E-War

Posted by on Jun 6, 2012 in Articles, Featured, Security, US Foreign Policy | 0 comments The Pentagon has traditionally presented cyber war as “their hackers” against “our defenders.” Out there, especially in China, a faceless horde of anonymous computer users are arrayed against the United States in an updated version of the “yellow peril.” In 2010, the Pentagoncomplained publicly for the first time about the Chinese government deploying civilian hackers to go after...
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Okinawa: Small Step Forward?

Posted by on May 4, 2012 in Featured, Security | 0 comments It’s a deal that’s been more than 15 years in the making and the unmaking. The United States and Japan have been struggling since the 1990s to transform the U.S. military presence on the island of Okinawa, the southernmost prefecture of Japan. In preparation for this week’s visit of Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to Washington, the two sides rolled out the latest attempt...
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NATO vs. Rogues

Posted by on May 2, 2012 in Articles, Featured, Security, US Foreign Policy | 0 comments Institutions rarely vote themselves out of existence. Not if they still have money in their budgets. Large institutions in particular have an almost genetic propensity to cling to life even after their reasons for being have vanished. That’s why I don’t expect NATO, which will gather in Chicago later this month, to suddenly declare game over and disband – even though the alliance’s...
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Death and Taxes

Posted by on Apr 24, 2012 in Articles, Featured, Security, US Foreign Policy | 0 comments Military spending combines the two certainties in life: death and taxes. U.S. taxpayers are paying more than anyone else on Earth to support an industry devoted to death. Last Tuesday, Tax Day, Americans were treated to the news that our nation has increased its overall spending on the military. In 2011, the United States spent approximately $740 billion on the military, an increase of more than...
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Arms Down

Posted by on Apr 13, 2012 in Articles, Featured, Security, US Foreign Policy | 2 comments Every year, in the last two weeks of their final semester, a group of seniors in the 20th-century world history class at my high school played a mysterious game. They were honor-bound not to tell anyone what they were doing. All we knew was that, while their fellow seniors goofed off and marked time until graduation, this group of students were completely obsessed with…something. They were...
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Asia Is Up In Arms

Posted by on Mar 26, 2012 in Articles, Asia, Featured, Security | 0 comments The geopolitical centre of gravity, as measured in arms spending and transfers, has shifted to Asia. The top five arms importers over the last five years, according to new data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), are from Asia. And, led by deep-pocketed China, Asia is poised to overtake Europe for the first time in modern history in overall military spending. The...
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