By Tyler Hooper On 12 March the Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, along with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, released a document titled “Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.” The document outlines eight major “global threats” and numerous major “regional threats” to the U.S. Among the regional threats, unsurprisingly, is […]
If They Build It, Will the Kardashians Come? By Peter Savodnik The New York Times Magazine Azerbaijan is rich — oil rich — pushing one million barrels of crude oil through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipepline per day. Perched on the Caspian and with a massive energy sector, it’s no wonder it was the fastest growing economy […]
If the status quo continues, as is likely, and the Pakistani government remains mired in its own incompetence and impotence, the militants in Pakistan will have become more popular and will have built up their ranks in a way, so far, unforeseen. Today’s New York Times lays out the strategic issue in very stark terms: […]
Max Boot , Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and most importantly a Petraeus advisor, had a chat with Charlie Rose. I invite you, my reader, to watch the whole interview here. There are a few takeaways that you might want to keep in mind as you watch Boot […]
A pen and ink and suminagashi print of the 2007 arrest of the retired general and former Director of Pakistan’s spy agency, Hamid Gul. Lt. Gen Gul is thought to have managed ISI’s coordination with the Afghan Taliban in order to develop strategic depth in Afghanistan to counter any Indian intervention in that country.
Zainab Jeewanjee discusses the intricacies of implicating Pakistan in the Wikileaks report. She elaborates on the history, motivations and interests of Pakistan and finds that negotiating with extremist groups is perhaps an inevitable reality that policy makers must take into account before implicating that the government in Islamabad aids insurgents.
In an Air Force One interview session, President Obama opened the proverbial door to negotiating with the segments of the Taliban. He was vague about who the ‘Taliban’ was and how to go about it, but its definitely on his Afghan policy workbench. Though he offered few details, Obama was well aware that such a […]