By Yavuz Baydar* Following months of high tensions – including standoffs at sea and dogfights in the air – and many ifs and buts, Turkey and Greece seem ready to sit down at the table to discuss the issues that led to a huge military escalation between the two NATO allies. The “exploratory talks”, as...
By Jamil Farshchi* and Samantha F. Ravich** The next seismic event we face as a country may be a cyber pandemic. Funded by a foreign government, led by a terror organization, or carried out by a lone wolf with a laptop and a bit of skill, a major cyber event would spread faster and further than a...
One lone French sub, the Safir, sank half of the Theodore Roosevelt carrier battle group in a 2015 exercise: Report Most people were fast asleep in their beds in 2015 when a French submarine named the Safir apparently sent half a US navy carrier battle group to Davey Jones’ locker. Didn’t hear about it? That’s...
By James Goldrick* In 1976, Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Sergei Georgyevich Gorshkov published his exposition of Soviet maritime strategy under the title The sea power of the state. It was translated by United States Naval Intelligence in 1977 and an English-language edition was published commercially by Pergamon and by the US Naval Institute Press in...
By Paul Iddon* A Russian writer recently made a bold claim, namely that Russia sought a diplomatic solution to the recent round of fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia because it recognised that it is militarily weak compared to Turkey. Is his assessment accurate? Alexander Zhelenin referred to three major conflicts in 2020 in which Turkey...
By Michael McFaul* After President-elect Joe Biden inauguration on January 20, some elements of U.S. policy toward Russia will change immediately. No longer will the president of the United States seek to befriend Russian President Vladimir Putin, as President Donald Trump did throughout his tenure. Biden will not hesitate to criticize Putin’s belligerent actions, especially...
By Seth Cropsey* & Harry Halem** The current chaos in Washington DC has given U.S. political discourse a distinct focus, a focus that will remain until 20 January, when Mr. Biden is inaugurated. Fortunately, the guardrails of democracy have held despite the stresses of the past year, particularly over the past three months. But Americans would do well...
From Center for Preventive Action In CFR’s annual Preventive Priorities Survey, U.S. foreign policy experts assess the likelihood and impact of thirty potential conflicts that could emerge or escalate in the coming year. A crisis stemming from North Korea’s continued development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile testing is the top-ranked conflict concern for 2021, according...
By Neville Teller* Normalization is in the air. In the past few weeks, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced not only that he would like to have better relations with Israel, but that he is working with France on a roadmap to normalize the bonds between them. Regretfully, neither statement can be taken at its...
By Michael Peck* Fighter pilots aren’t cheap. The U.S. Air Force estimates that training a new pilot to fly a plane like the F-35 costs $11 million. And that doesn’t count the priceless experience of a veteran pilot who has been flying for years. That’s why the U.S. Air Force is willing to offer half-million-dollar...
