Defense & Security Archive

Toward the end of August, French President Nicolas Sarkozy ushered in a new phase in the diplomatic negotiations on the Iranian nuclear program by calling for tougher sanctions against Iran. In the event that the U.N. Security Council should prove incapable of taking action, Sarkozy demanded that the Europeans take action themselves: unilaterally. It is only by applying massive economic pressure, Sarkozy argued, that “a catastrophic alternative” could still be avoided: “either the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran.” At the same time, Sarkozy pressured the French energy companies Total and Gaz de France to forego any further investments […]

On Sept. 28, Belarussian Defense Minister Leonid Maltsev repeated his government’s warning that U.S. plans to deploy ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems in Poland and the Czech Republic could have “unpredictable consequences” for Eurasian security. Maltsev’s comments, delivered at a press conference after a meeting of the defense ministers of the member states of the Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) held in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, have revived concerns that Russia might place nuclear weapons in Belarus as a countermeasure to the U.S. BMD deployments. Last month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted that his government had no plans to deploy […]

The intense political and media scrutiny directed towards Blackwater Inc. this week evokes the old Irish saying that “calm waters run deep, but the Devil lurks in the depths.” During congressional hearings, the rock was lifted to reveal one of the most profound developments in the American way of war since perhaps the use of conscription during the Civil War: civilianization of the battlefield. Ironically, the media exposure of the stark statistic that there are today more civilian contractors serving in Iraq than members of the armed forces occurred during the same week when many Americans tuned in to the […]

It is difficult today to recall the anxiety that shook America when, fifty years ago, Sputnik pierced the atmosphere. “No event since Pearl Harbor set off such repercussions in public life,” University of Pennsylvania historian Walter A. McDougall has observed. Sputnik was the starting gun for a desperate, urgent race between the United States and the Soviet Union for space superiority — and the military advantages it might confer — which would consume billions while leaving neither nation safer. These days, the phrase “space race” seems antiquated, an almost quaint relic of a bygone era. But behind the competition to […]

On July 13, 1989, a frantic getaway is taking place out front of an apartment house at 5 Linke Bahngasse in Vienna. In an article for the Austrian weekly Profil, the journalists Sibylle Hamann und Martin Staudinger reconstruct the scene: A secret agent has been shot and he is dragged by two other men between two parked cars. He is bleeding from multiple wounds. A man on a motorcycle pulls up beside them. All four are members of an Iranian terror commando unit that has left behind a bloodbath in a two-room apartment on the fourth floor of the building […]

After long being spared the violence that has characterized Basque separatist agitation in the Spanish Basque country, the French Basque country has in recent months been hit by a series of increasingly spectacular attacks. French police investigations in connection with one such attack led to the arrest last month of 13 people, including some with known links to the Basque terrorist group ETA. An internal ETA document uncovered last month by the local Basque news service Vasco Press suggests that the upswing in violence may be the result of a new ETA “strategy of confrontation” with France. -o- In a […]