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According to a recently published Heritage Foundation report, the 2017 Index of U.S. Military Strength, Russia poses a “formidable” and “aggressive” threat to the vital interests of the United States. The report states, “Russia seeks to maximize its strategic position in the world at the expense of the United States. It also seeks to undermine U.S. influence and moral standing, harasses U.S. and NATO forces, and is working to sabotage U.S. and Western policy in Syria.” The international machinations of the current Russian government are not all that different from domestic strategies pursued within Russia, according to David Satter, former...

Dozens of high-ranking Turkish military officers formerly posted at NATO headquarters in Brussels and SHAPE military headquarters in Mons are among more than 125,000 people President Recep Tayyip Erdogan alleges helped launch a failed coup against him in July. Erdogan calls them "terrorist soldiers." Several of these officers agreed to speak with Deutsche Welle under cover of anonymity. They want to know if any visiting dignitary is going to ask Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu for details on what's happening to them, how he'll reassure them the alliance that it can get along just fine without some of its best-trained...

<p>In the aftermath of the Raymond Davis and bin Laden affairs, General James Mattis was key in maintaining ties with top Pakistani military leadership.</p> <p>New Delhi: The next US secretary of defence was the Obama administration's main man to keep a line open and bring ties with the top Pakistani military leadership back on an even keel in the dark days following the arrest of a CIA contractor and the killing of Osama bin Laden.</p>

I don't know whether Gen. Wesley Clark is qualified to be president, but Peter J. Boyer's profile in this week's New Yorker—which paints him as scarily unqualified—is an unfair portrait as well as a misleading, occasionally inaccurate précis of the 1999 Kosovo war and Clark's role in commanding it.Boyer relies heavily on some of Clark's fellow retired Army generals who clearly despise him. The gist of their critique, as Boyer summarizes, is that Clark, while a brilliant analyst, "had a certainty about the rightness of his views which led to conflicts with his colleagues and, sometimes, his superiors." I have...

A call earlier this week between President-elect Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May — in which they agreed on the need for more NATO member states to commit two percent of their GDP on defense spending — brought European security debate back into the limelight. Although Trump gained notoriety in Europe for his skepticism of America’s alliances, there has been a surge of high-ranking politicians and government officials on both sides of the Atlantic saying that Europe is not doing enough for its defense. Earlier British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said that Europe should “step up to the...

An American tank full of US Marines crashes through the silence of the sub-zero pine forest, far above the Arctic Circle, as unidentified drones hover overhead and yellow and green smoke fills the freezing air. The troops' target? A bunker up ahead, manned by Norwegian soldiers. Shots ring out as the Marines advance, crunching through the snow beneath gray winter skies. It's all role-play, of course -- the maneuvers are part of a training exercise, but one jarringly imbued with the new reality along NATO's northernmost border with Russia. Some 300 US Marines are due to be based in Norway...

Erdogan has already transformed Turkey into an Islamic Republic in all but name. Now he appears intent on building his own Turkish equivalent of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, loyal to him and the ideology of his slow motion revolution.

NATO’s chief has urged alliance members to cough up the cash needed to secure the “transatlantic bond” that the US president-elect has threatened to cut, unless members contribute the required two percent of their GDP to the common “defense” goal.

As President-Elect Trump begins to form his governing team and to review the involvement of America in the world, it makes sense in the revolutionary change in American politics to look anew at almost everything. Trump has taken some hits for suggesting that our contribution to NATO has been disproportionately large. I will suggest what many of us may think but Trump may be too coy to openly state: America does not need NATO. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created at the instigation of an American superpower trying to find a means of containing global communism, led by the...

Russia will deploy two advanced missile systems to its far-west territory of Kaliningrad in a direct response to NATO expansion in eastern Europe, a pro-Kremlin Russian lawmaker said Friday. Kaliningrad is a parcel of land disconnected from the Russian mainland that sits on the coast of the Baltic sea, sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania. A Russian deployment of S-400 surface-to-air missiles and nuclear-capable Iskander balistic missiles to Kaliningrad, with its proximity to NATO member states, will undoubtedly heighten concerns among leaders of the transatlantic security alliance, who were already nervous over incoming American leader Donald Trump’s commitment to their collective...

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg spoke by phone today with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. The Secretary General congratulated the President-elect on his election victory and said that he was looking forward to working with him and his national security team. The President-elect and the Secretary General both underlined NATO's enduring importance, and discussed how NATO is adapting to the new security environment, including to counter the threat of terrorism. Secretary General Stoltenberg also thanked the President-elect for raising the issue of defense spending during the campaign, which has been a top priority for the Secretary General since his appointment in...

COPENHAGEN, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Denmark is ready to increase military and national security spending, Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said on Wednesday after a phone conversation with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. Trump criticised NATO allies during campaigning for the White House, saying they did not pay enough for their own defence and suggested the United States was paying a disproportionate amount. Denmark spends about 1.2 percent of GDP on defence. NATO has set its members a target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defence. "The government is setting the stage for increasing spending on military and national security,"...

It should not be controversial to observe that the EU is in a bit of a mess. It has been one slow-motion disaster ever since the 2008 financial crisis. That was initially because one of the pillars of European unity is the Euro currency, yet the European Union does not have the effective political integration to make a currency union work. Though Europe’s economies, for example, are more similar between themselves than the richest and the poorest states of the US, the United States has an adequate level of political and financial integration to make their monetary union work. Europe...

Denmark is ready to increase military and national security spending, Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said on Wednesday after a phone conversation with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. Trump criticised NATO allies during campaigning for the White House, saying they did not pay enough for their own defence and suggested the United States was paying a disproportionate amount. Denmark spends about 1.2 percent of GDP on defence. NATO has set its members a target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defence. "The government is setting the stage for increasing spending on military and national security," Rasmussen said in a statement...

According to a report in Deutsche Welle (DW) on Tuesday, most of the 60 Turkish diplomatic passport holders who are seeking asylum in Germany in the post coup period are military personnel who were representing Turkey at NATO. Given the fact that the military personnel at NATO have classified information regarding Turkey, which is a NATO ally, German officials are reportedly evaluating the applications with sensitivity. In an earlier report in October, German media said that 35 Turkish diplomatic passport holders had applied to Germany for political asylum. Today’s DW story gives this number as 60. However, it has emerged...

Former George W. Bush administration foreign policy hawk John Bolton says President-elect Donald Trump’s win, coupled with the recent “Brexit” vote, presents a unique moment for the U.S. and Britain to get together behind a push for major change in the current world order.Mr. Bolton, who is reportedly still in the running for a possible cabinet position in the Trump administration, said Washington and London have a rare chance to join forces on aggressive reforms at both the United Nations and NATO.

Since Donald Trump's election, media-fuelled panic has engulfed Europe, including over defence and security. We are told that World War III is imminent, that Trump will jump into bed with Putin and pull the US out of NATO. Such fantasies are put about by media cheerleaders for European political elites, terrified that Trump's election will inspire support for populist candidates in the forthcoming elections in Germany, the Netherlands and France. In fact, it is the EU, not Donald Trump, that threatens to undermine NATO and the security of the West. In recent days, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, his foreign...

AARGM missiles will replace the pictured HARM as a weapon of Tornado aircraft. Photo: Bundeswehr/PIZ Luftwaffe. AARGM anti-radiation missile, developed for the US Navy and for the Italian government has also been selected by the German Air Force, as a replacement of the AGM-88B HARM weapon, to become integrated with the Tornado jets in Luftwaffe in the future. As a result of the aforesaid steps, the missile will become the core armament of the NATO air forces specialized in SEAD/DEAD operations (Suppression/Destruction of Enemy Air Defences). The missiles are also being offered to Poland, as the armament for the F-16...

U.S. president-elect Donald Trump needs to clarify his views on Russia, and to understand that NATO must be treated as an alliance of shared values rather than a business, Germany's defense minister said. "What his advisors will hopefully tell him and what he needs to learn is that NATO isn't just a business. It's not a company," Ursula von der Leyen told a ZDF talk show on Thursday. "I don't know how he values NATO." During his election campaign, Trump threatened to abandon U.S. allies in Europe if they do not spend enough on defense. "You can't say 'the past...

Quadriga - Trump and Europe: Partners or Rivals? "Shock and horror in Europe: the next US president will be Donald Trump. Having criticised the EU during the campaign, he now promises good relations. But can the EU take him at his word or is the transatlantic divide set to widen?" 25:59 min VIDEO AT SITE