Robert Farley

Now this is fascinating: In a sign of growing concern in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government over US President Barack Obama‘s Middle East policies, Minister-without-Portfolio Yossi Peled proposed Israeli sanctions on the US in a letter to cabinet ministers on Sunday… In the interim, the minister suggests reconsidering military and civilian purchases from the US, […]

Last week, an interview at a Brazilian defense website revealed that China and Brazil had come to an agreement regarding the training of Chinese naval personnel on board the Sao Paulo, Brazil’s only aircraft carrier. Brazil is one of the only four countries in the world to possess an aircraft carrier capable of launching and […]

North Korea announced that it had tested a second nuclear device yesterday, a move which immediately earned the condemnation of the international community. Initial reports indicated that the explosion was in the 15-20 kiloton range (roughly the size of the Hiroshima bomb) but those reports appear to have been mistaken; the bomb was probably fewer […]

Last week I spoke with Vanda Felbab-Brown of Brookings about gangsters, pirates, insurgents, and weak states. Here we talk a bit about the violence of the Mexican drug cartels: Ms. Felbab-Brown also has a Ms. Felbab-Brown also has a paper on the Mexican drug cartels from Brookings that’s worth your valuable time. –Robert Farley

Via David Axe and the United States Naval Institute blog, Fairplay Shipping News reports that a retired Soviet admiral has claimed that many of the chief Somali pirates were trained in Soviet naval schools. Sergey Bliznyuk told the Ukrainian newspaper Gazeta Po-Kievskiy that he had personally come across some men he now believes are behind […]

If true, this is hilarious. Reportedly, Venezuela and Russia were close to a deal on purchasing several ultra-quiet KILO diesel submarines. Last November’s visit to Venezuela by the Russian nuclear battlecruiser Peter the Great was intended to enhance the status of both nations and to help seal the submarine deal. Unfortunately, a dispute broke out: […]

A New York Times article this morning highlighted the fact that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal appears to be increasing, in spite of the fact that the Taliban insurgency occupies much of Pakistani territory. This fits in well with a developing narrative about how Pakistan’s focus on India is the problem: The story goes that the Pakistani […]

The government is on the verge of crushing the last remnant of the Tigers in Sri Lanka. The leader of the LTTE, Velupillai Prabhakaran, appears to have been killed in the latest government offensive. Sri Lanka’s prime minister will announce victory tomorrow. The military defeat of the Tigers won’t exactly solve the political issues in […]

Reuters reports that North Korea may be preparing a new nuclear test: There is increased activity at North Korea’s known nuclear test site, a South Korean news report said on Thursday, suggesting Pyongyang is gearing up for a new test as it has threatened in response to tightened U.N. sanctions. Impoverished North Korea, whose only […]

According to Der Spiegel, National Security Adviser James Jones nixed a proposed German assault on a ship seized by Somali pirates. The assault would have been launched from the USS Boxer, and would have involved up to 200 German counterterrorism personnel. The operation planned to take the Hansa Stavanger, a German freighter with 24 hostages […]