Ceramic poppies from the Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red artwork installed at St George's Hall, Liverpool, for Remembrance Services in 2015. Peter Byrne/PA Archive/Press Association. It seems to be business as usual in the worldwide "war on terror". The United States military is currently embroiled in many hotspots where violence, fear, and the ever present reality or threat of high explosive are the order of the day. Those conditions mean, for people at the sharp end, multiple distress. But for suppliers of weapons and military equipment, the good times – which never really went away – are back.
Consider, for a moment, just a few of the international conflicts stretching from Africa to east Asia where the US is a major player. It is increasing the use of armed drones in Syria as the war against ISIS accelerates. It remains active in Iraq's evolving combat. Its military chiefs are working out how to persuade Trump to expand operations in Afghanistan, even as a resurgent Taliban tell him in an open letter to withdraw all American forces from the country.
It is also about to conduct a major “wargame” in South Korea, where Trump and his ally, Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe, seek to counter North Korea's missile ambitions. It is providing heavy military assistance to the Philippines government as a much less comfortable ally, Rodrigo Duterte, takes on a local ISIS-affiliated movement in the southern city of Marawi. It is called on to deploy more resources in eastern Europe in face of Russia's power, and to address the rise in paramilitary violence in the Sahel.
