Latest Articles about Military/Security
Is Dagestan’s Kizlyar District Becoming a New Flash Point in the Regional Insurgency?
On August 31, officials in Dagestan unveiled the plan to dispatch an additional 200 troops to fight insurgents in the republic’s Kizlyar district. The reinforcements are part of the 7,000-man military force that was created in Dagestan earlier this year. Dagestan’s territory was divided into... MORE
Tsentr 2011 Scenario and CSTO Transformation
Preparations are intensifying ahead of the operational-strategic exercise Tsentr 2011 scheduled for late September in southern Russia, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. Tsentr 2011 will test the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) rapid reaction forces (Кollektivnye Sil Operativnogo Reagirovaniya –KSOR) and its possible preparedness to respond to... MORE
Quadripartite Summit On Afghanistan Falls Short of Russian Expectations
Presidents Dmitry Medvedev of Russia, Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan, and Emomali Rakhmon of Tajikistan held a quadripartite meeting on September 2 in Dushanbe. The presidents gave preliminary consideration to possible security and cooperation arrangements for the region, in anticipation of... MORE
Assessing China’s Response to U.S. Reconnaissance Flights
On June 29, 2011, for the first time in a decade, a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force (PLAAF) J-11 crossed the center line of the Taiwan Strait in an attempted intercept of a U.S. Air Force (USAF) U-2 reconnaissance aircraft conducting a monitoring mission... MORE
Xi Jinping: China’s Conservative Strongman-in-Waiting
The world caught a rare glimpse of Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping during U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s five-day visit to China last month. Xi is due to succeed Hu Jintao as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at its 18th Congress in... MORE
Taiwan’s Defense White Paper Shows New Candor on Challenges Ahead
In mid-July, Taiwan published the 2011 edition of its defense white paper (“National Defense Report”). This was actually the third such document released in the last 38 months—the Ministry of National Defense (MND) having published a white paper in the final days of the Chen... MORE
General’s Spy Comments Reveal More Than Just Espionage
Remarks made by Major General Jin Yi’nan of China’s National Defense University at a conference earlier this year provide new insights into Beijing’s reaction to foreign espionage, which Jin believes showed moral degeneracy within China. Jin’s lengthy speech originally appeared on and was later removed... MORE
August 2011 Briefs
PAKISTANIS DOUBT LIBYAN AL-QAEDA LEADER KILLED After the United States announced the death of Attiyah Abd al-Rehman - the Libyan national Washington describes as al-Qaeda’s new number two ranking figure - in a drone strike in North Waziristan Agency on August 22, a U.S. official... MORE
Iraq’s Kata’ib Hezbollah Seek Greater Popularity through Threats to Kuwaiti Port Development
Last April the Kuwaiti government started building a new port on Boubyan Island near the marine border with Iraq. The port, named Mubarak al-Kabir (Grand Mubarak) after the founder of the Kuwaiti al-Sabah ruling dynasty, triggered the latest crisis between Baghdad and Kuwait, with the... MORE
The North Caucasus’ Troubled August
It has become a tradition that August is an especially volatile month in the North Caucasus. This year has not been an exception, with the situation in the North Caucasus becoming more aggravated, especially in those regions that were relatively quiet in the preceding time... MORE