ArcaMax

Usually, dictators first invade and seize coveted territory before they hold a sham plebiscite to mask their aggression.

Russia's Vladimir Putin did that in Crimea. In 2014 he invaded Crimea, annexed it then held a sham vote. Russia has also held sham plebiscites in occupied eastern Ukraine. Putin justifies his continued aggression ...Read more

2023 isn't 1914 and 1915. In two contemporary wars -- Ukraine versus Russia and Israel versus Hamas/Hezbollah/Houthi Iran -- history is not repeating World War One's first two appalling years. The slaughters on Europe's eastern and western fronts -- and later in the Middle East -- were so immense our moment on the planet still confronts their ...Read more

Yemen's complex nest of wars is a hideous but representative example of a bloody, chaotic tragedy exploited by a would-be great power, in this case ayatollah Iran's Shia Islamic revolutionary dictatorship.

Iran and al-Qaida -- yes, al-Qaida is still there -- both use chaotic Yemen as a base for violent and criminal operations throughout the ...Read more

In September 2022, explosive charges damaged three of the four Russian-built Nord Stream Baltic Sea natural gas pipelines connecting Russia to Western Europe. The Washington Post recently reported that Ukrainian special forces conducted the sabotage attack. Why? The pipeline gives Russia economic and political leverage over energy-hungry ...Read more

Despite waging proxy offensive wars throughout the Middle East -- wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, in the Persian Gulf littoral, Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza and Israel -- Iran's ayatollah regime has escaped deadly retribution.

The Pentagon jargon term for "we're really going to kill you" is "kinetic attack." That means conducting violent and ...Read more

Give Turkey's historical moment frames our immediate crisis: civilized human beings confronting Iran-funded Hamas' savagery.

The Calendar Moment: The Turkish Republic celebrated its 100th anniversary on Oct. 29.

The Turkish Republic's democracy is the legacy of Kemal Ataturk, the only man to successfully modernize a culturally Muslim nation....Read more

Defeat in detail, a classic military stratagem, occurs when a comparatively weaker combatant secures victory over a more powerful opponent through the piecemeal destruction of the stronger force. The weaker combatant never lets the stronger adversary bring all of its power to bear.

Bit by bit the piecemeal attrition degrades the strong to the...Read more

Like Mark Twain's death, the demise of the tank has been "greatly exaggerated."

That line began a column I wrote in 2005, as sensationalist media simultaneously declared high-tech weapons had made the tank a death trap on the battlefield and -- get this -- that U.S. troops patrolling Iraq didn't have enough armor on their vehicles to protect ...Read more

FACT ONE: A major land war rages in Europe. Twenty months ago, Russia invaded Ukraine without provocation and the horror grinds on with mass casualties and World-War-I-like attrition.

FACT TWO: War in the Middle East. An Iranian proxy army, Hamas, launches a complex and well-planned attack on Israel. Mass atrocity by Islamist terrorists ...Read more

In May, CIA Director William Burns declared Iran could "probably develop (its) stockpile of weapons-grade enriched uranium in a couple of weeks."

"Develop" translates into Iran building a nuclear weapon in 14 days.

In August, I began a column series with the working title "21st-century war in the nuclear shadows." The first column examined ...Read more

America's land borders are vulnerable.

Sad truth: Our sea borders are even more exposed.

America's land border vulnerability has become a shared fear, for good reason. Drug cartels smuggle narcotics and traffic human beings across American land frontiers. TV cameras following reporters who actually visit the southern border document the ...Read more

The year is 2002. I'm on a quick trip through Taiwan en route to Singapore to investigate Singapore's responses to 9/11-style Islamist terror. The Straits of Malacca are an international choke point. Osama bin Laden loves icon targets with economic pop and Singapore is a world trade center.

Back in Taiwan: I've met a stringer for a defense ...Read more

Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine is a desperate bid to assemble a 21st-century Russian Empire. It is also an oil war -- or more accurately, a war to steal Ukraine's energy reserves.

The czarist and Soviet communist Russian empires were largely self-sufficient entities possessing the resources and millions of people required to field powerful ...Read more