For some five years, from the 2004 presidential campaign through the end of his term, indignant media headlines excoriated Republican president George W. Bush for failing to stop Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir’s genocidal war in Sudan’s Darfur region. Hard-hitting media coverage echoed the imposing outrage expressed by Democratic politicians, leftist academic theorists and fashionable, liberal […]
Austin Bay
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Austin Bay: Strategist Putin strikes an ominous deal with Iran
Russian president Vladimir Putin made dangerous history in 2014. His invasion of Crimea and subsequent annexation of the peninsula shredded the diplomatic agreements stabilizing post-Cold War Eastern Europe. Then Putin ignited a low-level war in Eastern Ukraine. Despite a September 2014 ceasefire agreement, Putin’s overt covert war-making continues in Eastern Ukraine. The Kremlin has concluded […]
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Austin Bay: The struggle to reform Islam continues
It is much easier to count the dead in Paris than in rural Nigeria. Islamist terrorists connected to al-Qaida or Islamic State (perhaps both) murdered 17 people in the modern, globally linked capital of France. Seventeen is a definite number. Last week, Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamist terror movement, murdered several hundred people. Initial reports […]
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Austin Bay: Congo’s elites undermining peacekeeping successes
In February 2000, the U.N. authorized the current Congo peacekeeping operation and named it MONUCO: U.N. Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It’s 2015. For over 15 years, the U.N. has sustained a major peacekeeping and nation-building effort in the region. Has the effort been worth the troops and treasure? My answer requires […]
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Austin Bay: 2015: Will China continue to probe its neighbors?
A nudge by air in 2013. A probe by sea in 2014. Will China take a crack on land in 2015? For the sake of world peace, let’s hope not. However, China’s nudge and probe record, especially over the past two years, should worry diplomats and alert headline writers. In 2013, China tested Japanese and […]
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Austin Bay: Questions await Defense Secretary nominee
Several senators returning in 2015, among them Diane Feinstein, John McCain and Joe Manchin, have already announced that they support President Barack Obama’s nomination of Dr. Ashton Carter for secretary of defense. Sen. Feinstein welcomed “Dr. Ash Carter’s nomination” and urged her colleagues to “move his nomination” expeditiously. Sen. Manchin, noting he “enjoys credibility” with […]
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Austin Bay: WWII doctor relives battle’s fury in letters
Captain and medical doctor James E. Kreisle’s Dec. 6, 1944 letter, posted from Clervaux, Luxembourg, begins with a chest thump: “Dear Mum, Dad and Peg: I’ve just returned to my outfit after a leave which allowed me two days in Paris.” Leave? Impossible, Captain. Fall 1944’s cold, wet weather and illness kept Army doctors busy, […]
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Austin Bay: Putin’s Kemlin losing the oil price war
Free enterprise is proving to be Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s most potent foe. Moscow’s February 2014 invasion of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and its immediate annexation drastically altered international diplomatic calculations. In a year marked by the homicidal rise of the Islamic State and Chinese probes of East Asian maritime borders, Putin’s destruction of post-Cold War […]
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Austin Bay: Hagel firing simply a theatrical gesture
President Barack Obama has fired Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. The Beltway clerks and pundits tell us Hagel is a political scapegoat, a sacrifice to Obama’s electoral drubbing. This explanation may be accurate, at least in part. Removing a senior cabinet member is an inherently dramatic gesture. It can signal the president’s intent to rectify […]
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Austin Bay: Sherman’s March to the Sea: Total impact warfare
One hundred fifty years ago this month, General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Union “Army of the West” marched from Atlanta, Georgia, to the seaport of Savannah. En route, Sherman’s forces intentionally devastated a 60-mile wide swath of countryside. According to contemporaneous Confederate accounts, Sherman’s March to the Sea was a hideous form of “total war.” Yankee […]