Defense & Security Archive

In late October, U.S.S. Kearsarge, a 40,000-ton amphibious assault ship, arrived off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago laden with hundreds of doctors, nurses and engineers, and tons of medical supplies. The tiny developing country was the fifth stop in Kearsarge’s four-month tour of Latin America, advancing a new Pentagon strategy for creating security through good deeds. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates calls it “soft power” — and it’s all the rage in a military exhausted by five years of hard combat. The Navy’s three-dozen amphibious ships, with their extensive medical facilities, along with its two specialized hospital ships, are […]

Just hours after President-elect Barack Obama’s election victory, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev used his first state of the nation address before both houses of the Russian parliament to declare that Russia would deploy short-range Iskander missile systems in Kaliningrad “to neutralize if necessary the anti-ballistic missile system in Europe.” Medvedev also said that Russian electronic equipment would jam the U.S. systems and that he had canceled plans to dismantle three missile regiments deployed in western Russia. Kaliningrad, a Baltic Sea port which lies between NATO members Lithuania and Poland, hosts a major Russian military base. The Iskander surface-to-surface missile has […]

YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia — Early Sunday morning, the Indonesian government executed three men convicted of the 2002 Bali Bombings, ending a controversial period of postponements, court appeals and international media attention. Now, counter-terrorism officials and the public are braced for possible retaliatory attacks that the men — who operated under Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the al-Qaida-linked terrorist group held responsible for most of the bombings that hit the country from 2000 to 2005 — had promised. The 2002 Bali bombings killed over 200 people and remain the deadliest terrorist attack after 9/11. The executions, the first of Muslim extremists carried out under […]

Two weeks ago, the parliament of South Africa — essentially an arm of the ruling African National Congress party — voted to abolish the Directorate of Special Operations and fold their jurisdiction into the work of the National Police. The move surprised no one but has angered many. Over the course of its nine year existence, the independent crime fighting unit of the National Prosecuting Authority, colorfully known as the Scorpions, has brought charges against current ANC head — and presidential heir-apparent — Jacob Zuma, as well as other high-profile ANC-supported figures such as former National Police Chief Jackie Selebi […]

No matter who is elected president today, the next leader of the United States should make reforming the U.S. national security system a top priority. That’s the conclusion of the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR), a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization funded and supported by Congress, foundations, and the private sector. After more than a year spent analyzing case studies of how the U.S. government mitigated, prepared for, responded to, and recovered from various national security challenges, the PNSR research indicates that the U.S. national security system’s performance is inconsistent. And America needs better to address the challenges it will […]

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — “What America needs now is a drink,” Franklin Roosevelt famously declared upon repealing Prohibition in 1933, amidst a bleak economic climate. But according to the U.N.’s top anti-drug official, consumers of prohibited substances — particularly cocaine — might not have the same reaction to today’s comparable economic turmoil. “There is no doubt the [economic] crisis will have an impact [on the drug trade],” Antonio María Costa, the director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, told Reuters last week. “It may turn cocaine into a much less desirable discretionary income expenditure.” Costa was referring to European […]