Pentagon

By Bryce W. Reeder | The US is an active participant in the war against Al-Shabaab in Somalia, efforts that have increased in the last few years under the Trump Administration. The strategy involves using airstrikes to assist Somali ground forces in recapturing territory controlled by Al-Shabaab. In addition, there have been attempts to take […]

Climate Crisis

All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change

Michael T. Klare

(Tomdispatch.com) – The Situation Room, October 2039: the president and vice president, senior generals and admirals, key cabinet members, and other top national security officers huddle around computer screens as aides speak tokey officials across the country. Some screens are focused on Hurricane Monica, continuing its catastrophic path through the Carolinas and Virginia; others are […]

Donald Trump

Trump’s Debacle in the Desert: A Post Mortem on the Kurdish-American Military Alliance (1941-2019)

Brian Glyn Williams

(Informed Comment) – An “After-Action” Report on the Kurds’ Vital Role in The Defeat of ISIS and Death of “God’s Shadow on Earth”: On October 26th US Delta Forces, acting on intelligence provided to them by their trusted Kurdish allies, launched a dangerous, long-distance heliborne raid from Iraq, across a region in northern Syria that […]

Afghanistan

What hope for a New Generation of US Troops graduating into the Forever Wars?

Danny Sjursen

(Tomdispatch.com) – Patches, pins, medals, and badges are the visible signs of an exclusive military culture, a silent language by which soldiers and officers judge each other’s experiences, accomplishments, and general worth. In July 2001, when I first walked through the gate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point at the ripe young age […]

National Security State

America: Bases, Bases, Everywhere, and Not a Base in Sight

Nick Turse

( Tomdispatch.com) – They called it Castle Black, an obvious homage to the famed frozen citadel from the HBO series Game of Thrones. In the fantasy world of GoT, it’s the stronghold of the Night’s Watch, the French Foreign Legion-esque guardians of the northern border of the Seven Kingdoms. This Castle Black, however, was all […]

Donald Trump

Too Inept to end the fruitless US Forever Wars: Trump v. the National Security State

Andrew J. Bacevich

(Tomdispatch.com) – Let us stipulate at the outset that Donald Trump is a vulgar and dishonest fraud without a principled bone in his corpulent frame. Yet history is nothing if not a tale overflowing with irony. Despite his massive shortcomings, President Trump appears intent on recalibrating America’s role in the world. Initiating a long-overdue process […]

Donald Trump

No, Trump isn’t Bringing Troops home: Not those in Syria, or any of the 60,000 in the Mideast

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Although Trump keeps talking about bringing the troops home from the Middle East, that isn’t what he is doing. There are some 60,000 US troops in and around the Middle East. There is no prospect of any significant number of them “coming home” any time soon. In fact, Trump just […]

Donald Trump

Trump’s Endless Wars

John Feffer

(Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Trump’s not bringing the troops home. He’s been haphazardly deploying more troops, drones, and dollars abroad, while waging a shadow foreign policy for his own benefit. Donald Trump loves to talk about ending the endless U.S. wars that he inherited as president. He tweets about it. He endlessly criticizes […]

Pentagon

America now solves problems with troops, not diplomats

The Conversation

By Monica Duffy Toft | – Is America a bully? As a scholar, under the auspices of the Military Intervention Project, I have been studying every episode of U.S. military intervention from 1776 to 2017. Historically, the U.S. advanced from a position of isolationism to one of reluctant intervenor, to global policeman. Based on my […]