Earlier today, President Obama unveiled a revamped national military strategy in a major address at the Pentagon. While the full details of the strategy—dubbed “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense”—have yet to be disclosed, early reports offer some important insights into the Administration’s evolving national security and defense priorities.
In the short term, Washington works to protect Israel and other U.S. allies, combat terrorism, rebuff Iran's hegemonic ambitions, and support regional stability, all of which ensures the continued flow of oil to power Western economies.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il's death has strategists and policymakers asking the same question: What's next? Among some there is a strong sense that a leadership change in Pyongyang represents the best opportunity in decades for North Korea to join the international community as a normal state. Pyongyang stands at a crossroads.
The past two weeks have seen a dramatic escalation in Iran’s war of words with the West.
Last Wednesday, Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi told Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, that new economic pressure currently being contemplated by the West would come at a steep cost. According to Rahimi, “not a drop of oil” will pass through the Strait of Hormuz — a key strategic waterway that serves as a conduit for as much as a third of the world’s oil — if additional sanctions are levied against the Islamic Republic for its nuclear program. Iran’s top naval commander, Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, has been even more explicit, warning publicly that his country stands ready to block the strait if necessary.
When it released its National Strategy for Counterterrorism back in June, the Obama administration had a lot to crow about. Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin Laden had been killed a month earlier by U.S. special forces in his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Persistent operations by the United States and its Coalition partners over the preceding year had succeeded in degrading the organization's capabilities in a number of key theaters (including Afghanistan and Pakistan). And counterterrorism operations then underway would net major gains in the months that followed, not least the late September death by Predator drone of influential Yemeni ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki.