The mid-term election results in the United States carry implications for Israel’s military plans towards Iran.
The signals of growing turbulence in a range of military environments - Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and beyond - send a worrying message to Washington.
A number of initiatives around the world, for example in Bosnia and Guatemala, seeks to record the details of every victim of violent conflict. The new revelations of civilian deaths in Iraq could advance a project whose wider ambition is to change warfare itself.
The British government’s new defence strategy gestures towards the real security challenges of the 21st century while remaining locked overall in an outmoded vision. But the seeds of new thinking, beyond and even inside the state, will grow.
A series of developments across greater west Asia offers evidence of al-Qaida’s dispersed reality, continued energy and potential vulnerability.
Behind the escalation of United States cross-border raids into Pakistan and of Taliban attacks on coalition tanker-convoys lie the cold political reality of an unwinnable war.
The election of a new leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party is a rare opportunity to put fresh thinking on global security at the heart of the political agenda.
The war in Afghanistan is at a critical point as it enters its tenth year – and the view that it is unwinnable can be glimpsed in unexpected places.
The severe cuts facing Britain’s armed forces are also an opportunity to embrace the new thinking they and the country need.
The annual report for 2010 of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, a leading establishment think-tank, raises the prospect of a shift in western policy in Afghanistan.
The zealous attitudes and fevered misjudgments that drove United States policy towards Iraq in 2003 could yet have a second life over Iran.
The prospects for progress in the direct Israeli-Palestinian talks in Washington are meagre. But breakthrough is essential if Israel is to be saved from itself.
