Blog Posts

"Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq are growing more powerful and confident as they operate with increasing impunity."

"Everyone knows that President Donald Trump wants out of Afghanistan, and the Afghans know that the State Department’s dealings with the Taliban will not deliver “peace.” Instead, Khalilzad’s talks have further empowered the same jihadists America has been fighting for nearly two decades."

"U.S.-backed Syrian forces on Tuesday seized control of an encampment held by the Islamic State group in eastern Syria, after hundreds of militants surrendered overnight, a spokesman said, signaling the group's collapse after months of stiff resistance. A group of suspects involved in a January bombing that killed four Americans in northern Syria were among militants captured by the Kurdish-led forces."

The Smith Richardson Foundation is pleased to announce its annual Strategy and Policy Fellows grant competition to support young scholars and policy thinkers on American foreign policy, international relations, international security, military policy, and diplomatic and military history. Continue on for more information.

"One of the best descriptions of subterranean warfare comes from the world of fiction—the hypothetical scenario in Max Brooks’s World War Z, a novel set in a future where small paramilitary units are fighting a zombie infestation in the catacombs beneath Paris. The US Army Asymmetric Warfare Group has produced two good handbooks—the Subterranean Warfare Handbook and the Subterranean Operations Handbook—which start to address subterranean warfare, but both fall short of establishing either a subterranean doctrine or comprehensive set of tactics, techniques, and procedures."

"As the United States makes its biggest diplomatic push in Latin America in years to try to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the U.S. military is zeroing in on a byproduct of the crisis: a strengthening of Colombian rebels on both sides of Venezuela’s border."

Zach Dorfman - Yahoo News - "Iranian espionage is nothing new, but the charges against Doostdar, and other recent court cases, including the indictment of a former Air Force linguist who defected to Iran in 2013, highlight what the U.S. intelligence community sees as an increasingly worrying part of Tehran’s covert strategy. Iranian operatives are compiling what are known as 'target packages' to undertake prospective future assassinations and terrorist attacks, according to more than half a dozen former U.S. intelligence officials."

"Few ever doubted that a U.S.-led coalition of 79 countries would ultimately prevail militarily over Islamic State. But the enduring appeal of the militants’ ideology among people like Umm Abdulrahman raises questions about the totality of its defeat. Even as Islamic State loses almost all territory and its less committed members fall away, a hardened core who remain in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, the Philippines, Libya and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula present a daunting challenge"

"The fight to depose Assad is over. The battle over his regime’s boundaries has no end in sight."

"The IDF would love nothing better than to fight an old-fashioned tank battle, at which it is famously proficient. But twenty-first-century warfare is more about guerrillas and tunnels, and these are the bane of high-tech, mechanized armies."

"Authorities in Afghanistan confirmed Monday that the Taliban captured 58 government forces during recent fighting in a northwestern district bordering Turkmenistan."

"To apply one standard to Israel, and another to the rest of the world – as the UN Human Rights Council does – is to be antisemitic, US Ambassador to German Richard Grenell said Monday in Geneva."

"President Donald Trump’s new executive order rescinding a provision of an Obama-era executive order that required public reporting of civilian and combatant deaths in U.S. counterterrorism strikes “outside areas of active hostilities” has garnered concern from transparency advocates. They express fears that President Trump’s action will deprive the public of information it needs to judge the appropriateness of the United States’ use of force in an era of persistent conflict against global terror threats."

"In a review of three U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operations and maintenance contracts, valued collectively at over $1 billion, SIGAR found that ANDSF personnel had confiscated contractor-owned property and mistreated or abused contractor staff under all three contracts."

"Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford denied the accuracy of a report published Sunday that the U.S. is planning to keep 1,000 troops in Syria."

"The U.S. military is crafting plans to keep nearly 1,000 forces in Syria, U.S. officials said, a shift that comes three months after President Trump ordered a complete withdrawal and is far more than the White House originally intended."

"President Donald Trump and his national security team had an hour-long, classified meeting on Afghanistan on Friday, a day after a top Afghan official openly complained that the Trump administration was keeping his government in the dark about its negotiations with the Taliban."

"U.S.-backed forces fighting to recapture the last Islamic State group outpost in Syria admitted on Sunday they were facing 'difficulties' defeating the extremists, saying they were being slowed by mines, tunnels and concerns over harming women and children among the militants."

"Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia authorized a secret campaign to silence dissenters — which included the surveillance, kidnapping, detention and torture of Saudi citizens — more than a year before the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, according to American officials who have read classified intelligence reports about the campaign."

"Years after the death of his father at the hands of a U.S. Navy SEAL raid in Pakistan, Hamza bin Laden now finds himself in the crosshairs of world powers."

"The Taliban carried out the biggest known capture of Afghan soldiers of the war, taking 150 prisoners after they chased units into neighboring Turkmenistan and that country forced them back, Afghan officials said on Sunday."

"Zalmay Khalilzad, who was born in Afghanistan, has a long and often regrettable history in Afghanistan affairs. Prior to the Sept. 11 terror attacks, for example, Khalilzad worked as a consultant for a group in Boston which was in turned hired by UNOCAL which at the time was trying to build a pipeline across Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. At the time, Khalilzad worked to normalize U.S. relations with the Taliban and arranged for a senior Taliban official to come to the United States to meet with Clinton administration officials and business leader."

"The debate on privatizing the war in Afghanistan is heating up yet again, with Democratic lawmakers pledging to end so-called 'forever wars.' The public is slowly recognizing the war’s hidden costs and global scale."

"The death toll in a mass shooting at two New Zealand mosques on Friday has risen to 50 after emergency workers found another body at one of the crime scenes."

"The United States and its closest allies have spent nearly two decades building an elaborate system to share intelligence about international terrorist groups, and it has become a key pillar of a global effort to thwart attacks."