Military Archive

On July 17, the U.S. announced that it had terminated Turkey’s participation in the F-35 fighter jet program, five days after Ankara took delivery of components for four batteries of Russian S-400 air defense systems that Turkey purchased in 2017. The systems will not be assembled and operational until the fall, but in receiving the first shipment, Turkey ignored repeated warnings from Washington that it considered the presence of the S-400 to be incompatible with operating the F-35. The Trump administration gave several reasons for the suspension: the intelligence risk posed by the presence of an advanced Russian data-collection platform […]

If there’s still any question about whether President Donald Trump will actually deliver on his promises to “get out” of Afghanistan, the answer seems simple after this week. No, Trump won’t, not while he remains convinced that he could win the war there in 10 days by killing 10 million people and wiping Afghanistan “off the face of the earth.” Trump’s statement, made in a stomach-churning Oval Office meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan on July 22, may have been shocking, but it wasn’t all that surprising. After 19 years at war, the bumbling that has passed for U.S. […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Since early July, Chinese and Vietnamese vessels have been engaged in a tense standoff over natural gas resources in waters off the coast of southern Vietnam. The ongoing confrontation is just one incident in a pattern of increasingly assertive Chinese behavior in the South China Sea, and while no shots have been fired so far, it could provoke anti-Chinese protests in Vietnam. The South China Morning Post reported on July 12 that six “heavily armed” coast guard vessels—two Chinese […]

Following Ursula von der Leyen’s confirmation last week, the European Union not only has its first female president of the European Commission, but also the first who was formerly a minister of defense. What will her leadership mean for the long contentious issue of European security and defense policy? In an enthusiastic stump speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg before she was confirmed by a vote of 383-327, von der Leyen laid out her “political guidelines” for the European Commission over the next five years. Yet defense only appeared vaguely, under the fifth objective for “a stronger Europe in […]

This week marks five years since Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine. Since then Russia has seemingly spared no effort or expense in waging an epic disinformation campaign to beat back allegations that Kremlin-backed mercenaries and separatists in the Donbas region fired the Russian-made Buk missile that killed all 298 people on board the passenger jet. Yet as evidence of Russian involvement has continued to mount in recent days, it looks like Moscow may need to retool its strategy. Almost five years to the day that a group of intrepid journalists at Bellingcat, an investigative collective, […]

In the early years of this century, there were suggestions that the European Union could play the role of a “quiet superpower,” and even speculation that Brussels might become a hegemonic rival to the United States. Now, with the rise of China and talk of a new Cold War brewing between Washington and Beijing, the EU’s place in the world is looking dramatically less imposing. For some experts and observers, the EU continues to be a “civilian power,” given its nonmilitary capabilities, or a “normative power,” referring to its historical role in helping to shape global norms on human rights […]

The best that can be said about President Donald Trump’s handling of U.S. national security and foreign policy is that it has avoided outright catastrophe—at least so far. Trump did finish the job of helping local allies in Iraq and Syria destroy the self-styled Islamic State’s “caliphate.” But in every other part of the world, the United States is in a worse position than when he took office, less influential and less respected nearly everywhere. Most of America’s security partnerships have eroded; some are close to collapse. China and Russia are more assertive and less constrained than they were a […]