When the late Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), was engaged in a heavily one-sided battle against a robustly-armed Israel in 2000, he admitted the Palestinians were completely outgunned by the Israelis. As the the U.S.-supplied...
When world leaders packed their bags and headed home last week, there was one lingering memory of the General Assembly’s high-level debate: Benjamin Netanyahu’s dramatic presentation of a cartoonish nuclear red line, which hit the front pages of most mainstream...
As the United States withdraws the last of its 50,000 troops after a nearly nine-year military occupation of Iraq, visiting Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki had one final request: billions of dollars' worth of U.S. weapons for his ragtag armed forces. A longstanding...
The world's nuclear powers - both declared and undeclared - have come primarily from Asia: China, India, Pakistan and possibly North Korea. The Middle East was dominated by a single nuclear power - Israel, which has refused to publicly declare its status. But that...
Peeved at Russia's Security Council veto derailing a Western-sponsored resolution against Syria last week, U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice implicitly accused the Russians of protecting the beleaguered government of President Bashar al-Assad primarily to safeguard their...
A resolution inspired by Western nations critical of civilian killings in politically-beleaguered Syria is facing threats from two veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council: Russia and China. If and when the resolution is adopted by the 15-member...
A proposed international conference on a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, tentatively scheduled for 2012, may be in jeopardy amid the growing political turmoil sweeping across the Arab world - and Israel's fears of negative fallout on its own security. The proposal...
Latin America has displaced traditional high-rollers, including the Middle East and Europe, as the region registering the largest percentage increase in military spending last year, according to a new study released by the Stockholm International Peace Research...
The world's key arms manufacturers are still firmly entrenched in the United States and Western Europe, while some of the newly-emerging military industries in China, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Israel, Turkey and Kuwait are trailing mostly far behind. A new...
When embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak reluctantly called it quits after more than two weeks of mass demonstrations against his 30-year-old authoritarian regime, he temporarily turned over the country to an institution trained, armed and nurtured by the...
