The United States and Israel see the next generation of armed drones as a potent reinforcement of their military capacity against insurgents and rogue states. But Iran and Hizbollah too are in the race.
The failed assault on a Japanese oil supertanker is, alongside developments in Iraq and Yemen, a signal of the al-Qaida movement’s protean challenge.
Israel’s combative military posture, evident both in a tense border skirmish with Lebanon and in its wider strategic plans, is a recipe for permanent insecurity.
The release of official United States material by the website Wikileaks confirms and amplifies enduring political assessments of the Afghanistan war, not least on openDemocracy.
The United States and its allies are rethinking their commitment to Afghanistan by the week. But an attack on Iran would return all calculations to ground zero.
An Israeli assault on Iran’s nuclear and missile infrastructure and personnel would be far more extensive than many realise. The prospect that it will happen in the next few months is increasing.
The ability of Iran’s military to learn from experience and become adept in irregular warfare echoes that of insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also presents the United States with hard choices.
The replacement of one United States general by another to lead the war against the Taliban leaves untouched the essentials of a failing campaign.
The revolving-door experience of United States military commanders in Afghanistan is but symptom of a flawed strategy with its roots in the response to 9/11.
A new report that highlights Afghanistan’s extensive mineral deposits provides fuel for the United States’s military project. But it also signals the existence of a wider resource-competition that reflects the 21st-century’s emerging geopolitics.
Iran is at the centre of a global storm: targeted by new sanctions, suspected by Washington, defended by Brazil and Turkey. But the complex diplomacy around its nuclear programme could be ended by decisions made not in the United States but in Israel.
Israel’s assault on a flagship attempting to break the blockade of Gaza has sparked international condemnation. Behind the crisis lie deeper shifts in world politics in which Turkey is playing a key part.
