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A New Germany

How Putin’s Aggression Is Changing Berlin Within a week, Germany has undergone a dramatic transformation, shedding its reluctant and dovish foreign policy and committing itself to drastically increase defense spending. The shock of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine spurred Berlin to send thousands of antitank and antiaircraft weapons …

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Crisis Over Ukraine: A Primer

Anceps fortuna belli (The fate of war is uncertain) – Cicero (106-43BCE) A Facebook friend asked me to write something on the Ukraine crisis for his page in Q & A form. Q: Briefly, what is the recent historical background to this conflict? A: The 2014 coup d’état in Ukraine …

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America Defeats Germany for the Third Time in a Century

My old boss Herman Kahn, with whom I worked at the Hudson Institute in the 1970s, had a set speech that he would give at public meetings. He said that back in high school in Los Angeles, his teachers would say what most liberals were saying in the 1940s and …

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Infighting between Islamist, Turkish-backed armed groups continues in north Syria

Infighting between Turkish-backed factions in north Syria continues despite pleas by civilians, with most recently dozens of members of the civilian police resigning in response to a shootout with the military police that left two of its members wounded. Violent clashes erupted Feb. 22 between members of the civilian police …

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Turkey’s Black Sea warning may impact Syria more than Ukraine

Turkey will limit the passage of Russian warships through its straits linking the Mediterranean and Black Sea as the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues into its sixth day, in a move that will likely have a larger impact on the Syrian front than the war in Ukraine. The position became …

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Israel torn over ties with Russian oligarchs

Formulating its policy on the Ukraine crisis, Israel must take into account its coordination with Russia in Syria, its special relations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, its super important alliance with the United States and its large Russian-Ukraine-born population. At a Feb. 27 meeting of Israel’s foreign affairs and security …

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Facing Western isolation over Ukraine, Russia looks to Mideast, Islamic world

After the start of Russia’s military campaign against Ukraine and the resulting unprecedented sanctions against Moscow, the latter is focusing its attention on the leading states in the Islamic world and the greater Middle East to negate the impact of Western isolation. The operation against Ukraine began when Pakistani Prime …

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Rapid Response: The future of European energy security

The Ukraine crisis has generated a level of attention on energy security that has been sorely lacking over the past decade. European dependence on Russian gas and global dependence on Russian oil is limiting Western action against Russia. However, with Germany halting the certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline; …

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Four ways the war in Ukraine might end

The invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces has spurred Europe’s worst security crisis in decades. But while most analysis is rightly focused on the immediate situation, it is equally important to forecast the war’s multiple possible trajectories and outcomes. Anticipating the uncertainties that this war will bring is a critical …

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No fighter plane transfers to Ukraine through allied airspace

NATO airspace will not be used to transfer fighter planes to the Ukrainian military, alliance leaders said Tuesday after a meeting in Poland, where top U.S. commanders were on hand for high-level security talks. Ukraine has requested additional military hardware from the West to help stave off Russia’s full-scale invasion, …

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