2015-12-02 In September, Egypt announced that they were purchasing the two Mistral-calls amphibious ships which France and Russia agreed would NOT be sold to Russia earlier this year. According to an article by Jess McHugh in the International Business Times published September 27, 2015: Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said…
2015-12-02 While Putin was working the Syrian opportunity in September, the Russian Prime Minister was visiting the disputed islands with Japan. His visit paved the way for a building program on two of the four disputed islands. As reported in The Japan Times on December 2, 2015: Russia is constructing…
2015-11-24 By Robbin Laird, Harald Malmgren and Ed Timperlake When analysts and intelligence experts were highlighting the warming sun of the Arab Spring, there was much hope: democracy was in the air and the gap between Islam and the West might be closing. Rather than a warming sun, close observers…
2015-11-27 By Gulshan Luthra Dateline New Delhi. According to reliable sources, the vital first test in ejecting a missile from its onboard silos was conducted November 25. Proverbially, adding a feather to the cap of the Indian Navy and scientists from DRDO and BARC, the firing was done remotely from…
2015-11-27 Readers of Second Line of Defense were not surprised by the Turkish shootdown of the Russian aircraft. Hardly, an unpredictable event, the shootdown is a function of the evolving situation and Turkish objectives. With regard to context, Professor Amatzia Baram highlighted two important data points going into this phase of developments…
2015-11-25 Europe is in the throes of fundamental transformation. Certainly, this is not the top down transformation experienced in the 1990s. This is crisis engendered transformation, where what is not done is as important as what is done in the reshaping of Europe. The Eurozone crisis raises fundamental questions about…
2015-11-23 By Kenneth Maxwell Last week, the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, released a digital text of a newly discovered poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, first published in London anonymously in 1811. Shelley was 18 years old at the time. The poem was long lost. It has now been made public for the first time in…
2015-11-23 By Richard Weitz Second Line of Defense had the opportunity to attend this year’s 12th annual meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club in Sochi, where more than one hundred foreign and Russian participants heard President Vladimir Putin and other senior Russian officials and various international experts discussed recent international developments.…
