Security & Defense

Afghanistan Victory Not in Sight

By James Joyner

In a speech to the Atlantic Council this week, Major General John Toolan, just returned from a year commanding NATO forces in southwestern Afghanistan, both highlighted the tremendous progress coalition forces have made since the beginning of the Afghan surge and candidly acknowledged how much work remains to be done.

US and Russia discuss hotline for cyber incidents

By Ellen Nakashima, the Washington Post

Can Western Women Tame Iran’s Nuclear Negotiators?

By Laura Rozen and Barbara Slavin

Photos of the high-stakes Iran nuclear talks held in Istanbul earlier this month tell their own story.

Nuclear Iran Not Inevitable, Says Israel’s Defense Chief

By James Joyner

Lieutenant General Benny Gantz, the head of Israel’s military, says that Iran’s leaders have not yet decided to develop nuclear weapons and that they may well never take that step.

Nuclear Weapon Reductions Must be Part of Strategic Analysis

By Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft

A New START treaty reestablishing the process of nuclear arms control has recently taken effect. Combined with reductions in the U.S. defense budget, this will bring the number of nuclear weapons in the United States to the lowest overall level since the 1950s. The Obama administration is said to be considering negotiations for a new […]

The Comprehensive Approach: Groundhog Day?

By Julian Lindley-French

For the past few days I have been acting as rapporteur for a large conference on enhancing and improving civil-military interaction in crises – the so-called Comprehensive Approach. The fifty heavy pages of notes I have before me testify to the intense nature of the debate and the challenge of writing the conference report. Over […]

Memo to NATO: Stay Out of Syrian Conflict

By Joshua Foust

Despite this weekend’s unanimous UN Security Council vote, which authorized a team of observers to Syria to monitor the tentative ceasefire there, there remain many questions about what can actually be done to stop the fighting. Conventional wisdom, prior to Saturday, seemed to resign the international community to doing very little about the bloodshed, thanks to […]