War

By Mandy Smithberger | – Hold on to your helmets! It’s true the White House is reporting that its proposed new Pentagon budget is only $740.5 billion, a relatively small increase from the previous year’s staggering number. In reality, however, when you also include war and security costs buried in the budgets of other agencies, […]

Bashar al-Assad

With a Million Fresh Refugees and a 9-Year Civil War, Can Impoverished Syrians Survive?

Stasa Salacanin

( Middle East Monitor ) – A devastating civil war and international sanctions have destroyed Syria’s economy, leaving it with a GDP that is a third of what it was in 2010. The monetary crisis and depreciation of the currency is the latest chapter of the country’s economic meltdown. Despite the lack of accurate statistics, […]

Pentagon

Retired US Officers are all in on Forever Wars: Where are the Smedley Butlers of Today?

Danny Sjursen

(Tomdispatch.com) – There once lived an odd little man — five feet nine inches tall and barely 140 pounds sopping wet — who rocked the lecture circuit and the nation itself. For all but a few activist insiders and scholars, U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Darlington Butler is now lost to history. Yet more […]

Pentagon

Is America Addicted to War?

Tom Engelhardt

(Tomdispatch.com) – My first question is simple enough: After 18-plus years of our forever wars, where are all the questions? Almost two decades of failing American wars across a startlingly large part of the planet and I’d like to know, for instance, who’s been fired for them? Who’s been impeached? Who’s even paying attention? I […]

Pentagon

As Fossil Fuels Melt Arctic, Pentagon Dreams of North Pole War

Michael T. Klare

(Tomdispatch.com) – In early March, an estimated 7,500 American combat troops will travel to Norway to join thousands of soldiers from other NATO countries in a massive mock battle with imagined invading forces from Russia. In this futuristic simulated engagement — it goes by the name of Exercise Cold Response 2020 — allied forces will […]

War

Yemen: the nightmare continues, with no end in sight

Brian Whitaker

(Al-Bab.com) – The war in Yemen is complicated and it can be difficult to keep track of what’s happening on the ground, not to mention the related peace efforts. A new report from the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies is a useful starting point for anyone wanting a quick catch-up – well, relatively quick, since […]

Saudi Arabia

Will Saudi Arabia ever End its Catastrophic War on Yemen?

Open Democracy

By Helen Lackner | – ( OpenDemocracy.net ) – While Saudi Arabia seeks an exit from the Yemen war, it is deepening its involvement in the South instead. Last year saw some significant changes in Saudi strategy in Yemen. Following on the UAE departure, the new Deputy Defence Minister, Khalid bin Salman, the crown prince’s […]

Australia

Some Technology is Too Dangerous: Iran’s Accidental Ballistic Launch and Australia’s Climate Inferno are Trying to Tell us Something

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – The first month of 2020 has been full of lessons—if we are willing to listen. With over 200 brush fires burning in Australia and an area as big as West Virginia already scorched, Australia’s problems are hardly confined to the subcontinent. In a telling irony the plumes […]

Congress

The War Powers Act isn’t Restraining the President: Congress Must de-Fund Wars

Harry Blain

(Foreign Policy in Focus) – By any measure, the War Powers Act has failed to constrain presidential warmaking. A simpler step would be to stop funding wars. Practically speaking, the Trump administration’s extrajudicial assassination of a top Iranian general was probably legal. The rationale is straightforward: Congress has steadily settled on a constitutionally dubious theory […]