So this was Iran’s “great” retaliation against America for the death of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani: 15 missiles lobbed at two U.S. bases in western and northern Iraq. Nobody died. In fact, it appears the Iranians may have missed on purpose, engaging in a face-saving gesture as they sought to de-escalate a situation at
President Donald Trump likely has averted a major regional war. With the recent escalation of hostilities between Iran and the United States, many—on the Trump-hating Left and the “Blame America First” Right—have insisted the world is headed into a major conflict, maybe even a third world war. Certainly, we appear to be closer to a
The little Cold War with Iran is heating up. Last week, the U.S. military conducted airstrikes on Iranian-backed militia operating in both Syria and Iran. Washington approved the attacks after a U.S. defense contractor was killed by an Iranian rocket attack in Iraq. The Iranian Quds Force commander, General Qassem Soleimani, was behind the plots.
China has overcome its last significant hurdle to spaceflight. The Chinese have successfully launched their much-anticipated Long March V heavy-lift rocket. China can now place the modules to construct the Tianhe-1 space station (meant to rival the International Space Station) in orbit and, more importantly, Beijing can attempt its first interplanetary mission to Mars in late 2020.
During the Raisina Dialogue in India this summer, Spanish Foreign Minister Joseph Borrell observed, “In Europe, there are countries that are small and countries who don’t know that they are small.” Although he didn’t come out and say it, he was talking about Great Britain and Brexit. Many Britons want the United Kingdom to be
Since Friday, according to Pensacola, Florida officials, the small northern Florida town has been crippled by a systemic cyberattack. This comes in the wake of an actual terror attack at the Pensacola Naval Air Station one day earlier. The perpetrators of the cyberattack are unknown, and it has yet to be confirmed that this malicious
In 1902—just a few short years after Queen Victoria’s momentous Diamond Jubilee celebration and at the height of British imperial power—London was fretting about its strategic position. British strategists, according to the late Oxford historian Michael Howard, were concerned that year about “Imperial weakness: of commitments all over the world to be defended, of well-armed
Canada doesn’t make sense from a geopolitical perspective. Think about it: geopolitics “provides the link between geography and strategy.” Geopolitics also seeks to “establish the links and causal relationships between geographical space and international political power, for the purpose of devising specific strategic prescriptions.” Canada is a huge country geographically—the world’s second-largest behind Russia—but it’s
From the end of the 19th and throughout the 20th century, Russian leaders believed that rapid, mass industrialization would modernize Russia, and make their country competitive with the West. Yet, Russia (and, later, the Soviet Union) was never able to match the productive powers of the Western states. By 2000, as George Friedman assessed, “Russia
This year has been an historic first for American women in space. Not only has an American female astronaut committed the world’s first cybercrime from space (directed against her wife—so stunning and brave!) but the world was also treated to NASA’s first all-female spacewalk. Of course, the pesky patriarchy at NASA reared its ugly head,
