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"As the civil-war aspect of the Syrian conflict winds down, the great power struggle among states is intensifying. It appears the Trump team has discovered that its ability to help solve the former will determine how it fares in the latter.

Sunday marks 17 years of the war in Afghanistan. As the 18th year begins, Stars and Stripes has recapped key points throughout the war, which has spanned the terms of three presidents. Combat veterans now serve with their sons and daughters, some of whom were too young to remember 9/11.

Threats to the international order from near-peer competitors and from rogue regimes, terrorists, and the proliferation of cyber weapons and weapons of mass destruction all challenge whether the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) will be able to fulfill its mission. It is unclear whether the IC is prepared to provide decisionmakers and warfighters with the intelligence they need and expect.

This NYT At War (@NYTimesAtWar on Twitter) article is part of a partnership between The Fuller Project for International Reporting and The New York Times Magazine.

"A rare look at the front lines where Special Forces battle the Islamic State."

“The May election seemed to turn out badly—but the new government is as good as it could have been.”

Pressed flowers. Mint chocolate-chip ice cream. A first dance. A final phone call. As the United States marks 17 years of war, the families of 17 fallen service members share treasured memories.

In 2014, Nadia Murad, a member of the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq, was taken captive by ISIS members and sexually enslaved for three months before escaping. In 2016, at the age of 23, she was named the U.N.'s first Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking. Today, she became the co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Dr. Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who treats victims of rape.

"A new crop of senior American officials in Afghanistan has been racing to contain a dual crisis on the battlefield and in a potentially explosive election dispute. But it is a different American figure — the mercenary executive Erik D. Prince — who has been the talk of Kabul these days."

“Recent statements from the White House regarding a long-term presence of troops in eastern Syria to counter Iranian influence in the country should not be interpreted as a shift to a war-footing, Pentagon leadership said Thursday.”

Continue on for the latest online issue of ‘Parameters’ – includes links to all the articles and sections to include book reviews.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Iran are just a few of the hotspots the commander of U.S. Central Command spoke about this morning as he discussed the range of operations in the area during a Pentagon news conference.

U.S. President Donald Trump's national security adviser has called Iran "the central banker of international terrorism" as he laid out a wider strategy for countering Tehran in the Middle East. John Bolton told reporters on October 4 that the U.S. strategy toward Iran would use both military and nonmilitary means to push back on Iranian-backed militants, and their financial backers.

“Afghan military and police forces had higher numbers of battlefield casualties in a “difficult and bloody summer” of fighting the Taliban insurgency, the American general overseeing the war said Thursday.”

"President Donald Trump on Thursday approved a new national strategy for counterterrorism to protect the country against future terrorist attacks. This is the first effort to update former President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism strategy released in 2011."

An Assessment of U.S. Military Power – The Heritage Foundation’s annual report on the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, nuclear weapons, and missile defense.

"Dutch security services say they expelled four Russians over a cyber attack plot targeting the global chemical weapons watchdog. The operation by Russia's GRU military intelligence allegedly targeted the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague in April. The OPCW has been probing the chemical attack on a Russian ex-spy in the UK."

“The U.S. military would be able to handle itself adequately in a single major regional conflict while maintaining smaller operations around the globe, but its “marginal” capabilities mean America would struggle if forced to take on a second major conflict at the same time, a new report has found.”

" Democratic senator is pressing the Pentagon to explain a policy that allows the military to launch attacks to protect an array of foreign forces, a practice that critics contend adds to already inflated powers to conduct counterterrorism missions overseas."

"U.S. troops and their local partner forces have surrounded what has been called the 'last pocket of ISIS resistance,' according to military officials involved in the campaign."

“Twenty-five years ago, news flashed across television screens that U.S. troops had engaged in some of the most intense urban combat since Vietnam and suffered more dead and wounded in a matter of hours than recent years of operations combined.”

"Amid a decline in terror incidents worldwide in 2017, African countries struggled to prevent the expansion of terror groups in parts of the continent, according to a U.S. State Department report on terrorism."

"Ever wonder why or how the U.S. military forgets how to do counterinsurgency and stability operations? We are witnessing the process happen in real time."

“The rise of “super militias,” which last month triggered the worst spasm of violence in the Libyan capital Tripoli in four years, has exposed the weakness of Western efforts to stabilize Libya while creating an opening for the Islamic State to resurrect itself in North Africa.”

"A 12-mile stretch of the Iraq-Syria border has become the epicentre of a battle between Iran and the United States for control of the Middle East."