The Cable (thecable.foreignpolicy.com) May 8, 2012 The United States needs to do more to protect civilians in Syria, including considering setting up safe zones inside Syria and potentially arming the opposition, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry (D-MA) told The Cable in an interview Tuesday. Kerry also warned that if the balance of power …
A 1937 Detailed Prediction Of Hitler’s Strategy In Eastern Europe by Brian Resnick
businessinsider.com / view original Hitler with generals Paulus and von Bock in Poltawa, German-occupied Ukraine, June 1942 Two years before the Nazi invasion of Poland, an Atlantic author made country-by-country predictions about Germany's eastward expansion. In 1937, Hitler's military intentions were becoming increasingly clear. He had already ascended to the top of the German government and instilled in the …
‘Understood properly, the Death Star is not worth it.’ by Gregory Koger
View Original / mobile.washingtonpost.com / I wish to address the most important policy question of the millennium: Should we build a Death Star? This debate picked up this year after some Lehigh University students estimated that just the steel for a Death Star would cost $852 quadrillion, or 13,000 times the current GDP of the Earth. Kevin Drum suggests that this cost …
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Removing the Biggest Obstacles to Strategic Thinking by Dave Lavinsky
growthink.com / view original Every business needs a vision - a clear definition of what you'd like your business to become in the future. And, every business needs a set strategy - a definition and plan of how your business is going to reach this vision. All the key elements -- what you sell, to …
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North Korea’s Performance Anxiety By William J. Broad
New York Times May 6, 2012 Pg. SR7 News Analysis “IT’S a boy,” Edward Teller exulted after the world’s first hydrogen bomb exploded in 1952 with a force 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. From the start, the nuclear era seethed with sexual allusions. Military officers joked about the phallic symbolism …
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Lead, Follow Or Get Out Of The Way: By Thomas L. Friedman
New York Times May 6, 2012 Pg. SR13 Dubai, United Arab Emirates--TRAVELING in the post-Awakening Arab world, I have been most struck by how few new leaders have emerged from the huge volcanic political eruption here. By new leaders, I don’t just mean people who win elections, I mean leaders — men and women with …
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Five Ways to Change the System from Within : Experts’ Corner by Richard Tafel
view original / bigthink.com / Richard Tafel Tafel's five steps for changing the system from within: 1. Find a focus. Tafel is fond of referring to the "trim tab, the little rudder on a boat that when you change it can change a whole system. " The first question activists should ask themselves is, what one rule could we change that would …
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Powerless In Kabul? By Robert Haddick
SmallWarsJournal.com May 4, 2012 This Week at War In my Foreign Policy column, I discuss the fragile assumptions behind the new Strategic Partnership Agreement with Afghanistan and explain why U.S. policymakers should have a Plan B ready. President Barack Obama's sudden appearance in Afghanistan on May 1, a calculated attempt to display his administration's foreign-policy expertise and …
Telling The Enemy What We Know By James Jay Carafano
New York Post May 4, 2012 Pg. 29 If the White House hoped that releasing documents scored by Seal Team Six at Osama's hideaway would ease anxiety about the threat of terrorism, it badly misjudged the value of reading bin Laden's mail. The government turned over a cache of the captured documents to the Combating …
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How Short-Term Thinking Makes the U.S. Worse at Fighting Wars by Joshua Foust
view original / theatlantic.com From Vietnam to Afghanistan, 12-month deployments and institutional norms have made long-term planning more difficult. In 2010, the U.S. adopted a new tactic in southern Afghanistan: it began to bulldoze entire villages to clear them of IEDs. The policy -- reminiscent of Vietnam, of destroying villages to save them -- spoke to a deeper issue …
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