2013-09-16 By Richard Weitz 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 religious and ethnic differences in a harmonious and productive manner. Thanks to its secular…
2013-09-15 In a twist of the South Korean procurement dynamic, the MOD procurement officials are excluding two of the three competitors for the next cycle of acquisition of combat aircraft for the South Korean Air Force. The Eurofighter and the F-35 are being excluded from consideration because of procedural issues…
2013-09-15 By Robbin Laird and Ed Timperlake Next month, Georgetown University is to host event honoring the memory of the late Vaclav Havel. Georgetown was one of the first places that Havel visited after coming to the U.S. in 1990, following the revolution that brought freedom to the nation. “I…
2013-09-13 by Robbin Laird The current Syrian crisis reminds one of the importance of understanding the neighborhood. A crisis is always contextual; and the neighbors are part of what happens next and the shape of geopolitics to come. Too often the public could not find countries within which crises are…
2013-09-12 by Robbin Laird In the days when there was a Soviet Union, no one would look at a Middle East crisis without looking at what the Soviets were prepared to do or how they might try to play out their interests. As the Soviet Union faced the end game,…
2013-09-05 By Kenneth Maxwell What on earth led the US to think that it was appropriate to snoop on the internal e-mails and computer messages and communications of allies like the President of Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto, and the President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff? The most recent revelations via Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald are…
2013-09-09 By Robbin Laird In the oft debated and discussed arms transfer export reforms, slow is an understatement. Irrelevance to this century might be another one. The nature of the arms business has changed so much from the late 20th century in response to global manufacturing, that debating which widgets should…
2013-09-09 by Richard Weitz South Korea’s total military expenditure reached almost $31bn in 2011, making it the third largest defense spender in Asia and the 12th largest in the world. Since the end of the Korean War, the United States has been the largest supplier of defense systems to South…
