With the world’s attention focused on high-profile conflicts such as Afghanistan and Syria, and humanitarian crises in Darfur and Haiti, the troubled East African state of Somalia seems to have fallen off the global radar screen, though its duress eclipses that of the aforementioned nations in terms of both intensity of conflict and human suffering.  Read More

Has anyone ever even heard of Mali?  Relatively few people other than Africa observers and Terrorism analysts have heard of Mali, but that obscurity may be short-lived. This large, sparsely populated West African nation is rapidly beginning to show signs of becoming the next front in the War on Terror. In recent years, Mali has  Read More

When considering the deployment of a nation’s military to support peacekeeping or stability operations, national interest usually trumps morality. In the 1994, the US did not intervene to stop the Rwandan genocide in which nearly a million Tutsis were butchered by the Hutus because it did not threaten US interests. Yet just a few years  Read More

Is it possible to buy national security?  During the Ancient and Medieval periods, it was common for potentates, kings and even empires to pay an adversary not to attack. Rome did so when the Goths threatened their northern frontier. Constantinople later paid successive generations of Arabs to leave them in peace. In these cases as  Read More

When a senior Military Officer publicly disagrees with the President of the United States, it tends to make headlines.    Since the President’s announcement of a strategic retirement from Afghanistan, the news media has been broadcasting testimony of senior military officers as they disagree with the President’s plan before Congressional panels. They do so for a  Read More

Historically, nations that are broke do not have the capability to wage war, yet the United States simply goes deeper into the financial hole to support combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. For many, this along with the death of Osama Bin Laden, justifies a withdrawal from both theatres of operation. Last week, all but  Read More

If you were to envision what the detention center for America’s worst enemies would look like, would family visitation be part of it?  The Pentagon is currently weighing whether or not to grant that privilege to the 172 terrorist detainees remaining at the Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) Detention Facility. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers in the US House  Read More

How can Hannibal’s invasion of Italy in the third century BC and Custer’s campaign against the Sioux in 1876 possibly apply to the 21st century war on terror?  Principles of warfare are timeless and unchanging. During the campaigns of both Hannibal and Custer, timing and tempo played a huge role in the success and failure  Read More