Military Archive

Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Saudi Arabia earlier this week to mend fraying U.S. ties with the kingdom, which remains one of America’s key partners in the Middle East. At the end of his visit, in a joint press conference with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud, Kerry declared that U.S.-Saudi ties are “strategic” and “enduring.” But if the Obama administration now believes that things are back on track, it should reconsider that assessment. Given the current overlap between Washington and Riyadh’s regional and global interests, both countries will continue to work closely together, but the coming years will […]

Last week, a U.S. drone strike killed Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of Pakistan’s sociopathically violent Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) movement. The organization has murdered thousands, often relying on indiscriminant suicide bombs; has trained terrorists to attack the United States; and has remained closely aligned with al-Qaida. No one among the civilized will lament Mehsud’s passing. But because the United States did it, Pakistan has responded with outrage. Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan called the U.S. action “a conspiracy to sabotage the peace talks” with the TTP—even though almost no one thinks those talks had much chance of success. Islamabad lodged a […]

Turkey’s decision to buy a Chinese-made air-and-missile defense system has aroused undue anxiety about Ankara’s ties with Beijing. While the purchase of the untested Chinese system is unhelpful from the perspective of NATO interoperability as well as Turkey’s protection, Ankara and Beijing see the deal primarily as a business transaction rather than as a precursor to closer security ties. The Chinese firm simply offered better co-production, technology transfer and pricing terms than did the competitors. Turkey’s acquisition program aims to establish a national air-and-missile defense system that can intercept incoming ballistic missiles inside the atmosphere. On Sept. 26, after years […]

Despite suffering huge losses, the Syrian army has managed to survive longer than almost anyone thought possible at the beginning of Syria’s civil war. According to a recent estimate by the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR), a U.K.-based monitoring group, 28,800 Syrian soldiers have been killed since the beginning of the conflict 2 1/2 years ago. This represents a massive hemorrhage of manpower for an army that was estimated to have a strength of 220,000 at the beginning of the war. The army has also suffered desertions and from the beginning could rely only on a handful of crack […]