for twice the money, and for Allah, he would do it.
Britain is suffering its worst winter in 50 years. Everyone is grumbling about their fuel bills and wondering what has happened to spring. Soccer and rugby matches and horse-racing fixtures have been canceled. The government has warned that if the weather persists like this for another couple of weeks, rationing may be necessary. While Prime […]
Tom Donilon, the U.S. national security advisor, was at the Asia Society in New York last week to talk (transcript here; video here) about the Obama administration’s effort to shift Washington’s strategic focus away from the military quagmires of the Greater Middle East to the dynamism of Asia – a region where, as the president […]
After nearly two decades of conflict, the Democratic Republic of the Congo makes a regular appearance in international news. The most recent chapter of the story is the conflict between the Congolese government and the M23 rebel group which started in April 2012. The back and forth fighting since then displaced more than 300,000 people […]
“When force is necessary, we will continue to do so in a way that reflects our values and strengthens our legitimacy, and we will seek broad international support, working with such institutions as NATO and the U.N. Security Council.” — President Obama (2010 National Security Strategy) Is it time for the international community to […]
The irony, of course, is that the FSA is just an umbrella term for a loose aggregation of Sunni militias whose best units–and consequently the fighters awarded the most money and the most lethal weapons– are, according to its own reports, puritanical Islamic jihadists, shouting ‘death to the United States and the West’ even as these targets scramble to comply with strategies the Saudis clearly believe are in their own best and immediate interests.
Almost immediately after Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis I, the 266th Pope of the Catholic Church, questions regarding his human rights record were being asked. The niceties of his election to the papacy, that Francis is the first Pope to be Jesuit and to hail from the Americas and the Southern Hemisphere, were […]
By Sarwar Kashmeri “Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role,” former Secretary of State Dean Acheson presciently observed in his 1962 speech at the U.S. Military Academy/West Point. It is the epigram with which David Hannay, the former British diplomat, and one of Britain’s most distinguished foreign service veterans, introduces […]