Robert Farley

CNN is reporting that Russian armor is moving on South Ossetia. Reports of Russian bombing of Georgia continue; the Russians are complaining that Georgia is firing on Russian aircraft. –Robert Farley

Georgian forces are moving on the capitol of the breakaway region of South Ossetia: Georgia pounded the capital of its breakaway South Ossetia province with heavy weapons on Thursday after a ceasefire broke down within hours and separatists said they were under siege. “Georgian troops are storming Tskhinvali (the capital). They are bombing the city,” […]

Three months ago, Robert Kaplan and (to a lesser extent) George Packer decided to try to use Burmese cyclone victims as props in Humanitarian Intervention III: Objective Burma! The argument was that SLORC, the junta that controls Burma, was so inept and mendacious that a military assault to save disaster victims was both justified and […]

Dueling reports from The Times and The Guardian disagree on whether the British struck a deal with the Mahdi Army that prevented them from assisting in the Iraqi Army’s offensive in Basra earlier this year. The Times: A secret deal between Britain and the notorious al-Mahdi militia prevented British Forces from coming to the aid […]

I’m not sure that I would go as far as Tim in calling academic critics of Minerva “foolish”; there are some good reasons for social scientists to be wary of close collusion with the military apparatus of the US government. It’s true enough that academics will be designing their own projects, but the availability of […]

Two years ago Marc Levinson published The Box, an account of how the development of the shipping container had dramatically reduced transport costs and abetted the shift to global production in the modern economy. The configuration of modern economic production has made firms dependent on the ability to manufacture goods in a variety of locations, […]

In addition to the brewing conflict over Abkhazia, Georgia and Russia remain at loggerheads regarding South Ossetia. Doug Muir wrote a brief but detailed account of the conflict a few months ago. South Ossetia is an extremely poor region between Georgia and Russia, home to about 75000 people. South Ossetians are ethnically distinct from Georgians, […]

Mr. Trend talks a bit about the resumption of the Brazilian (civilian) nuclear power program: Interestingly, the public met such plans with an at-best lukewarm response in Brazil when they first came up, but after Jimmy Carter heavily pushed Brazil not to turn to nuclear power, it attained a level of popular nationalism the military […]

Oops. Three ballistic missile crew members fell asleep while holding classified missile launch codes two weeks ago in North Dakota, the Air Force said Thursday. The error triggered a military investigation, which found the codes were not compromised. But the July 12 incident comes on the heels of a series of missteps by the Air […]

It’s easy enough to criticize the diversion of $230 million earmarked for Pakistani counter-terrorism efforts to the upgrade of Pakistan’s F-16 force, but I’m not sure that it really leads anywhere. To be sure, the F-16s will be of minimal use in a counter-insurgency role (although it’s fair to say that improved targeting systems are […]