Was the Iraq Study Group Report Really a Flop?
For a document that was supposedly "dead-on-arrival," it's certainly having a strong influence
Robert D. Kaplan is the chief geopolitical analyst at Stratfor and a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He is the author, most recently, of The Revenge of Geography.
For a document that was supposedly "dead-on-arrival," it's certainly having a strong influence
Thucydides may have been the more trustworthy historian, but Herodotus would have been more fun to share a wineskin with—and is a better guide to the god-filled geopolitics of the current era.
Iraq may be closer to an explosion of genocide than we know.
The furor over Kim Jong Il’s missile tests and nuclear brinksmanship obscures the real threat: the prospect of North Korea’s catastrophic collapse. How the regime ends could determine the balance of power in Asia for decades. The likely winner? China
In trailers just minutes away from the slot machines, Air Force pilots control Predators over Iraq and Afghanistan. A case study in the marvels—and limits—of modern military technology
In the mountains of strife-torn Nepal, some lessons about modern warfare from a British throwback
Whatever else the American occupation of Iraq may be, it serves as a laboratory for ideas about how to wring stability out of chaos—the great foreign-policy challenge of the twenty-first century
With the Army Special Forces in the Philippines and Afghanistan—laboratories of counterinsurgency
The Middle East is just a blip. The American military contest with China in the Pacific will define the twenty-first century. And China will be a more formidable adversary than Russia ever was
"Every time you fire, a bad guy should bleed!" At the heart of the U.S. military's imperial venture is the training of indigenous troops around the world—and at the heart of that training is the rifle range. A report from Niger
If Recep Tayyip Erdogan gets his way, Turkey will be more Islamic and Europe will be more Turkish. Both would be good news
American reporters would shudder to think that they harbor class prejudice—but they do
Since the beginning of spring Fallujah has been at the heart of U.S. military preoccupations in Iraq. Our correspondent accompanied the first unit of Marines to assault the city after the murder and mutilation last April of four American civilians. He filed this report
Body armor is a must in some lines of work, and it gives "fashion plate" a whole new meaning
A new breed of American soldier—call him the soldier-diplomat—has come into being since the end of the Cold War. Meet the colonel who was our man in Mongolia, an officer who probably wielded more local influence than many Mongol rulers of yore
It is a cliché these days to observe that the United States now possesses a global empire—different from Britain's and Rome's but an empire nonetheless. It is time to move beyond a statement of the obvious. Our recent effort in Iraq, with its large-scale mobilization of troops and immense concentration of risk, is not indicative of how we will want to act in the future. So how should we operate on a tactical level to manage an unruly world? What are the rules and what are the tools?
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