2014-07-30 By Oscar Nkala French defense minister Yves Le Drian says his country will in early August deploy more than 3 000 soldiers to start military operations under its broadened trans-Sahel counter-terrorism initiative which is set to operate from a string of bases in Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, Mali and…
2014-07-24 Earlier we published a piece addressed Norwegian participation in RIMPAC 2014. http://sldinfo.wpstage.net/norway-comes-to-rimpac-2014-for-the-first-time-a-symbol-of-21st-century-dynamics/ Norway was joined by China and India as first time RIMPAC participants. What follows below is the official Norwegian government explanation for its participation in the Pacific exercise by the Norwegian Defense Minister. Speech at RIMPAC 2014…
2014-07-20 By Robbin Laird It started with a crisis in Ukraine; it then became a Russian invasion of Ukraine and “taking back its legitimate territory” from the Putin-led Russian perspective. It has continued with an intermittently savage conflict on Ukrainian territory with Russia ratcheting up pressure and fostered in part…
2014-07-14 By Ed Timperlake and Robbin Laird When Americans hear Iraq, they think of a difficult country, far away, with a lot of recent history and little desire to revisit either the history or the country. When one adds to this a President who ran against his predecessor in part…
2014-07-19 By Stig Jarle Hansen, Associate Senior Analyst, Risk Intelligence Overview Since the French intervention early in 2013, the Mali conflict has been a defining one for regional security. The intervention itself was successful in the short run. Territorial integrity was more or less restored by the end of 2013,…
2014-07-16 By Kenneth Maxwell With the World Cup behind them President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, President Xi Jinping of China, and President Jacob Zuma of South Africa, met in Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil, this week for the sixth BRICS summit . BRICS is an acronym conceived…
2014-07-16 By Lieutenant General Ted F. Bowlds USAF (ret) To those who believe innovation inside the government, within the walls of the Pentagon bureaucracy is impossible, I am here to tell you it can happen. It requires only two ingredients. The first key ingredient is the entrepreneur, the innovator, and…
2014-07-09 By Robbin Laird When we wrote our book on Pacific strategy, a key element in considering how the key challenges facing the United States and its allies was how Japanese relationships with the US and the Pacific allies might evolve. The entire second section of our book deals with…
