Robert Farley

William F. Buckley has shuffled off his mortal coil. For want of something useful to say, I’ll just link to this account of a conversation on a NRO cruise between Buckley and Norm Podhoretz, cited by Wolcott: “Aren’t you embarrassed by the absence of these weapons?” Buckley snaps at Podhoretz. He has just explained that […]

Mr. Trend situates the opportunity for a new Cuba policy within the context of Brazilian foreign policy aspirations: One of Brazil’s better newspapers, Folha de São Paulo, has recently reported that, on his last trip to Cuba, Lula met with Raul Castro. Folha reported this past Wednesday that, during their meeting, among the other items […]

While on the topic of climate change and the military, Inside Defense had a couple of good articles last month on how a couple of different combatant commands are thinking about the problem. On Joint Forces Command: The U.S. military may be deployed more often to prop up weak governments worldwide as the effects of […]

Erik Loomis points to a Financial Times op-ed by John Podesta and Peter Ogden on the military response to climate change: In the run-up to the United Nations climate change conference in Bali, business people implored political leaders to take bold steps to combat global warming. They insisted that their ability to undertake effective long-term […]

Apparently, the track of the debris from the satellite the United States Navy plans to blow up tonight (10:30 Eastern) goes right across western and central Canada. Perhaps our Canadian readers should stay indoors tonight… –Robert Farley

Fidel Castro has stepped down after forty-nine years and ten American presidents. It’s worth noting that the proposed policies of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama differ in important aspects; Clinton won’t talk to Raul Castro, while Obama has held open the possibility of negotiations with the regime. Last year the Patterson School simulated the fall […]

Lots of stuff out there today on the decision to destroy a “rogue” satellite with elements of the missile defense system. Noah Shachtman explains how the satellite will be destroyed, and eviscerates the public rationale for destroying it. This sounds about right to me: Our veteran space security specialist believes there are several [rationales]. To […]

Via PP at Kos, Walter Pincus has a good article on the apparent decline of interest in nuclear security on the part of the Department of Defense and the United States Air Force. The concern stems from an inquiry into the incident last year in which a B-52, unbeknownst to anyone, carried five nuclear warheads […]

Via Alterdestiny, this is troubling: In an apparent violation of U.S. policy, Peace Corps volunteers and a Fulbright scholar were asked by a U.S. Embassy official in Bolivia “to basically spy” on Cubans and Venezuelans in the country, according to Peace Corps personnel and the Fulbright scholar involved. “I was told to provide the names, […]

At the core of the dispute sits a rock: An eight-ton rock rested for generations at the bottom of the Ohio River, minding its own business as time and currents passed. It favored neither Ohio to the north nor Kentucky to the south. It just — was…. The boulder became known as Indian Head Rock, […]