Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Turkey last week. Although the official purpose of Mullen’s visit was to congratulate his Turkish counterpart General Isik Kosaner, recently appointed as the Chief of the General Staff, this introductory visit had... MORE

On August 31, Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, reiterated his previous appeals for the military industrial complex (MIC) to transform itself to meet the challenges of modernizing the equipment and weapons inventory, to achieve an unrealistic target of a 70 percent share of new systems by... MORE

Russia and Armenia have agreed to deepen their already close military ties, signing a deal that will strengthen Russian influence in the South Caucasus and could have profound implications for the unresolved Karabakh conflict. Amendments to a bilateral 1995 defense treaty were signed during Russian... MORE

On August 29, Chechen President, Ramzan Kadyrov’s, home village Tsentoroi (aka Khosi-Yurt) was attacked by a group of militants. Initial reports said there were ten casualties among the attackers and two among Kadyrov’s forces (RIA Novosti, August 29). Russian official sources stated that five civilians... MORE

In May 2010 a team of 15 Chinese researchers from Tsinghua University in Beijing and the Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences, a government-directed research center, published a research paper announcing a successful demonstration of “quantum teleportation” (liangzi yinxing chuan) over 16 kilometers of free... MORE

The Caspian region is becoming enmeshed in a web of overlapping political, military, trade and energy interests of countries extending from Asia, to the Middle East, to Russia, to Europe. Given the rising instability of Middle East energy supplies, the Caspian basin has emerged in... MORE

A few weeks before the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) released its 2010 report to Congress on “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China,” a Taiwanese military intelligence assessment reportedly asserted that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) "regular amphibious abilities have ...... MORE

An intriguing divergence of views has been exposed within China’s foreign-policy establishment on how to handle the country’s worsening ties with the United States that may highlight a growing dissonance between China’s civilian and military establishments. Sino-American relations have taken a confrontational turn since Washington... MORE

On August 9, China launched the remote sensing satellite Yaogan-10 (military designation: Jianbing) into orbit from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. Situated in the northwest of Shanxi Province, the site is a space and defense launch facility reportedly used for testing the Chinese military’s intercontinental... MORE

The rising tension and provocative rhetoric surrounding Iran’s alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons are a matter of public record. Yet, are there other agendas being played out amidst the larger confrontation between Iran and the West? One such agenda may be found in the mountainous... MORE