Eurozone Faltering – Again

03/15/2013
2013-03-15 By Harald Malmgren ECB President Mario Draghi dramatically declared last year “the ECB would do whatever it takes” to stabilize Eurozone bond markets. It would purchase sovereign debt of troubled Euro member governments on condition that such governments would permit a European Union or Eurozone body to oversee and…

Hatchet Job on the Potomac: The Washington Post Fails Its Readers

03/10/2013
2013-03-10 by Robbin Laird I was spending my Sunday working on the last chapter of our book on shaping a 21st century Pacific strategy.  The F-35 among other systems figures prominently in how to build a 21st strategy, not simply funding a 20th century residue. We have interviewed many of…

The ARG/MEU in Transition

03/10/2013
2013-03-10 By Col Bradley Weisz, Deputy Commander ESG 2,  Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek, VA The ARG-MEU is a very flexible instrument. But as the demand side remains high, and the strategic environment evolves in the 21st century, some changes in operational art are both possible and necessary. The purpose…

The Seabase in Evolution: The Navy’s New Mobile Landing Platform

03/08/2013
2013-03-05 by Robbin Laird and Murielle Delaporte This past Saturday, we attended the christening of the latest US Navy ship at General Dynamics’s NASSCO shipyard in San Diego. Fully loaded, the new ship will displace more than 80,000 tons – yet it isn’t an aircraft carrier. Instead, the USNS Montford…

The PRC Expands its Global Presence: The African Case

03/08/2013
2013-03-08 By Richard Weitz In the past decade, Sino-African relations have increased in importance. Recent trends point to Chinese involvement in three areas of interest: economic policy, diplomacy, and military cooperation. Beijing’s policies with reference to sub-Saharan Africa reflect clear goals: 1)    expanding export markets (to Africa’s growing middle class) 2)   …

Can US Industry Turn Innovative Products Into Volume Production?

03/07/2013
2013-03-07 By Richard A. McCormack, [email protected] http://www.manufacturingnews.com Structural changes in U.S. industry over the past 30 years caused primarily by the financial sector's insatiable quest for profits have left "gaping holes" in the American system of scaling up new technologies to large-scale production, according to preliminary findings from a study…

China and African Peacekeeping

03/07/2013
2013-03-07 by Richard Weitz In the past decade, the PLA has increasingly participated in multilateral peacekeeping operations in Africa. Since 2000—when China deployed fewer than 100 peacekeepers—there has been nearly a twenty-fold increase in troops-on-the-ground. In recent years, China has provided more troops, police, and observer teams to UN peacekeeping…