Iraq

“We have contained them.”  Those words from U.S. President Barack Obama about the status of ISIS came the day before the Paris terrorist attacks and […] More

In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, U.S. defense officials announced a rare military strike on a senior Islamic State group (ISG) leader in Libya. […] More

Osama bin Laden would be a happy man were he still alive. His hopes and dreams have seemingly come to fruition. And, the master plan […] More

Dr. Sebastian Gorka, an expert in counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and irregular warfare, told The Cipher Brief that ISIS has superseded al-Qaeda as the world’s leading jihadist […] More

Today, the United States arguably contends with one of the most complicated and dangerous “world orders” in its history.  It must maintain a credible nuclear […] More

Military security assistance as it is currently applied is an outdated, myopic approach. It is characterized by ambiguous funding timelines, stove piped information, and the […] More

Nobody likes comparisons with the Vietnam War, but in the case of United States security assistance, the comparison is worth considering. The United States often […] More

U.S. security assistance and cooperation programs have come under a lot of fire recently.  The failure of the $500 million program to train and equip […] More

A fifty-year veteran of American intelligence recently told me how once, as a young officer, he had blurted out that a situation he had been […] More

A fifty-year veteran of American intelligence recently told me how once, as a young officer, he had blurted out that a situation he had been […] More

There has been no shortage of speculation about the motives behind Russia’s recent military deployment to Syria following the September 28 meeting between Russian President […] More

The recent infusion of Russian weapons and other military materiel into Syria has gotten the chattering class in Washington in a tizzy. “Inside-the-Beltway” policy experts, […] More