Robert Farley

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made clear that the United States Navy would not take steps to shoot down any North Korean ballistic missiles launched over the next week. North Korea is carrying out clear preparations for such a launch, under the argument that it is deploying a satellite. Japan, which also has sea-based ballistic […]

Internal political developments in the Czech Republic may affect the Obama administration’s calculations on missile defense, and on economic stimulus. Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek lost a no-confidence vote in parliament yesterday, possibly forcing his resignation. Topolanek has been an advocate of deploying a US anti-ballistic missile system on Czech territory, but the rest of […]

Word came out a few weeks ago that the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force was building a contingency plan to shoot down any North Korean ballistic missiles that might threaten Japanese territory. Japanese destroyers have the same anti-ballistic missile (ABM) capabilities as U.S. destroyers, and the North Korean satellite launch would provide an almost unique opportunity […]

An interlocutor has taken issue with this post, arguing that there were a clear series of connections between al-Qaeda and the ICU prior to 2006, and thus that the United States was entirely justified in supporting Ethiopia’s drive for regional hegemony counterterrorism operation in Somalia. A few words on this are in order… The phrase […]

Osama Bin Laden has released an audio tape denouncing Somali President Shariff Sheikh Ahmed, and calling for Somalis to resist the new government’s rule. Shariff Sheikh Ahmed is formerly the head of the Islamic Courts Union, which Ethiopia overthrew in 2006 with American assistance. The United States was concerned that the ICU was closely associated […]

Stephen Walt has developed a list of “dumb” policy debates in the United States, the criteria for which run as follows: But there is a special category of foreign policy where almost everyone agrees the existing policy is wrong-headed yet almost everyone also believes the policy is impossible to change. Walt lists farm subsidies (which […]

Remarkably interesting post this morning from Hans Kristensen on nuclear ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) patrols; last year the United States Navy conducted 31 deterrent patrols, as compared to a combined total of 22 by Russia, France, and the United Kingdom. Although China possesses three SSBNs, the PLAN has yet to perform any deterrent patrols. A […]

At Le Monde, Eric Paul Meyer lays out some of the difficulties that continue to face the government of Sri Lanka in its fight with the Tamil Tigers. The Sri Lankan government has recently won a series of spectacular victories against the Tigers, and has forced the hybrid guerrilla organization into a small northern pocket: […]

In a widely expected move, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced today that France would return to NATO’s military command. France left the command in 1966, as part of fromer President Charles De Gaulle’s drive for French foreign-policy independence from the United States. The actual impact of French withdrawal was somewhat less striking than the political maneuver […]

Alex Harrowell has a couple of interesting posts on the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, one at Fistful of Euros and the other at Yorkshire Ranter. The point is essentially this; the Soviets executed the withdrawal more competently that just about any other aspect of the war, and it worked out really well for them. The […]