Related Content: military
Is Belarus Assad's Newest Ally?Essential Reads U.S. officials are increasingly concerned that Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad is receiving new military assistance from Belarus, a tiny nation which appears willing to flout the international effort to isolate the dictator and force him from power. Western officials and outside analysts say that Belarus is providing Damascus with technology that would improve the capabilities of Assad's surface-to-surface missiles, one of the Syrian military's primary weapons during its brutal ongoing crackdown on rebels throughout the country. |
For the White House, a Wary Wait as Syria BoilsEssential Reads After ordering American forces to Libya last year, President Obama declared that he had tackled a humanitarian crisis more decisively than his predecessors. “When people were being brutalized in Bosnia in the 1990s,” Mr. Obama told a national television audience, “it took the international community more than a year to intervene with air power to protect civilians. It took us 31 days.” |
From the Vault: WikileaksVault Show Britain's Supreme Court wants to deport Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to Sweden to face sex-crime allegations. Assange is also facing espionage charges in the U.S. for publishing hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. military and diplomatic documents. The case against Assange from the Vault with Gwen Ifill, Karen Tumulty, Washington Post; Pete Williams, NBC News; and Martha Raddatz, ABC News. |
Romney Tells Vets Dangerous World Demands Powerful MilitaryEssential Reads Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney chose Veterans Day to proclaim to the American people his conviction that the world is a dangerous place, and the United States must remain its most formidable military power. "The world is not safe," Romney told veterans on Memorial Day. He was joined by Senator John McCain, in a speech to honor the veterans of America's wars. |
Charting Obama’s Journey to a Shift on AfghanistanEssential Reads It was just one brief exchange about Afghanistan with an aide late in 2009, but it suggests how President Obama’s thinking about what he once called “a war of necessity” began to radically change less than a year after he took up residency in the White House. |
European Woes Increase G-8 Summit TensionEssential Reads Bloomberg's Julianna Goldman reports that President Obama pushed for a Euro zone growth package as leaders of the Group of Eight nations urged Greece to stay in the euro area, even as an increasingly isolated Germany said Europe can’t spend its way out of the debt crisis. |
Insider Who Thwarted Underwear Bomb Plot was Supposed to Carry it OutEssential Reads An insider who worked with the United States and an allied security service to thwart an al-Qaida bomb plot hatched in Yemen was the man picked to carry out the suicide attack on a U.S.-bound airliner, U.S. and Yemeni officials tell NBC News. |
The Advantage of IncumbencyGwen's Take Mitt Romney’s May Day plan seemed pretty reasonable for a man who had been systematically and successfully clearing his path to the Republican nomination for more than a year. Republicans had been quietly dinging President Barack Obama throughout the previous weekend for appearing to be taking a victory lap leading up to the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden. |
A Delicate New Balance on National SecurityEssential Reads One moment he boasts about taking out America’s No. 1 enemy, and the next he vows to bring home troops from an unpopular war. For President Obama, the days leading up to his re-election kickoff have been spent straddling the precarious line between hawk and dove, and possibly redefining his party for years to come. |
Obama Says With War Near End, Defeat of al-Qaeda in ReachEssential Reads President Barack Obama assured the American public the defeat of al-Qaeda is within reach as he marked the first anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden with a visit to Afghanistan and an agreement that prepares the way to bring U.S. troops home. “My fellow Americans, we have traveled through more than a decade under the dark cloud of war,” Obama said at Bagram Airfield, where he had arrived about six hours earlier. “Yet here, in the pre-dawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of a new day on the horizon.” |
