(RFE/RL) — Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the owner of the mercenary group Wagner, has rejected a report saying he plans to scale back his military operations in Ukraine and instead concentrate on Africa, where Wagner was previously involved in local conflicts and businesses. …
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Netanyahu Is Warned: Don’t Attack Iran – OpEd
Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – known less formally as the UN’s nuclear watchdog – spent March 4 and 5 in Tehran as the guest of the Iranian regime. After discussing nuclear matters with Iranian officials, he met foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, and then Iran’s …
Read More »The System Is Blinking Red Over Iran – Analysis
In his testimony to the 9/11 Commission, then-CIA Director George Tenet described the harrowing intelligence picture that had emerged in the summer of 2001. “The system was blinking red,” he famously recalled. What followed, of course, was the well-documented, multi-agency failure to prevent an avoidable disaster that changed the course …
Read More »Seven Lessons From Latvia A Year After Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine – Analysis
A year has passed since Russia escalated its war against Ukraine to a full-scale invasion. When writing about the first Latvian reactions to the Russian attack, we noted the geographical proximity with both aggressor and victim made Latvians feel emotionally invested in the conflict. Latvia also realized that, by attacking …
Read More »China’s Naval Strategists Dissect Ukraine’s USV Strike on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet Base
The attack on Sevastopol six months ago may not have had the intended impact, but could have reverberations for the naval rivalry in the western Pacific. In shaping patterns of future warfare, there is little doubt that militaries across the world will be seeking to absorb the key lessons of …
Read More »Two decades later, it feels as if the US is trying to forget the Iraq war ever happened
In framing the Ukraine war as a fight between democracy and autocracy, Biden shows that the US hasn’t learned from Iraq Two decades ago, the United States invaded Iraq, sending 130,000 US troops into a sovereign country to overthrow its government. Joe Biden, then chairman of the Senate foreign relations …
Read More »America Never Learned the Lessons of the Iraq War
The (Continuing) Costs of Failing to Learn Iraq’s Most Obvious & Painful Lessons – Twenty years ago today, President George W. Bush told the American people that at his orders, “American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and …
Read More »20 Years On: The Avoidable, Anguishing, and Awful 2003 Iraq War
Next Monday marks the 20th anniversary of the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). In an attempt to make sense of the past two decades of American military operations in Iraq, we must begin by recognizing our military engagement in Iraq isn’t at the two-decade mark. With only one brief …
Read More »Daniel DePetris: Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow isn’t what it seems.
Chinese President Xi Jinping traveled to Russia this week for a three-day visit at a particularly critical point in the 13 month-old war in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin was indicted by the International Criminal Court several days earlier for war crimes, the first time the high court has charged …
Read More »The Case for a Restrained Republican Foreign Policy
Conservatives Can’t Go Back to Ignoring the Limits of American Power As the U.S. Republican presidential primary heats up, so too will the debate about the future of conservative American foreign policy. Although most of the declared and likely candidates will probably attempt to assume the mantle of “America first,” …
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