Abraham Lincoln referred to the "terrible arithmetic" that it would take for the Union to win the civil war, meaning that the greater number of soldiers supported by the more advanced economy would eventually wear the Confederates down, though at great cost...
As in the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, an aggressive France threatens to pull the United States into another brushfire, nation-building war in the developing world. This time it is in the West African state of Mali. The French have panicked because...
As the French invade Mali under the guise of fighting "Islamic terrorism," the reawakening of long dormant French imperialism straddles the fine line between comedy and tragedy. A French air strike against a rebel-held town wound up killing over a hundred,...
The U.S. government recently designated the Syrian opposition group Jabhat al-Nusra Front a foreign terrorist organization. The move was designed to built Western support against the Syrian government by alleviating fears that money and weapons donated to the...
Gauging U.S. military policy — at least on a meta level — isn’t as hard as it looks, as long as you remember a few general axioms: like, what seems to be true today, will almost certainly change tomorrow, and never, ever listen to a four-star commander when he says...
The United States is meddling in another internal civil war to prevent a “terrorist haven” from developing. This time it’s not in Somalia or Yemen but instead in the West African country of Mali. The United States and France are concerned that Islamists have taken...
Army Gen. Carter F. Ham, head of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), stood at a podium in Algeria and addressed the deteriorating security conditions in the neighboring country of Mali. (For those geographically-challenged, remember when you were a kid and people used...
NIAMEY – Since January, various groups of Tuareg rebels in Mali have come together in an attempt to administer a new northern state called Azawad. While this was announced on April 6, the rebel grouping’s control of the region remains questionable, and the roots...
