ISRAEL will almost surely attack Iran’s nuclear sites in the next four to seven months — and the leaders in Washington and even Tehran should hope that the attack will be successful enough to cause at least a significant delay in the Iranian production schedule, if not complete destruction, of that country’s nuclear program. Because [...]

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Policies That Spawn Economic Inequality Rather Than Free Trade Could Bring about an Economic Crisis
These developments have raised concerns about the durability of globalization among its supporters. In April 2005, Martin Wolf of “The Financial Times” gave a lecture titled “Will Globalization Survive?” at Washington’s prestigious pro-globalization Institute for International Economics. More recently, Harvard professor [...]

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Corporate-led, finance-driven globalisation has successfully transferred wealth from labour to capital. This has resulted in inequality and exclusion on a massive scale which, combined with the pressure on water and other environmental resources, is likely to fuel new conflicts.
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AMERICA and Israel often hint at military action to stop Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons programme. The latest rumblings, however, may be more serious. The atmosphere has been charged by a combination of factors: Iran’s expanding uranium-enrichment programme, faltering diplomatic efforts to halt it, a dying American administration and a nervous Israel. Throw in the latest war [...]

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But we seem to keep arriving at them anyway. The news of Iran’s test Wednesday and the seemingly unstoppable nature of its nuclear program made me wonder whether we are close to another such tipping point. And whether it’s too late to turn back. Tehran’s test-firing of nine long- and medium-range missiles was intended to [...]

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The truth is that Israel might invade Iran, but only when there is no other alternative, only if the international community falls down on its job and allows Iran to achieve independent nuclear capability. That time is not now. And should that time come, Israel will not announce it anywhere, not in the Israeli press, [...]

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What should Israel’s aim be in the next war?
On the basis of the precedent of the Gulf War, Ben Eliahu estimates that in the next war, Syria and Iran might launch between 250 and 300 long-range missiles at Israel (Shihab and Scud missiles) and another 5,000 short-range missiles (mainly from Lebanon).
To intercept a single long-range [...]

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According to Gen. Michael Moseley, who was recently dismissed from his position as U.S. Secretary of the Air Force, “there is almost zero chance we will fight a nation state” in the 21st century.
While senior American flag officers acknowledge the increasing unlikelihood of great power war in the 21st century, a handful of U.S. think [...]

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WITH oil prices at their present highs and Iraq at last making tentative progress towards stability, the last thing anyone wants to hear is that conditions in the Middle East could be about to take an abrupt turn for the worse. Unfortunately, they could. Recent weeks have brought a spike in chatter about the prospect [...]

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Taiwan began Monday its annual computer-simulated war game that anticipates an invasion by China, despite warming ties between the island and its mainland rival.
Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense Spokeswoman Lisa Chi said the Hankuang war game will last five days, but she declined to offer further details. Hankuang means Chinese glory.
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Video: Pawn of the [...]

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If you want to understand the future, find out what is being taught in the schools.
From the article:
Moreover, 51 percent did not know that the war started with North Korea’s invasion of the South. About 14 percent picked Japan as the nation responsible for the war; 13.4 percent, the United States, and 11 percent Russia. [...]

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Is there a significant chance that Israel will attack by year end Iran’s nuclear facilities? The German magazine Spiegel argues so in a two-part article “Mission Doable“ and “‘We Will See a Middle East in Flames’“ (hat tip to Fabius Maximus):
While the Europeans continue to pin their hopes on diplomacy and are convinced that [...]

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This is a fictional account of what could have happened.
The rapid advance of the German army through Belgium and France in May 1940 left hundreds of thousands of British, French and Belgian troops encircled at the port of Dunkirk in northern France.
But then Hitler ordered a halt to the attack. This gave the British [...]

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Israel braced itself for conflict on two fronts against militants in Gaza and an Iranian government persisting with its nuclear programme.
Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, said the “pendulum is closer” to a large scale military operation in Gaza after another Israeli civilian was killed by a mortar fired from Gaza on Thursday.
…
One of Mr Olmert’s [...]

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The hundreds of drones cruising over Iraq and Afghanistan have changed war forever.
The UAV is the “smart bomb” of the Iraq War, the latest turn in the unending offense-defense spiral that characterizes the history of warfare. Army units searching and fighting house-to-house are using hundreds of drones, some of them as small as a model [...]

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The nuclear strike codes were kept inside a black vinyl briefcase known as “the Football.” The Football enabled the President to order the obliteration of thousands of targets in the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe. Within seconds of the authentication of a presidential order, missiles would lift off from silos on the plains of [...]

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Understanding why Hizbullah refused to take over Lebanon is key not only for understanding Hizbullah but also for understanding Hamas, Fatah and the insurgency in Iraq.
A compelling answer to this question is found in David Galula’s classic work, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice. Galula, who died in 1967, was a lieutenant colonel in the French [...]

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The rest of the report speculates on various other assorted scenarios for Mid-East Armageddon. Syria, generally assumed to be many years away from possessing a nuclear capacity, might, for some reason, decide to launch a CBW (chemical, biological weapon) missile strike on Israeli population centers.
Israeli dead under this scenario would once again be between 200,000 [...]

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DEBKAfile: Our Washington sources report that president George W. Bush is closer than ever before to ordering a limited missile-air bombardment of the IRGC-al Qods Brigade’s installations in Iran. It is planned to target training camps and the munitions factories pumping fighters, missiles and roadside bombs to the Iraqi insurgency, Lebanese Hizballah and Palestinian terrorist [...]

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“If you have tears, prepare to shed them now….
Oh, what a fall was there…
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down.”
–William Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar,” Act 3, Scene 1.
May 21, 2008, is a date–like December 7 (1941) and September 11 (2001)–that should now live in infamy. Yet who will notice, mourn, or act the [...]

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Whether Lebanon veered close to “civil war” this month—a question broached by many newspapers—seems purely academic at this point, and perhaps irrelevant. Beirut settled into a tenuous calm after Lebanon’s cabinet conceded (CNN) the immediate demands of Hezbollah, but the upheaval resolved none of the many issues destabilizing the country. Lebanon’s paralyzed government, Beirut’s inability [...]

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