Some big news from New Delhi today on one of the world’s biggest outstanding defense orders: the $10 billion contract to supply 126 fighter jets to the Indian Air Force. After the news broke that both U.S. bids were out of the running, the U.S. Ambassador to India, Timothy Roemer, resigned.
This morning’s newspapers revealed that the …
On Battleland, Mark Thompson rightly says that the leaked tranche of documents detailing interrogations with detainees in Guantanamo Bay contains “no bombshells.” We’ve known for a while that methods of interrogation deployed there were suspect, if not in violation of international conventions, and that dozens of inmates were seized and …
After being pounded for weeks by mortar and rocket fire, the city of Misratah experienced a brief lull earlier this weekend as forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi allegedly withdrew from the war-ravaged port. The government’s deputy foreign minister, Khalid Kaim, claimed operations had been suspended so that tribal leaders could negotiate a …
When asked about the lessons of Vietnam, military historians often quipped that ‘we didn’t fight one war for ten years, we fought ten wars for one year each.’ The same could be said of Afghanistan. Troops come in, learn the lay of the land, and leave, oftentimes within the span of six to fifteen months, depending on which country …
French media celebrity (and one time philosopher) Bernard-Henri Lévy has been called many things over the years by his equally large and outspoken armies of detractors and supporters. “Curveball”, however, was never among them. It might be time to consider adding that name to the list. Because Lévy was essential to French President …
Is Sen. John McCain’s visit Friday morning to the Benghazi strong-hold of Libya’s rebel forces a sign of creeping escalation in the conflict with strongman Muammar Gaddafi that may lead to eventual troop deployment by Western nations? Impossible to know at this point, of course, but events coinciding with McCain’s visit to …
As troops loyal to Col. Muammar Gaddafi continue to pound the rebel-held city of Misratah — leading to hundreds of civilian casualties — British Foreign Secretary William Hague announced April 19 that the U.K. and France were dispatching a joint squad of military advisers to Benghazi, stronghold of the Libyan rebels in the …
News that Fidel Castro has resigned from the Central Committee of Cuba’s Communist Party isn’t very surprising — slowed by chronic health problems, the 84-year-old has effectively been out of political life since passing over the reins to his brother Raul in 2006. He now looks more familiar to us in a loose track suit than his once …
In recent weeks, ties between Islamabad and Washington have grown more strained than a cup of sickly sweet South Asian chai. A prolonged kerfuffle over Raymond Davis, the American CIA agent who gunned down two Pakistani men allegedly pursuing him in Lahore, sparked protests across the country and triggered a diplomatic crisis that, while …
The New York Times and international NGO Human Rights Watch both confirm that forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi shelled the city of Misratah with cluster bombs, munitions banned by much of the international community. Times reporter C.J. Chivers, currently in Misratah, no stranger to warzones and author of a recent book on the history of …
It’s increasingly looking like the only factor capable of resolving the international community’s dilemma in Libya is also the one element to that will never cooperate in finding a solution: Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi himself. Because as the meetings, summits, and declarations of coalition partners come and go, it becomes …
One year ago today, an earthquake hit the northeastern edge of the Tibetan plateau, leveling a small, majority-Tibetan town. The magnitude-6.9 temblor shook buildings from the hills and pulled monasteries and mud-brick homes to the ground. The first images from the scene showed crimson-robed monks digging though the rubble by hand. They …
April 12 marked the 150th anniversary of the shelling of Fort Sumter, the island battery in Charleston harbor whose surrender to South Carolinian secessionists signaled the start of the Civil War. And while our attention rightly falls on the war’s dramatic — and traumatic — legacy, one which is still being grappled over to this day, …
