While the President of the United States is equivocating over troop support in Afghanistan and reducing defense spending at home, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is demanding greater efficiency from Russia's arms production facilities, which, he says, already produces "efficient and extremely ...

Read more: Russia Rearming

First published in The Jerusalem Post

"There is no doubt he is our friend," Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan, says of Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, even as he accuses Israel's foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman of threatening to use nuclear weapons against Gaza. These ...

Read more: Turkey: An Ally No More

In a posting on an Al-Qaida web forum, a jihadist recounted his journey from Saudi Arabia to join the Shabaab al-Mujahideen Movement in Somalia, in the process providing valuable insight into the radicalization process and the logistics involved in waging jihad in a foreign land. Identifying the ...

Read more: "Migrating from the Saudi Peninsula to Somalia"

BESA Center Perspectives Papers No. 93, October 22, 2009

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Senator George Mitchell, US Special Envoy to the Middle East, has an impossible task. American clout in the region has waned over the years, and Mitchell faces a situation where a US president advocates a quick end to the ...

Read more: Mitchell's Mission Impossible

"As the lone voice, crying in the wilderness, truth is ignored, it goes unheeded.  And when the war-mongers and hate merchants, with their spittle-flecked rhetoric, seek to forward their cause at the expense of truth as they are wont to do, all sides suffer."

In the October 16, 2009 emergency UN ...

Read more: The Lone Voice of Truth At The UN Human Rights Council

Pakistan has been a busy place over the past few weeks. The Pakistani armed forces have been conducting raids and airstrikes against the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other foreign Islamist fighters in Bajaur Agency, a district inside Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), ...

Read more: Pakistan: The South Waziristan Migration

INSS Insight No. 136

The agreement signed in Zurich on October 10, 2009 between Turkey and Armenia to establish diplomatic relations offers hope that some of the difficult problems in the southern Caucasus may soon be resolved. The two countries agreed in principle to open the border between them, ...

Read more: The Historic Accord between Turkey and Armenia: What Lies Ahead?

Much commentary about Barack Obama's speech to the United Nations Wednesday has focused on his description of pre-Obama America as a deadbeat, lawless, foot-dragging country that tortures innocent Muslims, or did until his glorious ascension to the right hand of power. The predictable emphasis on ...

Read more: Obama’s Dangerous UN Agenda