Stay Out of Petty Island Disputes in East Asia

One of the most dangerous international disputes that the United States could get dragged into has little importance to U.S. security – the disputes nations have over small islands (some really rocks rising out of the sea) in East Asia. Although any war over these...

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Call Hamid Karzai’s Bluff

The ever-mercurial Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, recently called a council of the nation’s tribal elders (a loya jirga) to ratify a bilateral security agreement reached with the United States governing the up to 12,000 U.S. forces that would be left in that...

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A Slippery Slope Back Into Iraq?

Despite having an increasingly autocratic and sectarian Shi'ite government that allows overflights of Iranian arms to a Syrian government opposed by U.S.-supported rebels, President Obama has pledged to increase military assistance to Iraq – reversing a five-year...

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