Thursday, March 28, 2024

The war IS not over: Pulling out would lead to more conflict on the ground and more instability overall

By Behnam Said

Shortly before the holidays, on Dec. 19, 2018, US President Donald Trump claimed victory over the Islamic State (IS) and ordered the withdrawal of 2,000 American troops from the northeast of Syria. Experts and observers mostly agreed that the true beneficiaries of this decision were Turkey on the one side and the current Syrian government …

US-North Korean talks continue, but can Kim Jong-un’s pledge to give up his nuclear program be taken at face value?

By Hanns G. Hilpert

The White House has announced that US President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un will hold their second summit meeting at the end of February. Optimists expect that Kim Jong-un will follow through with his stated willingness to denuclearize and commit to a verifiable, irreversible nuclear dismantling. Pessimists are afraid that we …

Russia’s aggression in the Black Sea shows how little it worries about a strong response from the West

By Ann-Dorit Boy

For the first ten months of 2018, the war in Ukraine continued to simmer without making front-page news abroad. Neither the Russianbacked separatists nor Ukrainian forces escalated the fighting beyond limited but often deadly violations of the Minsk II agreement along the Eastern Ukrainian frontline. The situation changed on Nov. 25, when Russian coast guard …

All terror politics is local: Jihadi groups in sub-Saharan Africa are more of a regional than a global threat

All terror politics is local: Jihadi groups in sub-Saharan Africa are more of a regional than a global threat
By Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos

France’s former minister of defense and current minister of foreign affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian, takes very seriously the threats currently destabilizing the Sahel, especially since the intervention in Mali by French troops in January 2013. He co-organizes the annual Dakar International Forum on Peace and Security in Africa. At the most recent forum, on Nov. …

For a future without chains : African authoritarianism and Western intrusion are blocking the continent’s development

By Dominic Johnson

Africa is the cradle of humanity and simultaneously the world’s youngest continent. It is home to more than 1.3 billion people (including North Africa), a number that continues to increase by roughly 50 million each year. According to UN projections, the population is set to almost double to roughly 2.5 billion people by mid-century. In …

Terror, old and new: In Africa, militant groups swearing allegiance to the Islamic State are multiplying.

By Marc Engelhardt

On Dec. 21, 2018, the declaration of war came from an unexpected source: “A so-called Islamic State has appeared in our country,” it said. “We have been observing its dangerous behavior for a time in the hope that it would change, but this has not taken place.” The speaker was Ali Rage, leader of Al …

The number of Africans migrating overseas is bound to rise significantly, and most will head for Europe

By Stephen Smith

A growing security threat at Europe’s southern borders has remained unacknowledged for almost a century. It has never been conceived in military terms and, I believe, rightfully so. But it has been depoliticized as merely a matter of economic expediency – the intake, first, of a cheap and much needed low-skilled labor force and, then, …

Global arms sales have grown for the third year in a row with Russia crowding out the UK for second place

By Markus Bickel

The difference in numbers is striking. Whereas $7.87 billion was spent on the 16 peacekeeping operations organized by the United Nations, global arms sales reached almost $400 billion. For the third year in a row, the United States along with Russia, China, Great Britain, France and Germany earned almost fifty times more in arms revenues …

Even a globally adopted database will not resolve the problem of ambiguous military spending data

Even a globally adopted database will not resolve the problem of ambiguous military spending data
By Mathias Albert and Thomas Müller

As a comparative measure, military spending is frequently used in both scholarly and political debates. Assessing the balance of power, level of armaments as well as arms races and arms control issues all require comparisons. While military spending refers to the input rather than the output dimension of military capabilities, it is nonetheless often regarded …

Death by remote: Do drones actually serve the war on terror?

By Emran Feroz

Several weeks ago, Mullah Abdul Manan Akhund, a powerful Taliban commander from the southern Afghan province of Helmand, was struck down by an American drone strike and his death celebrated. Many observers, including journalists and politicians from Afghanistan and elsewhere, flooded networks like Twitter with exclamations of joy over the attack.

The death of Mullah …

Journalists in conflict zones are increasingly targeted for their work. Media outlets must take ownership of their responsibilities

Journalists in conflict zones are increasingly targeted for their work. Media outlets must take ownership of their responsibilities
By Ines Pohl

Unfortunately, the remark attributed to Senator Hiram Johnson remains as valid today as when it was uttered in 1917: “The first casualty when war comes is truth.” With the outbreak of armed conflict, information decays into propaganda, thereby becoming an additional weapon of war. That makes the independent work of reporters all the more important …

We need a genuine European Cybersecurity Agency

We need a genuine European Cybersecurity Agency
By Sir Julian King

The security threats we face, not only in Europe but around the world, are increasingly cross-border in nature. Those who seek to harm us pay little heed to the niceties of national boundaries or international law. Successfully tackling these crossborder threats requires a crossborder response. Our work on security in the European Union underscores the …

More hackable things

By Ben Knight

Almost imperceptibly, the innocuous gadgets that surround us have become alive with threat. Fridges, smart electricity meters, cars, construction cranes – a bigger Internet of Things (IoT) means more hackable things: in other words, more points at which systems can be breached and disrupted.

Not only that, the pace of this change is likely to …

The real cyber threat is your likes

By P. W. Singer and Emerson Brooking

All through December 2018, a hacker by the online handle “Orbit” teased and tantalized his followers, releasing a new heap of hacked emails, chatlogs and home addresses each day. At first, German comedians, YouTube stars, rappers and TV stars were the only ones affected, with the media and public commenting and sharing the information that …

Can corporations make the digital sphere secure?

By Myriam Dunn Cavelty and Jacqueline Eggenschwiler

Not so long ago, when it came to cyberspace, states were believed to be powerless entities with no meaningful policy tools at their disposal. The supposed novelty of the cyber domain was thought to render traditional forms of state intervention and strategies useless. Now researchers and policymakers have come to realize that this is not …