A new approach to ballistic missile defence in Europe? Demystifying the end of the ‘third site’
Issue:Global militarisation
ORG Exclusive
The new “Phased, Adaptive Approach” to ballistic missile defence announced by the Obama Administration will provide the US with a considerable defensive architecture in Europe, potentially incorporating numerous radars and tracking facilities twinned with hundreds of interceptor missiles, which will be far superior in terms of size and capability than the Bush Administration’s proposal writes Andrew Futter.
Read more »Posted on 24/02/10
The nuclear-weapons moment
Issue:Global militarisation
The global effort to extinguish the nuclear peril needs to regain momentum. A bold act of leadership and imagination by one of the weapons-states could provide it.
Photo courtesty of thepretenda.
Read more »Posted on 9/03/10
Three connected conflicts - Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan
Issue:Global militarisation
At the beginning of February, ISAF sources announced that a major military offensive was about to be mounted in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan. This was Operation Moshtarak (“together”), involving 15,000 US, British and Afghan National Army troops, and would concentrate on clearing Taliban and other paramilitary groups from two areas, one of them centred on the town of Marja. The publicity given to the operation appeared designed partly to encourage civilians to evacuate areas under Taliban influence, but would also serve to highlight the capabilities of coalition forces at a time when support for the war in the United States and Britain was fragile.
Given the size of the operation, it is likely that it will provide a major focus for western media attention for some weeks, but to get a full measure of its significance requires seeing it in the wider context of the conflicts in Iraq and Pakistan, and of the Status of the al-Qaida Movement. There have, in particular, been significant developments in both Iraq and Pakistan, with each likely to have an impact on what is now happening in Afghanistan.
Photo courtesy of Helmandblog.
Read more »Posted on 2/03/10
New US Intelligence Report Highlights the Risks of Climate Change for Regional Instability
Issue:Climate change
A new report from the US Directo of National Intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, for the House of Permanent Selct Committee on Intelligence has highlighted the regional impacts of climate change in his assessment of threats to US national security. In his public statement, Blair states that global climate change will have a wide-ranging implications for US national security interests over the next 20 years because it will aggrabate existing world problems-such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weal political institutions- that threaten state stability.
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Posted on 24/02/10
Afghanistan: propaganda of the deed
Issue:Global militarisation
The deluge of publicity about a large-scale military operation against the Taliban must be set against Afghan realities that tell a different story. The task of reaching an accurate assessment of the real state of the conflict must look beyond such public-relations campaigns from military sources.
Image source: Reuters
Read more »Posted on 23/02/10
Iraq's shadow over Afghanistan
Issue:Global militarisation
The current surge in United States military forces in Afghanistan part of a strategy designed to bring the war to an end from a position of strength. The great strains within the US military mean that the deployment of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan can be sustained only if forces can be withdrawn from Iraq at the scheduled rate: that is, all combat-forces out by August 2010 and the remaining (approximately 50,000) personnel by the end of 2011. The dynamics of violence in Iraq present a serious challenge to this strategy.
Washington is thus engaged in a delicate balancing-act: managing disengagement from Iraq while ensuring that the United States will retain a significant military presence in the country well beyond 2011 in order to exercise a maximum degree of influence.
Read more »Posted on 18/02/10
