By Richard Weitz Last month, Second Line of Defense attended the eighht annual Moscow Conference on International Security (MCIS-2019), which met from April 24-26. The Russian capital was surprisingly warm, with the temperature higher than in Washington, but the frigidity of the Russian-U.S. relationship was pervasive at the conference. The…
By Robbin Laird Clearly, Europe is in crisis. In my own view, it faces a double constitutional crisis. Brexit is an internal constitutional crisis in the "United" Kingdom and poses a constitutional crisis within the European "Union" which is itself undergoing significant regional devolution. The continental European economies are facing…
A Joint Task Force consisting of up to four ships, maritime patrol aircraft and more than 1,200 personnel from the Australian Defence Force are deployed on Indo-Pacific Endeavour 2019, a series of key engagement activities with Australia’s regional neighbours. Running from March to May, Indo-Pacific Endeavour 2019 is geared towards…
By Robbin Laird The Trump Administration's National Security Strategy underscored the return of great power competition. By so doing, they did focus much more on the world as it is, rather than the last Administration which focused more on the world one might wish existed. But neither really capture the…
By Robbin Laird Two broad findings can be drawn from my five years of visiting Australia and working with the Australian Defence Force. The first is that they are very focused on building out as integrated a force as they are capable of doing, and that means not only leveraging…
By Ed Timperlake As the Guaidó forces on the streets of Venezuela were losing the tactical battle, a strategic defeat was rapidly approaching, that is until the president made an historic phone call to President Putin. That call accomplished a most important objective: President Trump personally built new strategic maneuvering space,…
We recently visited the Warlords at Beaufort MCAS. We had a chance to meet with the CO of the squadron and to watch flight demos at this year's airshow hosted by Beaufort MCAS. This gave us a chance to reflect back at the more than a decade of dealing with…
The return of the Russians to a position of directly threatening Europe is not a return to the Cold War. Not only is Russia, not the Soviet Union with the Warsaw Pact, but the threat being posed is considerably different. Analysts have focused on the hybrid threat whereby Russia uses…
