Section: The National Interest (USA)
Pentagon on Alert as Russia Preps for Huge Military Exercise
Sandra Erwin Security, Europe Should NATO be worried? The investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election is consuming the White House and gripping official Washington. The Pentagon, meanwhile, is turning its attention to Russia’s increasing military might. Defense and military experts from around the world will be...
Lawmakers Need a Russia Sanctions Strategy with an Exit Plan
Nikolas K. Gvosdev Politics, Americas History shows that the lack of flexibility or graduation mechanisms in congressional sanctions can create unnecessary complications for the United States. The Russia-sanctions train appears to be accelerating out of the congressional station, which makes it highly unlikely that both chambers of the...
New Artillery Rounds Will Help Restore America’s Conventional Deterrence
Dan Goure Security, The U.S. can no longer take its dominance as a given Once upon a time, the U.S. was the world’s sole military superpower. Commentators coined the phrase “the American way of war.” This term referred primarily to the employment of superior air and space capabilities to dominate the initial period of...
Ukraine’s Future Is Brighter Than You Think
Luke Coffey Politics, Europe Budget deficits have been reduced, budgetary discipline is being restored and there are finally signs of economic growth. Most of the attention Ukraine gets these days is about the war in the eastern part of the country—and rightly so. More than 10,000 people have been killed in the conflict since 2014. Ukrainian...
Ukraine Needs to Address Its Paramilitary Problem
Michael Sheldon Security, Europe Volunteer battalions represent a legitimacy dilemma for the Ukrainian government. Since the conclusion of Maidan, politically motivated private security actors operating in parallel with the Ukrainian government have played an integral part in the country’s security landscape. While some have been...
NATO Is Staging War Rehearsals for the Ultimate Nightmare: A Russian Invasion
Sandra Erwin Security, Europe Could it happen? President Trump’s assertion that NATO countries are not carrying their fair share of the security burden rings hollow across military bases in Eastern Europe this month, where 45,000 troops from the United States and 23 other countries are staging war rehearsals for a Russian invasion. Eighteen...
Is Russia Getting Ready to Build a New Aircraft Carrier and Fighter to Match?
Dave Majumdar Security, Maybe–and both might be blasts from the past. Russia is examining the possibility of building a new aircraft carrier along with a new short takeoff/vertical-landing (STOVL) fighter toward the end of its 2018-2025 state armament program. The new vessel—which would be a “heavy aircraft carrying cruiser”—would be a...
Russia’s Next Super Weapons: Big Aircraft Carriers and Nuclear-Powered Destroyers?
Dave Majumdar Security, Europe Could this happen? Russia is likely to build larger surface combatants in the coming years—with larger corvettes and frigates in the works. However, Moscow is not likely to spend large sums of money to build massive new vessels such as the gargantuan 14,000-ton Leader-class nuclear-powered destroyers or 100,000-ton...
5 Times Russia and America Almost Nuked Each Other (And Started World War III)
Tom Nichols Security, The end of world…almost. Every one of these crises could have resulted in a global conflagration. Earlier crises (such as the Berlin Blockade of 1948 or the Korean attack of 1950) could have led to war, but they took place before the superpowers developed huge stockpiles of nuclear-armed intercontinental missiles. Each...
Forget Trump Jr.’s Recklessness: The Battle Lines Are Already Drawn
Matt Purple Politics, Americas Whatever Trump Jr. did, the numerous causes of Trump’s election cannot be reduced to some hacked emails and a fruitless klatch with a Russian lawyer. The irony here is that Donald Trump has probably been tougher on Russia than Barack Obama was. Ham-handed efforts at forming a joint cybersecurity unit aside,...
