This distinction is crucial. An attack on the citizens or infrastructure of another state has traditionally been considered an act of war. Actions by the United States, Russia, Israel and other countries in recent decades have somewhat blurred this distinction.

Yale historian Timothy Snyder was out banging the fascist drum again this weekend in The New York Times. In the aftermath of the Washington riot by America’s version of the old Russian Black Hundreds, Snyder warns of Donald Trump’s ‘pre-fascism’. This builds on his previous work, which portrays Trump as tool of the not pre- but very genuinely ‘fascist’ Valdimir Putin.

A responsible and wise DCI like this is vital if the United States wishes to avoid more foolish and ill-conceived failing policies and military operations overseas. Biden has made a savvy choice.

President-elect Joe Biden has finally named a new CIA director, one of the final senior-level appointees for his new administration.  Much to the surprise of many of us who follow these things, he named senior diplomat Williams Burns to the position.  Burns is one of the most highly-respected senior U.S. diplomats of the past three decades.  He has ably served presidents of both parties and is known as both a reformer and as a supporter of human rights.

In the United States, the president has sole authority to order the use of nuclear weapons, for any reason and at any time. This arrangement is both risky and unnecessary.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, however, is wrong to assure her that there are checks in place to prevent this. There are not.

Between the 27th September and the 10th November 2020 over 100,000 Armenians have been displaced, nearly 4000 killed, and many sites of Armenian cultural and historical significance have been taken, damaged or destroyed.  Pietro Shakarian talks through the history of not only the region where the conflict has taken place, but the why’s and the how’s and also the implications on the people who have lived there for generations who are now refugees.

Peace Corner is a place to begin discussion about the ways war can be avoided if peaceful solutions are prioritized, freeing up funds for human needs.

When it became evident that Joe Biden had won the U.S. presidency, European officials, NATO bureaucrats, Eurocratic elites, and most other Europeans collectively exhaled in relief. Washington think tanks produced a swarm of papers and webinars featuring the same advocates celebrating the return of the consensus that Americans must forever pay for the continent’s defense.

It may make sense for America to step back and avoid the temptation to take sides in [Ukrainian] political, cultural, and religious debates for temporary foreign policy advantage. This was the approach that George Kennan advised taking toward Russia after its liberation from communism. “Let them work out their internal problems in their own manner,” Kennan wrote, for “the ways by which people advance towards dignity and enlightenment in government are things that constitute the deepest and most intimate processes of national life. There is nothing less understandable to foreigners, nothing in which foreign influence can do less good.”