India taps Israel for missile shield partnership;
Missile defense agency hopes for a raise;
Iran, U.S. beg to differ on missiles;
Tehran eyes S-300 alternative;
Israel eyes airliner defense...;
...as Obama budget takes bite out of its BMD program
Attacks on the rise in Xinjiang;
Protests halt work on Chinese refinery in Kyrgyzstan
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Russia's two-week-old invasion of Ukraine is that it surprised so many people.
On the eve of Moscow's incursion into the Crimean Peninsula, the U.S. intelligence community apparently concluded that Putin's military mobilization was nothing more than a bluff. So did CNN's esteemed foreign policy czar, Fareed Zakaria, who judged the possibility of a Russian invasion to be exceedingly unlikely, despite convincing signs to the contrary. In truth, however, the writing had been on the wall for quite some time.
Russia has shattered the presumption that we can take European security for granted. In the past two weeks, President Vladimir Putin has committed outright acts of war by invading Crimea and threatening to invade eastern Ukraine. It now appears that Russia will annex Crimea and perhaps go further unless confronted with a stronger resolve than visible so far from the United States and Europe.
Russian forces take over Crimea...;
...as the Kremlin looks further east