Best of the Moment
foreign-policy-defence
central-south-america
Dexter Filkins & Mark Mazzetti | NYT | 14 March 2010
Straight out of a thriller novel. Pentagon official uses millions diverted from other projects to run private intelligence network targeting assassinations in Afghanistan, Pakistan. Allegedly
Mark Perry | Foreign Policy | 13 March 2010
US army commander says US has to stick up more visibly for Palestinians. Seemingly unconditional support for Israel endangers US troops in region
Thomas Friedman | NYT | 13 March 2010
Israel needs a wake-up call. US needs to show backbone. After East Jerusalem fiasco, Biden should have got straight back on his plane and flown home
Robert Kaplan | Atlantic | April 2010
Big think-piece. Enemy in Afghanistan is not just the Taliban, it is history, geography, economics. Can the US army change the fundamentals of a country? And at what cost to itself?
Michael Crowley | New Republic | 9 March 2010
Profile of brutal Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, radical Islamist who fought the Red Army with US support, then led the anti-US insurgency after 2001. US needs him as a friend again
Michael Rühle | IP Global | March 2010
Step-by-step guide for going nuclear. You need a civilian nuclear programme to cover enrichment, a space programme to cover missile acquisition. North Korea and Russia will help
Philip Gourevitch | News Desk | 2 March 2010
France arrests ex-first lady of Rwanda on genocide charges, after sheltering her since 1994. France now accepting it was wrong on genocide, restoring relations with Kagame government
Kenneth Anderson | SSRN | 28 February 2010
Targeted killing by unmanned aerial vehicle is good anti-terrorist policy, legitimate self-defense. Obama is right to step up programme, needs to assert its legality more aggressively (PDF)
Robert Baer | WSJ | 27 February 2010
Ex-CIA agent concludes that high-level assassinations are pretty much finished as a political tool. Thanks to CCTV you just can't get away with it any more, as Israel has found in Dubai
Piers Brendon | NYT | 24 February 2010
British historian considers whether America doomed to imperial decline, like Rome and Britain. Not necessarily: America stronger than either. But it does need to husband resources