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It does not bode well that an Obama administration that assures us that the nuclear deal with Iran will not be violated by the mullahs is clearly looking the other way as Iran’s ally Russia blatantly violates the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty signed with the former Soviet Union. The Obama White House is sitting on a Pentagon risk assessment report completed last month that states “that the breach involved a new missile that violates the limits set by the treaty. The treaty bans holding, producing, or flight-testing ground-launched ballistic or cruise missiles with ranges of between 310 miles...

The US Army is far more heavily engaged around the world than projected when it began slashing force size several years ago, and its commitments will be hard to maintain in the long run as troop numbers shrink, General Ray Odierno said on Friday. Odierno, the Army chief of staff, said decisions about cutting the size of the force from 570,000 to the current 490,000 were made several years ago when Pentagon planners expected a peaceful Europe, a declining commitment in Afghanistan and no return to Iraq. Instead, he said, the Army is regularly using three brigades in eastern Europe...

A devastating report by the Heritage Foundation reveals yet another arena where the Obama administration, with the blessings of the Democrat Party, is fundamentally transforming the United States of America. "The U.S. military may be weaker than you think,” the report states. "All but one branch of America’s military and nuclear forces are currently operating at ‘marginal' strength levels.” The Heritage Foundation’s conclusions are strikingly at odds with the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, which maintains the U.S. can still fight two major conflicts simultaneously. Yet that same report highlights the reality that beginning in FY2012 the Department of Defense began absorbing the "significant...

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., may hope his presidential campaign spoils Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul's chances of holding higher office, but he could unintentionally disrupt former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's performance in the Palmetto State. To listen to Graham tell it, the person most surprised by his decision to run for president may have been Lindsey Graham. While he appears to relish his status as an underdog, his penchant for challenging the libertarian wing of his own party and omnipresence on political talk shows could magnify his campaign. It's still early, but Graham's success could spell bad news for Bush. Graham...

AUSTIN ...Former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on Saturday dismissed as a "joke" the demand by U.S. senators of his party that they must approve a potential agreement over the Middle East country's nuclear capabilities. "I strongly disagree with the motivation of that statement made by so many members of Congress, especially in the Senate," Paul said at a conference on liberty at the University of Texas at Austin, presumably referring to an open letter senators sent to Iranian officials describing any deal not approved by them as informal..... "They're out to stop peace," he said. "They're terrified that peace...

President Barack Obama says his successor in the White House will not call into question the executive branch’s power to cut deals between the United States and other countries, such as the nuclear framework reached last week with Iran. “I am confident that any president who gets elected will be knowledgeable enough about foreign policy and knowledgeable enough about the traditions and precedents of presidential power that they won’t start calling to question the capacity of the executive branch of the United States to enter into agreements with other countries,” Obama said in an interview with NPR’s “Morning Edition” set...

Talk about the Norfolk terrier tail wagging the Great Dane. If they are to have any hope of winning their party’s nomination, Republican presidential hopefuls better support ethanol mandates, Hawkeye State politicos told potential candidates at the recent Iowa Agricultural Summit in Des Moines. “Don’t mess with the RFS,” Republican Governor Terry Branstad warned, referring to Renewable Fuel Standards that require refiners to blend increasing amounts of ethanol into gasoline. “It is the Holy Grail, and I will defend it,” said Rep. Steve King, another Iowa Republican. It is vital for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and preventing dangerous climate change...

NASA's Administrator Charles Bolden acknowledged Wednesday there is no back-up plan to fly the International Space Station if Russia cuts off U.S. access to space. "We would make an orderly evacuation," Bolden said during a U.S. House Appropriations subcommittee hearing. Because both countries are dependent upon one another, the $140 billion station would be lost.

National Defense Briefs: (Editor’s Note: National Defense Briefs is a series aimed at informing readers with timely U.S. military and homeland security news updates, trends, definitions, and short commentaries. Canada Free Press highlights the National Defense Briefs that matter.) U.S. State Department officials met Jan. 28, 2015 with the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Benghazi a day after the committee’s chairman, Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC), “complained about resistance [from the White House] and vowed to ‘ratchet up’ his inquiry.to schedule interviews with up to 22 potential witnesses who work for the State Department or have knowledge of the...

Defense Spending: The venerable A-10 Warthog, designed to stop Soviet tanks, and the perfect weapon to "degrade and destroy" the Islamic State, as President Obama promised, faces a budgetary chopping block. We have noted the irony of how Obama was going to war against the Islamic State with weapons systems he had scrapped, ending the production runs of the F-22 Raptor and Tomahawk cruise missiles. They were dismissed by the administration as relics of the Cold War even as Russia was rearming and trying to reassemble the old Soviet Union. We've also mentioned the phasing out of the A-10 Thunderbolt,...

Russia has adopted a new military doctrine, keeping North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) expansion first among its list of primary external threats. The revised doctrine [PDF in Russian - 29 pages with 58 sections], signed by President Vladimir Putin on Friday, is comparable to a 2010 version, which also listed NATO expansion as a primary threat. Additions to the doctrine include a highlighting of the threat from "global strategic antiballistic missile systems" and a Russian goal to protect its interests in the Arctic region, according to Russian state-funded news organization RT. The doctrine’s adoption comes days after Ukraine took a...

President Obama’s push to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay is likely to become a flashpoint as he seeks to confirm a replacement for outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. Obama is seeking to close the detention center before leaving office, which would fulfil a promise he made during his first White House run in 2008. But with Republicans and some Democrats opposed to releasing the detainees or bringing them to U.S. prisons, the administration has considered closing the facility through executive action, according to The Wall Street Journal. The White House questioned the Journal report, but did not explicitly deny...

Former President Jimmy Carter responded Friday to being referred to as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., quipping that it’s a “compliment” to be considered a terrible president by a “warmonger” like McCain. [SNIP] “I was lucky enough to go through my four years, we never shot a bullet or dropped a bomb or fired a missile,” Carter said.

Google has announced it is developing next generation quantum computer chip as part of its plan to enable machines to think like humans. The internet company's Quantum Artificial Intelligence team, together with researcher John Martinis and his team at the University of California, will create the super-fast chip. They will work on a hardware initiative to design and build chips operating on sub-atomic levels, making them exponentially faster than processors in ordinary computers.

China's navy commissioned 17 new warships last year, the most of any nation. In a little more than a decade, it's expected to have three aircraft carriers, giving it more clout than ever in a region of contested seas and festering territorial disputes. Those numbers testify to huge increases in defense spending that have endowed China with the largest military budget behind the United States and fueled an increasingly large and sophisticated defense industry. While Beijing still lags far behind the U.S. in both funding and technology, its spending boom is attracting new scrutiny at a time of severe cuts...

Harold Rood, a professor of international relations at Claremont McKenna College who died in 2011, was not as well known as he was influential. A soldier in Patton’s army in World War II, he taught his students that war is permanent to the human condition, and that in war it is better to win, for no one ever had to accommodate a loser. America will always have enemies, he told them, and those enemies will forever be planning and expending resources to place themselves in a position to defeat us. It would be nice if it was otherwise, he was...

".............Within 24 hours of Beijing’s announcement of the new ADIZ and rules, civilian airlines from Singapore, Australia, South Korea, and Japan accepted the new conditions. This was a prudent move, given that the lives of their thousands of passengers are suddenly in the hands of 25-year-old Chinese fighter pilots with no record of dealing with fast-moving crises. Yet it also was a huge victory for China, giving legitimacy to its claims to have administrative control over huge swaths of the skies of Asia. Again, if reports are to be believed, Japan requests information only if undocumented flights appear to be...

The Senate's decision to invoke the "nuclear option" and limit Republican opportunities to use the filibuster had the side-effect of blowing up work on the annual Pentagon policy legislation the body was considering Thursday. Senators debated the defense bill into the evening on Wednesday, but the work came to an abrupt halt Thursday morning when Democrats moved to change the rules of the Senate. The move puts into doubt the fate of the National Defense Authorization Act, the one piece of legislation that has been signed by the president for 51 consecutive years. "This [nuclear option] blew it up," said...

Recommend watching the great video at the source for an example of how Cruz conducts himself as a constitutional conservative and patriot. Jim SEAN HANNITY: Here with reaction to this and much more is Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Senator, thanks for being with us. What should the response be from your perspective? SEN. TED CRUZ, R-TEXAS: Well, Secretary Kerry is right that Assad using chemical weapons is an outrage and it's wrong. But unfortunately missing from his statement and from the president's approach so far has been a focus on what the touchstone should be, which is the vital U.S....

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Tuesday that he has ordered a 20% cut in the ranks of the Pentagon’s top military officers and senior civilians. Beginning in 2015, and completed by 2019. Well, as we used to say: speed kills. The estimated 4,000 jobs at stake represent not only a fifth of those working at the highest levels of the U.S. military, but also represent about one-fifth — of 1% — of the U.S. military’s total full-time workforce. Hagel’s warning shot of budgetary pain to come marks the first time he has revealed action called for by the Strategic Choices...