2013-10-03 Hubert Stephenson was the co-pilot of the B-17 which was forced to crash land on July 4, 1943 in France. We participated in this summer's ceremony to honor the crew and to place a monument in the local area in their honor. A ceremony was held on Noirmoutier island, France,…
2013-10-03 by Robbin Laird The PRC leadership clearly has growing global aspirations. It is also a leadership living on top of a caldron of economic and ethnic dynamics. The two can actually go together, in terms of global play and reach being a means of containing domestic pressures. Obviously, the…
2013-10-01 By Robbin Laird Recently, we published a comprehensive report by Richard Weitz on Azerbaijan. Weitz argued that: The Republic of Azerbaijan is a close U.S. ally since Azerbaijanis regained their independence following the Soviet Union’s collapse. It has become a prominent role model for Muslim-majority nations seeking to manage…
2013-09-30 By Guy Martin The US military has stopped flying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from its main African base in Djibouti after a string of crashes, moving operations to a remote desert airstrip. Camp Lemonnier, next to Djibouti’s international airport, is the only official American military base on the African continent…
2013-09-30 by Chloé-Alexandra Laird I had the honor in June of this year to ask a couple of questions to Michel Adrien, a witness to the B17 crash in the town of Noirmoutier, France on July 4th, 1943. Q: How old were you when you witnessed this American plane crash…
2013-9-29 By Robbin Laird Clearly, when one looks back on 2008, the actions against Georgia were the beginning of a more assertive Russian policy. A line in the sand was placed on NATO expansion, and neither the United States nor Europe have really crossed that line since then. With the…
2013-09-26 By Robbin Laird The United States is no longer a superpower. It is clearly a significant global power. The period where the Soviet Union collapsed and left the US in a lopsided leadership position was a clear anomaly. This period is in the rear view mirror. Some asserted during…
2013-09-23 By Ed Timperlake John Boyd in his lecture (which I sat through twice) had a sine qua non building block for his work: the F-86 versus Mig-15 exchange rate kills by his beloved F-86 in "MIG Ally. " The exchange rate was approximately 10 to 1. Lessons learned at…
