Key decision points for Ukraine in the year ahead
Analyst Joshua Huminski asks, "What, in the end, is the balance Kyiv is willing to strike between what it wants to achieve (and at what cost) and what it actually can?"
Analyst Joshua Huminski asks, "What, in the end, is the balance Kyiv is willing to strike between what it wants to achieve (and at what cost) and what it actually can?"
The report offers up a detailed account of the high cost the US is likely to pay for “allowing Russia to win” in Ukraine, largely based around the Pentagon forced into bolstering defense and deterrence against a “renewed” Russian threat.
US partners Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are sending a message to US with high-profile Putin meetings, analysts told Breaking Defense.
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO secretary general, said after a meeting today that “unsolved issues” remain, all but ending the prospect of NATO expanding to 32 members at the alliance’s Heads of State Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, next week.
"We and our allies are asking [questions] about what situations may evolve as a direct repercussion of this very public attack on Putin's authority by one of his protegees and closest allies," said James Cleverly, UK Foreign Secretary.
One volunteer ferrying supplies and vehicles into the city of Bakhmut told Breaking Defense the Russian forces attacking act "like a zombie army."
Experienced observers of Russia’s defense sector point out that the US-led sanctions have a disproportionate effect on aerospace production, more so than any other sector.
History never repeats, but it often rhymes, and a wise man listens to the echoes. Today, the Army is exploring a new concept of future combat called Multi Domain Battle, which calls for small, agile units designed to overwhelm the enemy with coordinated actions not only on the land, but in the air, on the sea, […]
Norway faces the challenge of crafting a national defense strategy for the 21st strategy in the face of Vlad Putin’s more aggressive Russia. Because Putin thinks through his use of military power and designs limited objectives to achieve what he considers in the best interest of Russia, Norway faces a double challenge: how to defend […]
The United States — preoccupied with the wars of the Middle East and a pivot to Asia — has largely left the global playing field to Russian President Putin and must now lead NATO by forging a new consensus on the Russian threat and investing in new weapons. The correlation of forces in the European theater has arguably […]
WASHINGTON: Wealth, population and thin-skinned nationalism make China the number one threat to the US-led world order, not Russia or Islamic terrorism, writes leading military strategist Andrew Krepinevich. That means the US must build up forward-deployed forces in the Western Pacific, he writes, if necessary at the expense of defending Europe. Russia’s oil-dependent economy and […]
The battle of freedom and democracy versus authoritarianism repeats time and time again: World War II, the Cold War, the Arab Spring. Now, the setting is Syria, where moderate, pro-democracy rebels have been lashing out against the brutal dictatorship of Syrian President Bashar al Assad for over six years. How did we get to this […]
WASHINGTON: More than any other service, the Army’s future is uncertain under Trump. On the upside, the President-Elect has promised to boost the Army‘s budget and grow its ranks by almost 15 percent. On the downside, Trump seems deeply skeptical of what has become the service’s driving mission: deterring Russian aggression in Europe. [We rolled […]
WASHINGTON: Good news for NATO: Sen. Tom Cotton — Iraq veteran, Tea Party star, and potential Defense Secretary for Donald Trump — said that America’s commitment to defend its NATO allies must be “iron-clad” and that Russia must change its ways before relations can improve. During the campaign, Trump famously praised Vladimir Putin and said […]
WASHINGTON: Hope for the best; prepare for the worst. It’s a standard military prescription for dealing with a sometimes hostile and usually unpredictable world. It’s also what an African-American chum told me this morning was his plan for life under President Trump. This guy is a fellow Chicagoan and Cubs fan, so he knows how to […]