ArcaMax

Popular history credits Russian Czar Nicholas I with describing 19th-century Ottoman Turkey as "The Sick Man of Europe."

British envoy Sir George Hamilton's full quote lacks the headline's memorable pop: "We have a sick man on our hands, a man gravely ill ..." The czar added that it would be dreadful if sick man Turkey slipped away "before ...Read more

Trump administration "transactional diplomacy" envoys definitely tackle the tough wars -- but this time, the process has produced a bona fide peace deal.

The Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda aren't high-tech Ukraine and Russia. Russian nuclear weapons and proximity to NATO nations give that war a deadly global relevance.

However, a ...Read more

As I write this column late on June 24, Israel and Ayatollah Iran have stopped their latest battle of long-range missiles and bombs.

A tentative ceasefire holds, a ceasefire more or less personally imposed by U.S. president Donald Trump.

The predicate for Trump's ability to demand a ceasefire? The U.S. Air Force 509th Bomb Wing's jaw-...Read more

The Israel-Iran War Over Nuclear Weapons could end with a nuclear blast. Why have a reluctant Washington send two American B-2 stealth bombers each dropping a 30,000-pound (15-ton) Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) conventional bomb destroy Iran's buried Fordow uranium enrichment facility?

Israel has nuclear weapons, everyone knows that. One ...Read more

"This anarchy will not stand," President Donald Trump told his Fort Bragg, North Carolina, audience of Green Berets, Rangers and 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers -- the disciplined cadre of America's XVIII Airborne Corps sitting in the grandstands.

The anarchy Trump condemned is/was in Los Angeles, on the west side of America's fruited ...Read more

Bravo to Ukraine for its "New Model Trojan Horse."

Homer's Greek warriors slipped from a wooden horse to open Troy's gates and start the bloodbath that ended a 10-year war.

Ukraine cleverly and stealthily shipped wooden crates deep inside Russian territory, 1,500 kilometers into Siberia. The truck-borne crates were finally positioned a short...Read more

What does Russian dictator Vladimir Putin value?

My question's immediate frame of reference: Donald Trump says Ukraine war-waging, ceasefire-dawdling Putin is insane. Moreover, if Putin evades sincere peace negotiations, the Kremlin leader confronts "really bad things" and, ultimately, is "playing with fire."

"Really bad things" is a ...Read more

On May 14, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick received a letter written by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and James Risch (R-Idaho) -- and co-signed by 11 other senators and four members of the House.

The letter is a big political punch with strategic information purpose.

Cotton chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee and Risch the Senate ...Read more

Commerce Over Chaos!

That's Donald Trump's MidEast strategy expressed as a peace and prosperity sound bite.

Will the sound bite bumperstick in reality?

Historical hint it might: ARAMCO: Arabian-American Oil Company (now Saudi ARAMCO, but, as Shakespeare asked, what's in a name?).

ARAMCO's a wealth and energy-producing historical stick that...Read more

In a column written this past February, I listed four unsettled wars "frozen" under a nuclear shadow: 1) India vs. China in the Himalayas. 2) North Korea threatening South Korea and Japan -- speculating South Korea and Japan could have their own nuclear weapons in 72 hours. 4) Israel vs. Iran. Israel's nukes will work. Tehran currently calls ...Read more

On April 28, a critical "instability" disrupted electrical power grids in Spain, Portugal and parts of France. Extensive blackouts lasted for hours.

Initial reports speculated over-reliance on intermittent wind and solar electrical technologies share part of the blame.

Whatever the cause, the widespread power loss in three first-world ...Read more

In a column published June 12, 2019, I wrote, "I think 50 years from now, historians will argue that between 2000 and 2016, communist China decided to target America as an adversary ... Beijing saw America in retreat and entertained visions of global dominance."

Examples of American retreat: 1) continuing to offshore manufacturing industries,...Read more

Our murky, blood-soaked moment in time demands a new look at geopolitics -- specifically, what constitutes a strategically valuable position that in human terms is worth expending immense wealth and/or using violence to obtain or deny.

Understand the violence option means risking soldier sons' and daughters' lives in the struggle. Post-...Read more