“The sky turned red and it rained for four days straight. If there was ever a time you thought the world was going to end, it was that day.” These sound like lines straight out of a sci-fi thriller but, in fact, they are Minister Tony de Brum’s personal account of the effects of Castle Bravo, the largest nuclear test in US history. This was just one nuclear test out of the 68 that the United States conducted over a 12-year span (1946-1958) in t...
Illustration by Esha Maharishi The recent failure of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (JSCDR) to reach an agreement on the reduction of the federal deficit may turn into a full-blown military budget crisis with enormous, unforeseen consequences for national security if the United States does not act soon. The question is no longer whether defense cuts must be made. They are inevitable. But if cuts are made across the board, witho...
...is resignation last May. Obama has lost time and momentum to inherited wars and the economic crisis, but nonetheless his track record in the Americas is inconsistent at best. Despite Obama’s emphasis on engagement, the United States has experienced ambassadorial dismissals with Venezuela, Mexico, Bolivia and Ecuador. Several incidents, such as the Argentine seizure of US military equipment from a cargo plane this February, developed unnecessarily...
...and power shifts have revitalized interest in the doctrine, which faced the prospect of irrelevance after the end of the Cold War. As territorial rifts in the Asia-Pacific region stir up tensions between China and the United States, many wonder whether the coming decades will see a world not too different from that of the Cold War, defined in the terms of an American or Chinese tilt. A large number of foreign policy experts are becoming increasi...
...its claims against Abedin, save for citing Gaffney’s video, which, among other things, claims that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated past Republican and Democratic White House administrations and is destroying the United States from within through “civilization jihad.” Subsequently, with no credible evidence to back her claim, Bachmann’s accusations went unnoticed in American political circles. One month later, however, anti-Clinton demonstr...
...ustice and international law simply by mobilizing its vast financial resources. To this point, those who follow international affairs might object that such abuses of human rights and international law are typical of powerful states: Consider the United States’ reliance on torture of captives at Guantanamo Bay or on drone strikes in unstable countries. “Might makes right,” the saying goes, and that’s just the way it is. Such objections would be v...
...cision-guided weapons and space-enabled communication has become engrained in the operations of every branch of the military. If those satellites were jammed electronically or destroyed outright by a hostile power, the United States would be militarily crippled. It is perhaps impossible to overstate how vital these areas are to questions of U.S. strategy. But space is not just a place for war or exploration; it is also a place for profit. Private...
...c Treaty System (ATS) banned military deployments, nuclear tests, commercial mining, and territorial claims in Antarctica. As early as between 1982 and 1988, though, several industrialized powers – most prominently the United States, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand – pushed in favor of the Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities (CRAMRA), which would have created an ad hoc international legal framework allowing t...
...e, and the corresponding rise in sea levels. While perhaps a distant concern both geographically and temporally for much of the world’s population, rising sea levels pose an imminent threat to the inhabitants of small island states (SIS) already suffering from the effects. The highest point in the Marshall Islands, for instance, is only 10 meters above sea level, while other SIS such as Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Republic of Maldives average just...
In February, the United States Navy and Yemeni security forces seized a shipment of allegedly Iranian-made shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles heading to Houthi insurgents in Yemen. Far from a one-time incident, it is symptomatic of a larger and more disturbing trend in the region. Through the Quds force—a mix of an intelligence agency and special forces— Iran has begun providing significant support to various groups across the Middle East. Th...
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