Mel Gurtov The growing rift between Saudi Arabia and Iran is reportedly causing great consternation in US policy making circles.  Once again, US officials are called upon to decide whether to support an ally that isn’t behaving in accord with US interests, significantly modify the relationship, or abandon …

Rajeshwari Krishnamurthy The concept of using ‘counter-narratives’ to counter extremist propaganda is a strategy aimed to provide alternate narratives, to counter the narratives employed by extremist groups – the Islamic State (IS) especially – to attract, condition, and to recruit potentially vulnerable individuals, especially youth. Given the high …

Zayd Alisa Saudi Arabia, one year after king Salman acceded to the throne and 9-months after appointing his favourite – young and inexperienced – son, Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) Deputy Crown Prince (DCP), is grappling with not merely an increasingly relentless power struggle, compounded by an unprecedented devastating …

Over the past several decades, China has risen to become a prominent player on the world stage with global operations and interests far from its shores. The People’s Liberation Army reorients itself toward China’s evolving priorities in all spheres from weapons acquisitions to the army organization. The growing …

Stephen Lendman Washington tolerates no governments it doesn’t control, wanting pro-Western vassal states replacing sovereign independent ones – notably Russia and China, both countries targeted for regime change. Neocon/super-hawk former US Deputy Defense Secretary and World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz [pictured left] earlier explained Washington’s “first objective is …

Jeremy Garlick Since the start of 2016, there has been a proliferation of downbeat prognoses about the dire state of China’s economy in the Western media. Respected organs such as The Economist and The Wall Street Journal have opined that it is a question not of if but …

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute conducted an intensive multi-week exercise to frame, design, and evaluate potential courses of action that the United States could pursue to defeat the threat from the Islamic State in …

Jeffrey Rathke NATO’s strategy for transatlantic security, throughout the Cold War and to the present day, has been based on deterrence of potential adversaries through a mixture of both conventional and nuclear forces. A coherent and effective deterrence and defense policy depends on both aspects, especially at a …