U.N. and African mediators announced on Tuesday that South Sudan’s president Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar have agreed to a ceasefire. A political agreement signaling a common desire to curb South Sudan’s internal turmoil made by these two political adversaries and erstwhile guerrilla allies is a major step toward preventing a much larger […]

The U.N. Security Council’s mandate authorizing French military intervention in the Central African Republic’s expanding civil war is one more indication that in sub-Saharan Africa’s chaotic corners, “peacekeeping with teeth” has become bottom line U.N. policy. Peacekeeping with teeth, hard peacekeeping and peace restoration are a few of the diplomatic euphemisms trotted out to camouflage […]

High unemployment rates, which persist for years, slowly transform from difficult economic problems into multi-dimensional strategic decline. In the worst cases, decline fuels despair and creates the social conditions that spawn violent dictatorships. Since the early 1980s, several European countries have confronted structural unemployment. In a recent Moody’s Analytics report, economist Martin Janicko argues that […]

Enhancing survival is the gut reason for spying. In the case of the United States, enhancing survival means reducing the likelihood that enemy surprise attacks like Pearl Harbor and 9/11 will succeed. America’s spies and its intelligence agencies stand between the American public and a nuclear 9/11. They stand between America and several thousand other […]

The 1973 October War was the Arab-Israeli war Israel almost lost. Historians generally attribute Israel’s costly victory to two Israeli lapses, a successful enemy deception operation and a very astute Egyptian war plan. The lapses and enemy deception scheme still shape Israeli security policy, especially toward Iran and its nuclear weapons program. Israel’s first lapse […]