Russia is flexing its diplomatic muscles at the United Nations again. Moscow appears intent on using the U.N. to complicate American efforts to put pressure on North Korea and sow confusion over its own intentions toward Ukraine. Western diplomats should be alert, because Russia is a fine player of the U.N. game. World leaders gather in New York next week for the new U.N. General Assembly session. All eyes will be on U.S. President Donald Trump. His Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin will be absent. But Moscow knows how to make its presence felt in New York. Just days after Putin [...]
Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s devastating military defeats in 1991 and 2003 demonstrated that taking on the U.S. military in conventional battles is a very bad idea. Knowing that, some of America’s adversaries, like Russia and Iran, turned to what security experts call the “gray zone”—methods that relied on proxy forces, psychological warfare and other provocations at a level that would not compel U.S. intervention. Extremist groups like al-Qaida, the Taliban and the self-styled Islamic State cannot muster the resources for full-on gray zone aggression even if they wanted to. This has forced them to rely on insurgency instead. Luckily [...]
Today the grueling battles to expel the self-styled Islamic State from Iraq and Syria drag on, but even when they are over it will not be the end of the violent extremist movement. There are still willing recruits for the Islamic State and plenty of anger, disillusionment and alienation that it can exploit. Unfortunately, it has established its global “brand.” Even as it is being driven from its homeland, it seems to be plotting its next strategic moves. At this point, the Islamic State’s most effective foray outside Iraq and Syria is in Afghanistan, where it has joined the Taliban’s [...]
