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As international negotiators prepare for the next round of talks with Iran over its nuclear program, scheduled in Moscow for June 18-19, the United States faces a 21st century version of a “Stevenson moment.” In 1962, in a forceful presentation backed by compelling photographic evidence at the United Nations, Ambassador Adlai Stevenson made the case that the Soviet Union was installing nuclear weapons in Cuba. In addressing Soviet Ambassador Valentin Zorin in the chamber of the Security Council, Stevenson pointedly declared, “Let me say something to you, Mr. Ambassador. We do have the evidence. We have it, and it is […]

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which concluded its annual summit in Beijing, China, today, announced that it had granted observer status to Afghanistan as part of the group’s effort to play a larger role in the stabilization of the war-torn country after the U.S. military leaves in 2014. The organization, which is made up of six nations — China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan — was founded in 2001 to promote regional economic integration and security cooperation. But the two experts who spoke with Trend Lines said the organization has traditionally been better at ceremony than substance, and closer coordination […]

One of the obvious dangers of a possible war with Iran over its controversial nuclear program is that it could push oil prices sharply higher and, in turn, send the global economy into a tailspin. But a number of developments, some very deliberately set in motion by Iran’s adversaries, have recently converged to erode the effectiveness of Iran’s powerful oil weapon. The sharp edge of Iran’s oil power has been dulled through painstaking tactical moves by Washington and its allies, but the most significant change came not by design, but by misfortune. Ironically, the fear that a conflict with Iran […]

COMBAT OUTPOST SABARI, Afghanistan — “Incoming! Incoming! Incoming!” droned the cold, mechanical voice of the warning system as the combat outpost’s radar detected another Taliban rocket launch. Soldiers ran for cover in the shelters that dot this little American army camp near the Pakistani border. Then three deep booms shook the ground as the rounds hit the hill behind the outpost. The Taliban almost always miss, but they try and try again almost every day, only to disappear afterward among the dusty Afghan hills. With the United States and its NATO allies looking ahead to 2014 as the date when […]

Villagers in Logar province, 19 miles south of Kabul, claim a NATO air strike kills 18 civilians, as NATO dispute the local account saying those who were killed were militants. World News Videos by NewsLook

Armenia and Azerbaijan, former Soviet republics in the South Caucasus, have been at war for two decades over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, a separatist ethnic-Armenian province internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but occupied since 1994 by Armenia. Over the past week, renewed fighting has left eight soldiers dead. The outbreak of violence along the border, which comes as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits the region, underscores the difficulty in resolving this not quite frozen conflict. Amanda Paul, a policy analyst and expert on the South Caucasus at the European Policy Center, talked to Trend Lines about […]

In late-May, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan initialed a gas sale and purchase agreement (GSPA) for the long-envisioned Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline project. The step is being seen regionally as a marker of seriousness for a project that until a few years ago was categorized as a dark horse when compared to the much-touted Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline, itself currently on hold due to both Iranian inertia as well as Washington’s firm opposition to the project. For the United States, forward movement on TAPI serves to further isolate Iran from regional integration efforts, while showcasing the potential of its New Silk Road […]

In late-April, according to reporting by the New York Times, the U.S. Congress did something remarkable: It said no to U.S. Special Operations Command. Asked by the command for new authorities to train security forces from Africa to the Middle East, a confused legislative branch, backed by the State Department and the rest of the U.S. military, denied the request. The request itself, though, reveals something of the ambitions harbored by the command. With its confidence boosted by operational successes and the esteem in which it is held, the command is marketing its units as the weapon of choice for […]

Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Vladimir Putin urge the international community to support UN envoy Kofi Annan’s plan on Syria during meetings in Beijing, according to Chinese state media. World News Videos by NewsLook

Stratfor analyst Eugene Chausovsky examines tensions between Lithuania and Poland as Russia tries to prevent the countries from collaborating against Moscow. World News Videos by NewsLook

Hosni Mubarak, the ousted Egyptian president who turned power over to the military in the face of a popular uprising last year, was sentenced to life in prison over the weekend for failing to stop the killing of demonstrators during the protests that ultimately led to his downfall. But while Mubarak and his former interior minister, Habib el-Adly, were convicted of being “accessory to murder,” they and their codefendants were acquitted of more serious charges of having ordered the killings of nearly 1,000 protesters last year. Mubarak and his sons were further acquitted of corruption charges. The verdict brought tens […]

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta made news this weekend when he announced that the U.S. Navy would move the bulk of its fleet to the Pacific in coming years as part of the Obama administration’s military rebalancing program. But the declaration should have come as no surprise, as the Pentagon has been increasing the share of its assets in the Pacific for several years already. Panetta was attending the 11th International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) Asia Security Summit, widely known as the Shangri-La Dialogue, in Singapore. In his speech, Panetta emphasized that the United States, after a decade of […]

With budgetary constraints looming and global priorities shifting, the U.S. military is in the process of pursuing leaner and more adaptive ways to achieve U.S. national security objectives around the globe. This effort is in accordance with the Department of Defense’s (DOD) 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance (.pdf), which recognizes the need for the military to rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region and sustain its focus on the Middle East, while maintaining current defense commitments in other parts of the world. One of the new approaches being developed is the Regionally Aligned Brigade concept, through which each regional combatant command (COCOM) would […]

U.S. troops say Taliban fighters are firing on Afghan and Pakistani observation posts in the hope of opening up a rift between the two countries. World News Videos by NewsLook

In recent years, cyberattacks against the governments and business entities of economically developed and technologically advanced nations have proliferated, with the purpose of such attacks increasingly turning toward economic information collection and industrial espionage. As adversaries have expanded their computer network operations, the use of new venues for intrusions has increased, and the increasing use of portable devices that connect to the Internet and other networks will only create new opportunities for malicious actors to conduct espionage. Meanwhile, the trend among both corporations and government organizations toward the pooling of information processing and storage will present even greater challenges to […]

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the hostilities that historically divided the Cold War’s political and military opponents have cooled, but a heightened intensity in espionage has become evident as well. New antagonists have surfaced as old enemies seemingly became allies; nonstate actors occasionally have become as dangerous and influential as nations with standing armies; and the computer and satellite have replaced lapel cameras and microfilm stashed in shoe heels as preferred methods of espionage. Predictably, the playing field of global espionage has become more sophisticated as well. Cyberspace and outer space have become espionage battlegrounds where fortunes are […]

In the run-up to Sept. 11, 2001, the CIA and the 15 other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community were increasingly preoccupied by the terrorist threat emanating from the Middle East. The previous decade had represented a long and difficult transition for U.S. intelligence from the requirements of Cold War espionage and denied-area tradecraft as well as the more brutal operational tasks associated with helping the Afghan mujahedeen chase the Soviets from Afghanistan. Al-Qaida’s brutal attacks on the U.S. Embassies in Dar-es Salaam and Nairobi in 1998 and on the USS Cole in 2000 had already raised the alarm. But […]