To better prepare its troops for tough counterinsurgency warfare, the U.S. military is investing in super-realistic exercises that combine traditional live-fire training with sophisticated cultural instruction and Hollywood-style special effects that blur the lines between training and combat. At the start of the so-called Global War on Terrorism, the military’s combat training infrastructure reflected an entrenched Cold War mentality. At the sprawling National Training Center (NTC) in California’s Mojave Desert, armored brigades maneuvered against an Opposing Force equipped with mock Soviet tanks. At the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) in the Louisiana bayou, light infantry battalions trained on simulated battlefields [...]
The Great Game of the 19th Century was played between empire builders Britain and Russia, using Afghanistan as their football in seeking control of central Asia. Today, there is a new great game under way between two very different competitors — China and India. But this time the ball is Burma. In much the same way that Afghanistan was a poor and undeveloped but strategic piece of territory, so Burma now fits that role for the two burgeoning economic giants. But Burma is more than simply a slice of well-placed geography: It is rich in energy resources, which China and [...]
The United States has no plans to join the U.N. stabilization force destined for southern Lebanon, but the Bush administration is pressing the international community to speed up troop deployment if the fragile cessation of hostilities has any chance of becoming durable. Technically, it is the U.N.’s responsibility to recruit and shape the 15,000-strong force, but World Politics Review has learned that on Wednesday foreign ambassadors in Washington were called to the State Department where a senior U.S. official called for more haste in pledging and sending contingents. Diplomats who attended the meeting, which was not publicly reported, said the [...]
