Last week, the U.S. Navy formally announced that it will soon begin to retire the first four of its Littoral Combat Ships, two of the Freedom class and two of the Independence class. The vessels have long faced technical, operational, and logistical hurdles to fulfilling their originally envisaged role. The retirement of the four LCS vessels amounts to a tacit acknowledgement by the Navy that the Freedom and Independence class vessels are effectively a failed concept. The downsizing will come even as the U.S. Navy continues to work toward a nominal 355-ship fleet.

According to a Pentagon report almost 75% of US troops refused taking the COVID-19 vaccine. Addressing the allegation of a cover-up, the spokesperson for the agency, John Kirby informed the news outlets about the reason for the lack of exact data.

75% Of US Troops Against Getting COVID-19 Vaccine Says Pentagon Report
According to the latest reports issued by the Pentagon, one-third of the US troops have refused to take the vaccination to shield themselves from the coronavirus.

The statement issued by the Pentagon on 17th Feb 2021 points to the low acceptance rate of the virus.

Major General Jeff Taliaferro, the top official in the US military has indicated the two-third acceptance rate of the virus.

The old cliché about a fish not knowing it’s in water has survived for a reason. Our cultural currents can drive us toward normalizing or, worse, glorifying what we might otherwise find objectionable. This can take shape in blatant or subtle ways, but there can be no doubt that by underscoring certain narratives and opinion to the exclusion of others, culture is a powerful forger of both material conditions and psychology. As Americans we swim in cultural waters that glorify war.

The U.S. honors its military and reinforces warrior behaviors with holidays, ceremonies, parades, Hollywood movies, TV shows, and memorials to soldiers, wars, and wartime presidents. Individual military members/veterans enjoy medals, promotions, vanity license plates, tax exemptions, free admissions, reserved parking spaces, airline boarding preferences, veteran discounts, and other privileges. These honors and privileges reinforce militarism in the U.S.; no other group of citizens is as revered.

The U.S. Air Force’s top officer wants the service to develop an affordable, lightweight fighter to replace hundreds of Cold War-vintage F-16s and complement a small fleet of sophisticated—but costly and unreliable—stealth fighters. The result would be a high-low mix of expensive “fifth-generation” F-22s and F-35s and inexpensive “fifth-generation-minus” jets,...

When the Navy holds its daylong stand-downs to address the extremist ideologies that leaders say have infiltrated the military ranks, sailors across the fleet will be required to reaffirm the oath they took to the U.S. Constitution.

All Navy personnel -- uniformed and civilian -- will have to repeat the oath of enlistment or office and discuss what actions betray that promise during the virtual or in-person learning sessions that must be held by April 6. The stand-downs will focus on the "damaging effects of extremism" and how to eliminate it, Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Adm. John Nowell wrote in a service-wide message.

"As public servants, we took an oath to the Constitution and we will not tolerate those who participate in actions that go against the fundamental principles of the oath we share, particularly actions associated with extremist or dissident ideologies," Nowell wrote.

Defense Blog reports a pair of Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk stealth attack aircraft were spotted above Los Angeles last Friday. The F-117s are supposedly retired but were spotted flying with a Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker.

AP Freelance photographer Matt Hartman tweeted a picture of the stealth aircraft on Sunday. He said:

"So one day at ? @flyLAXairport ? I get a tip about something special… I look up ……. USAF KC-135R in-flight w/ 2 F-117 Stealth Fighter’s! Well I guess they're NOT retired after all?? 02-19-21 2."

The International Defence Exhibition and Conference (IDEX 2021) kicked off on Sunday and runs through the 25th of the month at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre. All sorts of new weapons are being featured at the first COVID-era defense show.

According to Breaking Defense, IDEX 2021 features more than 900 exhibitors from 59 nations with 35 national pavilions.

"84% of companies exhibiting will be internationally based, while 16% will be UAE based entities which demonstrate the vast international interest in IDEX and NAVDEX," said Humaid Matar Al Dhaheri, managing director and group CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company (ADNEC), the shows' organizers.

In what feels like a throwback scenario to 2017 which marked the first time Trump bombed Syria over al-Qaeda's unverified claims of a government chemical attack on a "rebel"-held town in Idlib province, Russia's military is now warning that anti-Assad jihadists are planning a new "false-flag operation against civilians" involving chemical weapons in Idlib.

The allegation of a major 'provocation' in the works originated in official comments days ago from the deputy chief of the Russian de-escalation mission in Syria, Rear Admiral Vyacheslav Sytnik. The statements are being featured predominantly in Russian and Iranian state media sources, which say the incident will be blamed on Damascus, ultimately in order to gain the attention of the newly in office Biden administration.

U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancers from Dyess Air Force Base in Texas arrived in Norway on Monday as part of a training mission in Europe, marking the first time U.S. bombers have operated out of the Scandinavian country.

The U.S. Air Force said in a statement that since 2018, strategic bomber missions have involved "U.S. integration with NATO allies and regional partners."

Gen. Jeff Harrigian, the U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa commander said training with Norwegians "enables us to hone our deterrence and defense capabilities while also enhancing regional stability."

Using ‘conservative’ to overlap with ‘extremist,’ Cambridge University scientists claim they’ve found this elusive category of people to be cognitively deficient. The Guardian took these tentative conclusions and ran with them.
Donald Trump may be gone, but his supporters are still hanging around, gumming up the works and interfering with returning both halves of the American uni-party system to their proper anti-populist, war-loving baseline. This means playing whack-a-mole with the “wrongthinkers” on the Right, whether it’s knocking them off social media, smearing them as racists, ‘extremists,’ and xenophobes (oh my!), or just lobbing playground-level insults their way.

The Guardian seems to have embraced its role performing the latter, delivering a writeup of a Cambridge University study that takes the researchers’ already shaky conclusions and reduces them to the equivalent of ‘conservatives are big dum-dum poopy-heads.’

Earlier this month, a study group established by Congress recommended that President Joe Biden extend the May 1 deadline for withdrawing troops from America’s longest war. It’s a strategy that many experts say runs the risk of abrogating the U.S.-Taliban agreement and potentially setting back the potential peace process in Afghanistan — or even dooming it to failure.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is a striking similarity in the backgrounds of the individuals involved in these critical recommendations, which are likely to influence whether Biden maintains a “conditions based” U.S. military footprint in Afghanistan. Two of the group’s three co-chairs and nine of the group’s 12 plenary members, comprised of what the group refers to as “members,” have current or recent financial ties to major defense contractors, an industry that soaks up more than half of the $740 billion defense budget, and stands to gain from protracted U.S. military involvement overseas.

US Army researchers began experimenting with autonomous vehicles at a new testing facility within Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) in Middle River, Maryland.

APG allotted Army Research Laboratory (ARL) with 200 acres to prove and refine autonomous vehicles' performance. The facility has been home to the service for nearly a century, where munitions and weapons have been tested.

"The one-of-its-kind research campus was established to advance Army knowledge of autonomy and intelligent systems through basic and applied research of unmanned technologies that integrate artificial intelligence, autonomy, robotics and human teaming elements in complex environments," Jeffrey Westrich, an ARL program manager said.

The superpower rivalry, sparked by the Cold War between the US and Russia, continues to this day. If that's in stealth fighter jets or hypersonic weapons, there's a race between both countries to field these weapons. Russia appears to be ahead in hypersonic weapon development as the US has yet to field these weapons. Still, the US is ahead of Russia when it comes to fielding stealth jets.

The ultimate fighter jet is a fifth-generation fighter with a weapon bay that can carry hypersonic missiles. Both the US' Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II and Russia's Sukhoi Su-57 weapon bays are too small to carry hypersonic missiles.

Americans who don't support "forever wars" in the Middle East in service of the "liberal world order" are simply showing their "intolerance," so says PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan in Foreign Affairs magazine.

From Foreign Affairs, "A Superpower, Like It or Not," subheadline, "Why Americans Must Accept Their Global Role":
That Americans refer to the relatively low-cost military involvements in Afghanistan and Iraq as "forever wars" is just the latest example of their intolerance for the messy and unending business of preserving a general peace and acting to forestall threats. In both cases, Americans had one foot out the door the moment they entered, which hampered their ability to gain control of difficult situations.
Shame on you, America!

Opposing the wars in Afghanistan is also an attack on women's rights, as the Washington Post noted last week:

Prior to his inauguration, President Joe Biden had proclaimed that he wished to end the “forever wars” the US is fighting, just as former president Trump had claimed he would. But once you’re in office, it’s a different story.

NATO has decided to expand its footprint in Iraq, following a rocket attack in the city of Erbil that killed one American contractor and injured six more people. This, as the US State Department has threatened consequences for all those involved.

Following conflicts over trade, technology, and capital markets, rising political tensions between the US and China will continue under the Biden administration.

For instance, the US Army is expected to equip its first unit with hypersonic equipment this fall. The Pentagon is far behind in the hypersonic races with China and Russia.

A hypersonic unit within the Army will begin training with all the equipment it needs to launch these new weapons, according to Lt. Gen. L. Neil Thurgood, director of the Army's Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office, who spoke with Defense News.

About 1,000 Marines who arrived in Norway last month -- only to have their military exercises canceled due to the pandemic -- will remain in the country for arctic training.

The Marines will be in Norway's high north region until spring, continuing "valuable arctic and mountain warfare training," Maj. Adrian J.T. Rankine-Galloway, a Marine Corps Forces Europe and Africa spokesman, said Thursday.

While a small number of Marines headed back to the U.S. after Norwegian officials canceled a pair of multinational exercises there last month, most of the members of 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, who arrived in the country last month stayed put, he said.

Across the US, Europe and most of the world, new COVID cases and deaths continue to decline as New York State announces more summertime reopening plans for summer camps, indoor family-entertainment centers and amusement parks and the EU strikes a major deal for more COVID jabs.

Worldwide, total case numbers are nearing 110MM, as total deaths are on the verge of breaking above 2.25MM as of Wednesday. In the US, new daily cases and deaths have plunged to their lowest levels since the fall, as projections show numbers falling even more quickly than academic projections used by the CDC had anticipated.

One of the U.S. foreign policy establishment’s favorite propaganda themes is that the United States promotes liberalism and democracy around the world. However, several of the supposedly democratic foreign factions that Washington has backed proceeded to establish corrupt, quasi-authoritarian regimes when they gained power. Two cases highlight that depressing reality. One was the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and the government that insurgency spawned after the United States and its NATO allies launched an air war against Serbia to wrench its restless province from Belgrade’s control. The other is the "reformist" Ukrainian government that Washington helped bring to power in the so-called Maidan revolution in 2014.

For the first time, the U.S. Air Force has introduced fifth-generation F-35A stealth fighters to its concept of austere airfield operations in the Pacific. The exercise took place on the island of Guam where the Joint Strike Fighters were joined by F-16s in operating from an austere airstrip at the northwest end of the island. The exercise was a major component of a larger emerging initiative that looks to provide dispersed operating locations that can be accessed by Air Force combat aircraft during a crisis. The new strategy is largely a result of the growing threat posed by ballistic missile attacks in the Pacific theater.

General Atomics is to bring a company-owned SkyGuardian drone to the UK in the summer to undertake “a series of operational capability demonstrations” for the UK and other NATO members. The RAF’s soon to be acquired Protector drone is a version of the SkyGuardian with a range of UK modifications. The aircraft is being shipped into the UK rather than flying in (possibly due to the controversy around a previous flight to the UK) and will be based at RAF Waddington.

Similar demonstration flights, planned by the company to fly over San Diego last year, did not go ahead apparently after objections on safety grounds from airspace regulators. The flights took place instead well away from populated areas in the desert between Palmdale, California, and Yuma, Arizona.

In his first presidential visit to the Pentagon yesterday, Joe Biden announced the creation of an anti-China task force. This team will review the Pentagon’s policy towards the country in areas such as strategy, technology, military and diplomacy with neighboring countries. During the visit Biden pledged to “meet the China challenge … and win the competition of the future.”

Career politician and long-time Biden aide Ely Ratner has been tapped to lead the task force targeting China. Ratner has continually advocated for bipartisan aggression against China in his roles at the pro-war Center for New American Security, the State Department, and elsewhere.

One of the top national security think tanks backing the Biden administration, the Center for a New American Security, has been taking money from every major defense contractor while pumping out a steady stream of research supporting those companies’ interests. It’s yet another sign that Biden’s promised “return to normal” has, unfortunately, arrived.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will meet with members of the world’s most powerful military alliance on Wednesday for the first time since joining the Biden administration.

NATO meets Wednesday and Thursday to discuss an array of challenges facing the 30-member group. The virtual meetings will be a glimpse into President Joe Biden’s foreign policy agenda and comes on the heels of his calls to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with America’s closest allies.

“When we strengthen our alliances we amplify our power as well as our ability to disrupt threats before they reach our shores,” Biden said during a speech at the State Department. “America cannot afford to be absent any longer on the world stage,” he added.

Biden’s message broke sharply from his predecessor’s “America First” policy, which on occasion seemed to vex NATO members.

More children could be pushed into the joining armed forces and armed groups due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, senior United Nations and European Union (EU) officials said on International Day against the Use of Child Soldiers, observed on Thursday.

In a joint statement EU High Representative Josep Borrell and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict Virginia Gamba also warned that very few among those released by armed forces and groups are able to access reintegration programmes or support.

“Armed forces and armed groups continue to recruit and use children, tearing them away from their families and communities, cruelly stripping away their dignity and destroying their lives and their future”, they said.

NATO’s top general in Europe has declared initial operational capability of the alliance’s five-strong fleet of surveillance drones stationed in Sicily, Italy.

The unmanned aircraft and associated ground equipment make up the NATO Allied Ground Surveillance program. Started nine years ago, its goal is to provide all member countries with an aerial picture of worldwide threats, especially in locations close to alliance borders.

The mission-ready proclamation comes after NATO received its fifth and final aircraft for the fleet of modified Northrop Grumman RQ-4D Gobal Hawks at Sigonella Air Base last November. There are also enough trained personnel assigned to the program for initial operations to commence, according to a NATO spokesman.

U.S. Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters, the supreme allied commander Europe, called the fleet’s completion “a significant milestone towards improved sensing of the environment.”

The naval phase of the AMAN-2021 drills has started in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Pakistan. The multinational exercise brings together over 40 countries, including Russia, China and several NATO nations.

The two-day maritime maneuvers began on Monday. Apart from the Pakistani Navy, combat vessels of the Russian Navy and the ships of some six other nations are taking part in the maritime module of the drills.

The stated goal of the drills is to strengthen cooperation between the navies of different nations, as well as to exchange experience in combating maritime piracy in waterways with busy traffic.

The Pentagon, in the three weeks that Joe Biden has been president, has turned the department’s attention from outside threats towards potential threats from inside the military.

Former President Donald Trump’s first military priorities were to rebuild the military, defeat the Islamic State, and focus on the threat from China. For this, he chose retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis as his first defense secretary. Trump’s first military-related executive orders were to rebuild the armed forces and to establish new vetting measures to keep “radical Islamic terrorists” out of the U.S. — which critics panned as a “Muslim ban.”

As relations between the USA and Russia continue to fall ever deeper into the abyss, and as China’s Belt and Road Initiative continues to evolve deep into the Eurasian Arctic via the Polar Silk Road, a new era of potential for cooperation as well as nuclear war awaits humanity. The decisions made over the coming months will determine which of those two opposing destinies are selected.

For the time being, things are looking bad.

On February 5, 2021 the Canadian press was lit abuzz with the headline NORAD Modernization to Dominate Agenda of Canada-U.S. Defence Relations citing various military think tanks and ivory tower game theorists who should be kept as far from any actual policy making circles if the world is going to survive beyond the coming decade.

Citing the recent Biden-Trudeau meeting which featured a long discussion about Russian-Chinese aggression and Arctic defense, Andrea Charron (head of Manitoba’s Centre for Defence and Security Studies) states:

As US senator and vice president for nearly half a century, Biden supported US aggression against invented enemies.

He partnered with Obama’s preemptive wars on nonbelligerent Libya and Syria, continued inherited wars on Afghanistan and Yemen.

Their troop drawdown from Iraq was head fake deception. The country remains occupied by unwelcome Pentagon forces.

Along with orchestrated coups in Honduras, Paraguay and Brazil, they replaced democracy in Ukraine with Nazi-infested fascist tyranny.

They supported multiple Israeli wars on Occupied Palestine, along with war by other means on nations free from US control.

As selected, not elected, president, Biden’s geopolitical team is stacked with hawks.

Are plans afoot for escalated warmaking ahead?

Was pledging “to bring a responsible end to wars that have dragged on for far too long” polar opposite of what his hardline geopolitical team intend?

First there was the video from Libya of a Turkish drone destroying a Russian Pantsir missile defense system.

Next came the veteran S-300 air defense system — also Russian — being taken out in Nagorno-Karabakh by an Israeli-built Harop loitering munition.

In the conflicts in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh last year, unmanned platforms often made short work of the ground-based systems designed to neutralize them, paving the way for easy attacks on vulnerable troops.

What is more, experts say, is that the balance of power between drones and air defense systems is shaping up to be a key to global wars in the near future.

“Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh and also Syria have just showed us that if a fielded force cannot protect its airspace, then the large scale use of UAVs can make life extremely dangerous,” said Justin Bronk, an air force research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in England.

The F-35 joint strike fighter program is grappling with a shortage of the jet’s Pratt & Whitney F135 engine, and it could be months before the situation starts to improve, a defense official said Friday.

The problem, according to the F-35 joint program office, is twofold. First, the F135 Heavy Maintenance Center at Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., has not been able to process engines through scheduled depot maintenance as quickly as projected.

Second, maintainers are discovering “premature distress of rotor blade coatings” in a “small number” of engine power modules, creating more repair work and contributing to the backlog.

A defense official who spoke to Defense News on background called the issues a “serious readiness problem.” By 2022, roughly 5 to 6 percent of the F-35 fleet could be without engines due to scheduled depot maintenance as well as unscheduled engine removals caused by F135s in need of repair.

While civilians and troops have similar behavioral health concerns across racial, ethnic, gender and sexual-orientation groups, a recent RAND study found that white service members are more likely to have behavioral health troubles than their non-white counterparts, the opposite of what civilian research shows.

The DoD-sponsored study sought to compare the behavioral health of minority service members to the majority, as well as compare any disparities to civilian groups, at a time when the Defense Department is reviewing a host of policies to actively support diversity and an inclusive culture.

“Whereas the U.S. military has recognized the behavioral health needs of service members in general, the specific needs of racial/ethnic, gender, and sexual minority groups are not well understood,” according to the report.

Opposing war is a lonely task in Washington, D.C. Possessing the world’s largest and most powerful military encourages US administrations to use it. And use it they do – often.

This attitude was captured by Madeleine Albright, then America’s UN ambassador, when she accosted Gen. Colin Powell: "What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?" Casualties obviously don’t matter much to ivory tower warriors as long as someone else is doing the dying. (The amazing Albright was responsible for multiple idiotic aphorisms illustrating the defects of US foreign policy.)

The problem is not just the willingness of American policymakers to go to war for no good reason, which is why "endless wars" entered the political lexicon. It is officials’ willingness to risk war without thinking. Especially by expanding military alliances.

The U.S. military has named many bases and other institutions after individuals with ties to the Confederacy.

For example, Fort Buckner in Okinawa is named after Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., who was killed in combat on that island in 1945. Buckner Jr. wasn’t a Confederate, but his father Simon Bolivar Buckner Sr. was a famous Confederate general who later served as a pallbearer for the coffin of Ulysses S. Grant, along with Union generals Sherman and Sheridan and Confederate general Johnston. But what did Ulysses S. Grant ever do to fight systemic racism?

British lawmakers underlined that foreign investments in the UK defence supply chain should be restricted to companies from NATO countries or London's allies outside the North Atlantic Alliance.

Beijing may snap up more UK aerospace companies in order to obtain access to their technology and increase its military buildup, the UK House of Commons Defence Committee has warned in a report.

According to the study released on Sunday, venture capital funds "represent an avenue for hostile foreign investors to gain entry into the UK defence supply chain".

On Friday, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said the US “will have to pay” to keep the agreement that allows US troops to be stationed in the Philippines on a rotational basis, known as the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA).

Duterte made the comments during a speech to Philippine troops. “I’d like to put on notice if there is an American agent here, from now on, you want the Visiting Forces Agreement done? You have to pay,” he said. “It is a shared responsibility, but your share of responsibility does not come free, after all, when the war breaks out we all pay.”

Duterte was ready to scrap the VFA and kick the US out of his country last year but reversed the decision citing tensions with Beijing in the South China Sea. On Friday, the Philippine president made it clear that he was still reluctant to allow the US military in his country.

The former National Security Agency director and nine prominent retired general and flag officers have signed on to legal brief asking that the U.S. Supreme Court rule that the military draft is unconstitutional.

Their filing is in support of a petition that argues the Selective Service System is unconstitutional because it applies only to men ages 18 to 26 and not women.

Former Director of the National Security Agency Michael Hayden, a retired Air Force four-star and retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal top the list of supporters on the legal brief.

The group’s attorneys filed their brief Wednesday to support the petition filed by the National Coalition for Men, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Selective Service System on Jan. 8.

Thousands of Navy personnel are about to receive the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine ahead of an upcoming deployment -- and while sailors aren't required to take the shot yet, they soon could be.

Members of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group will get the option to receive the first dose of the vaccine for COVID-19, the sometimes-fatal illness caused by the coronavirus, on Saturday. So far, about 80% of the crew -- roughly 5,000 strike group members -- say they intend to get the shots, Vice Adm. Andrew Lewis, U.S. Second Fleet commander, told reporters Friday.

"We cannot make it mandatory yet," Lewis said. "I can tell you we're probably going to make it mandatory as soon as we can, just like we do with the flu vaccine."

The upcoming integrated review on UK defence and foreign policy has been described by the British Cabinet as the most serious re-evaluation of the nation's place in the world since the days of the Cold War

The British army is facing a massive reduction to meet the target number of 72,500 as part of the Cabinet's defence review that will be published next month, The Times reported, citing sources.

According to the newspaper, General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith, the chief of the general staff, told ministers that he could reduce the target size of the service by 10,000 personnel, so that the Army would be able to spend more money on technology. This means that some battalions could be disbanded to boost the remaining ones.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin faces an early test as he races to advance a major initiative targeting far-right extremism in the ranks, a challenge that officials acknowledge is complicated by the Pentagon’s lack of clarity on the extent of the threat following the U.S. Capitol riot.

Austin’s highly unusual order for a military-wide “stand-down,” slated to pause normal operations in coming weeks so troops can discuss internal support for extremist movements, underscores the urgency of the task ahead for the former four-star general, who last month became the nation’s first African American Pentagon chief.

Three years after unveiling its new fitness test as gender-neutral, the Army is considering a change to the Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) that would score soldiers on a service-wide percentile separated by gender, Task & Purpose has learned.

“We had this big thing of inclusion but this is one of the biggest eyesores that goes against inclusion,” an Army official said of the ACFT on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “They didn’t think about it. It was mostly men that ran it and it’s mostly men who are going to take it, and it’s mostly men who are just refusing to take the L.”

President Joe Biden’s nomination of Victoria Nuland for Under Secretary for Political Affairs, the third-highest position at the State Department, is a dangerous sign. Nuland exemplifies the neoconservatives who have led American foreign policy from one disaster to another for the past 30 years, all while evading any shred of accountability.

As a top-level appointee, Nuland must still be confirmed by the Senate. And while pro-peace groups have waged a campaign to stop her confirmation, reflecting on her career in public service makes clear why she is incompetent, highly dangerous, and should not be confirmed.

Agroup of more than 20 Israelis, among them former defense officials, are under investigation for allegedly illegally designing, producing, and selling “armed loitering missiles,” also known as “suicide drones,” to an unnamed Asian country. The news comes less than two weeks after the announcement of three legitimate sales of these kinds of weapons by the Israeli arms industry, including to unnamed Asian countries.

This news could give you a reason to stay up at night. Joe Biden’s administration is getting more aggressive against China. Biden has unveiled a Pentagon “China task force” to deal with the “challenges” China poses.

As the Asian nation has over one billion in population, a war with the CCP would end badly for the United States. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows that a war with China is already all but lost. Maybe everyone except Joe Biden. Because he’s flexing muscle he doesn’t have toward the Chinese. Biden has launched a military task force to assess US policy toward Beijing, vowing to confront the “China challenge” as he continues his predecessor’s naval deployments in the country’s backyard, according to numerous reports.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, in a phone conversation with US President Joe Biden, said cooperation was the only choice for the two countries because a clash would lead to a disaster for the entire world.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has stressed the need for cooperation between Washingon and Beijing after discussing bilateral issues with his American counterpart, calling their first telephone conversation a positive signal for the entire world.

"Sino-American cooperation is in many ways beneficial both for the United States and China and for the entire world. A confrontation between China and the United States is absolutely a disaster for the two countries and for the entire world", China Central Television quoted Xi as saying.

The recent loss of five of iconic UH-60 helicopters reveals the difficulties of maintaining an ageing aircraft at the tail end of its life expectancy, but may also be a catalyst towards using more ‘disposable’ weapons of war.

Military flight operations are inherently dangerous, whether conducted in peacetime or during actual operations. As the child of a career US Air Force aircraft maintenance officer, and later as a Naval Aerial Observer with the US Marines, I have experienced the life and death consequences of operating aircraft during war and peace.

While war corporations, or so-called “defense contractors,” make billions in profits, Wall Street is the ultimate beneficiary of today’s nonstop wars. The prosaic nature of war profiteering—far from the work of a shadowy cabal—is precisely why the collusion is so destructive and should be outlawed.

The U.S. ruling class deploys the military for three main reasons: (1) to forcibly open up countries to foreign investment, (2) to ensure the free flow of natural resources from the global south into the hands of multinational corporations, and (3) because war is profitable. The third of these reasons, the profitability of war, is often lacking detail in analyses of U.S. imperialism: The financial industry, including investment banks and private equity firms, is an insatiable force seeking profit via military activity.

Victoria Nuland exemplifies the neocons who have led US foreign policy from one disaster to another for the past 30 years while evading accountability. It is a bad sign that President Joe Biden has nominated Victoria Nuland for the third highest position at the State Department, Under Secretary for Political Affairs.

As a top-level appointee, Victoria Nuland must be confirmed by the US Senate. There is a campaign to Stop her confirmation. The following review of her work shows why Victoria Nuland is incompetent, highly dangerous and should not be confirmed.

Afghanistan and Iraq

From 2000 to 2003, Nuland was US permanent representative to NATO as the Bush administration attacked then invaded Afghanistan. The Afghan government offered to work with the US remove Al Qaeda, but this was rejected. After Al Qaeda was defeated, the US could have left Afghanistan but instead stayed, established semi-permanent bases, split the country, and is still fighting there two decades later.

Democratic lawmakers are pushing to finally take away the president’s blank check for war in Iraq — something that the Obama and Trump administrations had both tried to prevent.

Congress passed two authorizations for the use of military force, or AUMFs, in the wake of 9/11. The 2001 AUMF authorized war against al-Qaida, while the 2002 AUMF green-lit military action to stop “the threat posed by Iraq.” Two decades later, those laws have been stretched beyond recognition to justify dozens of military operations around the world.

The 2002 AUMF remains on the books, despite the fact that the occupation of Iraq has been over for a decade. Congress came close to repealing the law twice, only to be stopped by the Obama and Trump administrations. But the Biden administration may take a different approach.

Joe Biden’s got a problem — and so do I. And so, in fact, do we.

At 76 years old, you’d think I’d experienced it all when it comes to this country and its presidencies. Or most of it, anyway. I’ve been around since Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. Born on July 20, 1944, I’m a little “young” to remember him, though I was a war baby in an era when Congress still sometimes declared war before America made it.

The US Naval Academy is steeped in the cancel culture, providing one-sided “training” to all midshipmen that is straight out of the cultural Marxist rot that is infecting civilian colleges and universities across the land. The Marxists behind the cancel culture are scalp-hunters, too, and woe unto anyone who has differing views than these leftists do about critical racial theory [sic] and their definition of “white nationalism.” As the linked article above points out:

The victims of cancel culture are generally not powerful people. They are often vulnerable people who suffer devastating harm.

A famous US public service announcement ominously asked parents: ‘It’s 10pm. Do you know where your children are?’ An equally pressing question for Americans would be: ‘It’s 10pm. Do you know where your country is bombing?’

You might be surprised to know that the US has been relentlessly bombing Somalia, a country almost unheard of in the mainstream press for years. And this bombing is only increasing.

Somalia is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It borders both Ethiopia & Kenya and is situated just across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen – a country which itself has been bombarded and devastated by its northern neighbor Saudi Arabia, with US backing, from 2015 until the present time (though President Biden just announced that US assistance for this assault may be ending).

A war between Moscow and the West might start on the ground, but it would be settled in the air. That’s the verdict of two top Russian military strategists, published in a new analysis of how a putative conflict might play out.

Writing in a new edition of the Air and Space Forces Journal, two associate professors at Russia’s pilot-training academy set out how any invasion launched against the country by NATO allies would depend on a massive aerial bombardment with warplanes and missiles. Vladilen Stuchinsky and Mikhail Korolkov say, however, that the approach isn’t foolproof.

In order to disrupt the bombardment and frustrate ground-based operations, the analysts say, Russia should launch a colossal counter or pre-emptive strike to wipe out enemy hardware. This could be achieved, they argue, with the combined use of drones, missiles, cyber warfare and new weaponry, destroying Western equipment before it can even get airborne.

Boeing reported earlier this week the first test flight of its upgraded version of the F-15 Eagle was "successful," paving the way for two of these fighter jets to be delivered to the US Air Force later this quarter.

The F-15EX took off and landed from St. Louis Lambert International Airport in Missouri on Tuesday, completing a 90-minute test flight before returning to the airport.

The Pentagon's inspector general faulted leadership on a U.S. aircraft carrier for decisions the watchdog said exacerbated a coronavirus outbreak on the vessel early in the pandemic.

More than 1,200 sailors aboard the USS Roosevelt were infected with the coronavirus in the spring of 2020. The outbreak, and the Navy's response, erupted into a political firestorm.

An inspector general report released Monday found that USS Roosevelt commanders did not keep sailors in quarantine for long enough or strictly enforce social distancing rules. Leaders continued conducting urine tests for drug use amid the outbreak and “allowed social gathering areas to remain open.” The watchdog cited earlier investigations by Navy commanders in its report.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has hired General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, to craft designs for an air-launched missile-toting air-to-air combat drone as part of a program called LongShot. In concept, a larger manned aircraft would fire this unmanned air vehicle, which could then fly to a certain area and engage multiple aerial threats with its own weapons. This, in turn, would extend the range of the launch platform and reduce its vulnerability to hostile aircraft or air defenses, among many other benefits.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, some 50 vehicles in a US military convoy crossed into Syria this weekend and headed for bases in the nation’s northeast Hasakeh Province.

Details aren’t clear on why the convoy arrived, beyond delivering equipment. The Observatory noted this is the ninth such convoy to enter Syria in 2021, meaning nearly two convoys per week are showing up.

While there has been no official announcement on a policy change, this speaks to the Biden Administration’s intentions in Syria, or at least intentions to not leave Syria.

The US has very limited troop presence left in Syria, and President Trump made much of the remnant just being there to loot oil. With reports of ISIS seeking a resurgence there, it seems the US may have found itself another war, or at least a continuation of the existing war.

The United States military has kicked off joint war games with Australian and Japan on the Western Pacific island of Guam which will specifically focus on countering a theoretical future aerial attack from Russia or China.

The joint exercises, dubbed 'Cope North 2021' began last Wednesday and are scheduled to run all the way to February 19. Crucially the exercises will included F-35A joint strike fighters, marking the first time the advanced stealth jets are deployed to Andersen Air Force Base at Guam.

"Exercise Cope North 21 aims to provide an opportunity for the forces to hone their combined air tactics while enhancing support to the Indo-Pacific region," according to a US military statement. "Australia is participating for the 11th time in the US Pacific Air Forces’ largest multilateral exercise."

With the extremely rapid advances in technology made in the twenty-first century, many aspects of human life have transformed irrevocably. One of the most significant changes involves norms regarding the commission of intentional, premeditated homicide by governments. The practice is today termed “targeted killing,” but it differs only in the implement of death from what in centuries past was called “assassination” and deemed illegal. Black-ops involving shady assassins who stalk and eliminate perceived enemies under a cloak of secrecy are no doubt still carried out by governments. But the use of unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV) or lethal drones to stalk and eliminate terrorist suspects in lands far away is openly acknowledged and has been largely accepted by politicians and the populace alike as one of the military’s standard operating procedures.

Last week Louisiana-based shipbuilder Metal Shark announced that the U.S. Marine Corps had selected them to develop a Long Range Unmanned Surface Vessel (LRUSV), an 11-meter robot boat capable of operating autonomously and launching loitering munitions to attack targets at sea and on land. The unmanned boat is just the latest of a series of new platforms for launching drone swarms.

“This tiered, scalable weapons system will provide the ability to accurately track and destroy targets at range throughout the battlespace,” according to Metal Shark’s press release.

Loitering munitions, otherwise known as kamikaze drones, differ from other weapons in being relatively slow but able to patrol an area for a prolonged period looking for targets before identifying, selecting and attacking them.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is probably the most advanced fighter jet flying today. The F-35, a.k.a. the “Panther,” is the first jet to use a number of new technologies designed to make it the most lethal and survivable warplane around. The problem? Some of those bells and whistles have landed with a resounding thud.

In an interview with the excellent aviation magazine Hush-Kit, an anonymous Panther pilot describes the F-35’s cockpit and interface system. The pilot says the cockpit itself is “beautiful,” full of screens that allow you to bring up an incredible amount of information about the fighter with just a few finger swipes, and customize the data to tailor it for the particular mission.

The US military is making a big show of cleansing its ranks of ‘extremism’ – because nothing says tolerance like raining fiery death on innocent strangers at the command of a guy who just stepped down from Raytheon’s board.

With “domestic extremists” now officially the enemy du jour in Washington, the top order of business has become finding some. On Wednesday, newly-anointed secretary of defense (and former Raytheon board member) Lloyd Austin ordered a two-month stand-down so that commanders could engage in “needed discussions” with their subordinates on the issue.

Did we mention they have a lot of subordinates? There are 3.6 million service members in the most expensive military in the world, and evaluating every single one of them for a characteristic that lacks even a universally-agreed-upon definition is certain to be both time-consuming and frustrating.

In Barton Bigg’s book “Wealth, War & Wisdom”, he makes the case that to protect your capital during a war, investors need to own diversified portfolios of stocks and property in safe regions. The book chronicles the experience of investors during World War II: whose wealth was destroyed and why. And what you could have done to protect your wealth.

Biggs comes to the conclusion that the following asset classes were best at preserving wealth, ranked from best to worst:

In a cliché-ridden foreign-policy speech delivered at the State Department on Thursday, President Joe Biden declared that "America is back" – on the global stage, presumably, as policeman of the world, but certainly not a disinterested policeman. The problem is that it never left.

Sgt. Ryan G. Mason, a decorated Army veteran who grew up in Carthage and was deployed to Iraq months after 9-11, who was known as a loyal patriot, inspiring brother and romantic husband, died last week after battling cancer that apparently originated overseas.

He was 36.

Sgt. Mason died Jan. 28 with his family by his side at a hospital in El Paso, Texas, after having been diagnosed in 2019 with throat-targeting esophageal cancer. He shattered his prognosis of three months to live in his fight for more moments with his two young children, and to be there for his mother, sister and wife — the three women who helped shape his life.

Life for civilians in Ethiopia's embattled Tigray region has become "extremely alarming" as hunger grows and fighting remains an obstacle to reaching millions of people with aid, the United Nations says in a new report.

The conflict that has shaken one of Africa's most powerful and populous countries -- a key U.S. security ally in the Horn of Africa -- has killed thousands of people and is now in its fourth month. But little is known about the situation for most of Tigray's 6 million people, as journalists are blocked from entering, communications are patchy and many aid workers struggle to obtain permission to enter.

The head of US Strategic Command is warning that nuclear war with Russia or China is “a real possibility,” pointing to “destabilizing” behaviors of America’s rivals. He also claims the Pentagon is not “stuck in the Cold War.”

“There is a real possibility that a regional crisis with Russia or China could escalate quickly to a conflict involving nuclear weapons, if they perceived a conventional loss would threaten the regime or state,” STRATCOM chief and Vice Admiral Charles Richard wrote in the February issue of the US Naval Institute's monthly magazine.

STRATCOM, which oversees the US nuclear arsenal, views the probability of nuclear war as low. But with Russia and China advancing their capabilities and continuing to “exert themselves globally,” Richard said STRATCOM must understand what it's facing.

Transgender military veterans will soon have access to fake breasts and male sex organs along with other prosthetic devices, according to a VA bulletin obtained by the Todd Starnes Radio Show.

A disgusted military veteran sent us the jaw-dropping information — noting how the Veteran’s Administration is bending over backwards to accommodate men who identify as women and vice versa.

“We should be focused on teaching soldiers how to win wars, not how to put on chest binders and breast forms,” the veteran said.

Just days ago on January 30th, Steve Quayle had linked to this 'flashback story' over at the Telegraph titled "Blackjack: A Slideshow Story", with Steve warning in an SQnote that story, which was about a series of nuclear terrorist attacks on major western cities, was major 'predictive programming'.

With the Telegraph story claims in the beginning of it that the 'slideshow' presented within it was completely fictional, it detailed for us a scenario we see being 'pitched' by the globalists today, with a 'fictional' report done by an intelligence agency (though in the UK) warning of an imminent terrorist attack carried out by "...a coalition of extremists, Islamists and Christian doomsday cultists who may have acquired the means to carry out a mass-casualty attack".

President Biden delivered a foreign policy speech on Thursday and vowed to end US support for Saudi Arabia’s “offensive” operations in Yemen.

“We are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales,” Biden said. Last week, the administration paused planned arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, although US officials framed the pause as a standard procedure for a new administration.

While Biden vowed to end “offensive” support, he promised to keep supporting the Saudis militarily in other ways. “At the same time, Saudi Arabia faces missile attacks, UAV strikes, and other threats from Iranian-supplied forces in multiple countries. We’re going to continue to support and help Saudi Arabia defend its sovereignty.”

The February 4 announcement by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that President Biden would end U.S. support for ?“offensive operations” in Yemen was understandably met with celebration by those opposed to the war. Almost six years of the U.S.-Saudi?U.A.E. onslaught on Yemen have left the country devastated by humanitarian disaster and famine. Anti-war activists have spent these years?—?first during the Obama-Biden administration, then the Trump-Pence administration, and now the Biden-Harris administration?—?agitating to end U.S. participation in the onslaught. It has been an organizing effort that often seemed like shouting into the wind, as the bombings of hospitals, factories and weddings piled up. The countless people who have been toiling in obscurity to end this war, and the people in Yemen who have joined in this effort even while surrounded by hardship and death, certainly deserve praise and gratitude.

Pesky Russians went and built a Mach 8 anti-ship missile. "There is no technological solution for stopping this type of weapon in the US currently — the ramifications are colossal"

A plan to pull about 12,000 US troops out of Germany ordered by the Trump administration has been put on hold, the head of US European Command said on Wednesday.

“At this very moment, every single one of those options, they are all on hold. They will all be reexamined from cradle to grave,” Gen. Tod Wolters told reporters. He said Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had begun a “very thorough review” of the drawdown.

With the new Biden administration more friendly to NATO and keen to confront Russia, it’s no surprise that a plan to bring troops out of Europe was put on pause, and the chances of the US following through with the drawdown after the review are slim.

There are currently about 34,000 US troops stationed in Germany. President Trump ordered the drawdown partly because he said Germany was not paying enough for its defense.

While the Transatlantic alliance continues to exist and even wield some military power, last four years have seen it becoming increasingly irrelevant in terms of its ability to shape bi-lateral relations between the US & Russia, EU & Russia and EU & the US. Its ability to influence the outcomes of different conflict zones, including Afghanistan, has also considerably reduced over the past few years. This, for instance, is evident from the way the US continues to withdraw from Afghanistan despite NATO’s warnings. The most important reason for this increasing irrelevance is a sea-change that has occurred in the Europe itself, with most European states positioning themselves in ways that do not allow smooth convergence with the US. This is likely to continue.

The Russian military's future appears to be dominated by advanced hypersonic missile technology, stealth fighter jets, and perhaps in the next 15 years, combat suits for infantrymen that resemble the military gear worn by "Master Chief" in the Halo video games.

State-owned defense giant Rostec State Corporation released a press release describing how it has begun work on a new combat suit for the "soldiers of the future." The effort will result in the new suit being deployed on the modern battlefields by 2035.

"The fourth-generation outfit is a principally new gear that demands looking into the future. It will unite the Russian military-defense complex's latest achievements, new protection, and life-support systems, robotized equipment, and integrated information exchange systems. The outfit demands a big volume of research. We have begun the first stage to determine tactical and technical requirements," Rostec Industrial Director Bekhan Ozdoev said.

Sixty years to the month after President Dwight D. Eisenhower prophetically warned against the “unwarranted influence” of the “military-industrial complex” in his farewell address, the chief executive of one of the world’s biggest weapons makers affirmed that ongoing war in the Middle East is good for business.

During a Tuesday earnings call, Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes told investors he anticipated the Biden administration would temporarily block the sale of 7,500 of his company’s Paveway bombs to Saudi Arabia, a nearly $500 million deal sealed during the final months of former President Donald Trump’s tenure. Hayes quasi-cryptically said that a certain “offensive weapons system” to a certain “customer in the Middle East [who] we can’t talk about” was coming off the company’s books.

The first deployment of American bombers at a Norwegian air base has been met with criticism from several parties, who warned that an escalation of US activity on Norwegian soil is not in the country's interest amid a negative spiral of ever-increasing tensions between the US and Russia.

American bombers will be deployed to the Ørland Air Base during the course of February. Crews numbering some 200 airmen have already arrived at the base, the Norwegian Armed Forced stressed, finally confirming previous reports.

"The planes will arrive in February, depending on how long it will take to get through preparations for crews, among other things with regard to infection control and coronavirus", the head of 132th Air Wing at Ørland Air Base, Øivind Gunnerud, told national broadcaster NRK.

New Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has fired several hundred appointees to Pentagon advisory boards - including Trump administration appointees like Corey Lewandowski and Newt Gingrich.

The order only impacts board members appointed by the Defense Department, and not board members appointed by Congress or presidents, including Trump, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The move does not affect Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway, who were appointed by Trump to the Naval Academy Board of Visitors and the Air Force Academy Board of Visitors respectively.

The United Arab Emirates is confident that a deal to purchase F-35 fighter jets from the US will proceed despite the administration of President Joe Biden issuing a review of the Trump-era sale, the country's ambassador to Washington has said.

Yousef al-Otaiba described the review as routine and expected, and said the Emirates' purchase of 50 F-35 jets, 18 armed drones, and other defence equipment - a deal valued at $23bn - will go ahead as planned.

"Should they review it? They absolutely should, but they're going to find what we already know. It was done through a very straightforward negotiating process," Otaiba said on Monday during a virtual panel hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Navies are racing to develop hypersonic missiles which may change the pace of naval warfare. Russia will deploy the Zircon hypersonic missile aboard warships and submarines. The US Navy has started down the path of the common hypersonic glide body (c-HGB) for its destroyers. Meanwhile China’s latest hypersonic weapon is something completely different; it is air launched.

The massive new missile, labelled CH-AS-X-13, is probably the largest air-launched missile in the world.

The missile was first reported by Ankit Panda, the Stanton Senior Fellow at the Nuclear Policy Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in April 2018. More recently candid images have appeared on Chinese social media. These provide a clearer view of the novel weapon.

In the latest threat against Iran from an Israeli official, Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz said on Sunday that a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program was still on the table for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

“The IDF and Israel’s defense establishment are holding onto the option of taking action against Iran’s nuclear project if that is what has to be done,” Gantz told an Egyptian TV station.

Last week, IDF Chief of Staff Avi Kohavi said he ordered the military to draw up new plans to attack Iran and expressed his opposition to the Biden administration reviving the Iran nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA.

Both Kohavi and Gantz frame attacks on Iran as the last hope to stop the Islamic Republic from acquiring nuclear weapons. As evidence that Iran is racing towards a bomb, Israeli officials usually point to recent increases in Iran’s uranium enrichment.

The U.S. Space Force finally has an official rank structure for its enlisted members and officers, a service spokesman has confirmed to Military.com.

A leaked memo first posted on the popular Facebook page Amn/Nco/Snco detailed the new ranks, which nearly mirror Air Force ranks.

Foreign policy tends to be complicated and messy. International issues create an explosive imbroglio mixing economic, political, and security controversies. Human rights upsets almost every calculation since America’s friends can be even crueler than its foes.

The Trump administration cared not at all about humanitarian issues. Political prisoners were only convenient weapons, useful against adversaries but forgotten with allies. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s cynicism was exceeded only by his sanctimony when it came to the issue.

Although Azerbaijan won the war against Armenia, both countries have in fact lost part of their sovereignty.

Azerbaijan won the war and expanded territorially after it captured or received the districts surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh proper that Armenian forces captured in the first war (1988-1994). The status of Nagorno-Karabakh proper remains undetermined but is protected by Russian peacekeepers and is still governed by Armenians.

Touch screens. Love them, hate them.

How many times have you touched something on your smartphone screen, expected something to happen, and … nothing does.

So you hit it again, and again, until something does happen.

Now imagine you are in a jet fighter, over hostile territory, and you are faced with enemy ground fire and threatening aircraft in the vicinity.

You touch the display, and … nothing happens. You’ve just lost valuable time, that could mean the difference between life and death.

According to an exclusive interview with an anonymous US military pilot published by alternative aviation magazine Hush-Kit and Popular Mechanics, this is a serious issue on the new F-35, the most advanced fighter jet flying today.

We know that the US Navy is working towards integrating unmanned combat ships, but now it appears that the US Marines are joining that endeavor, with a cool twist.

According to Popular Mechanics, the Marine Corps is taking a completely new tack to providing fire support during amphibious landings: unmanned boats stocked full of suicide drones.

The shipbuilder Metal Shark has announced it’s building a new type of unmanned surface vessel, which the Marines plan to equip with loitering munitions.

Such a boat would act as a mobile fire support platform, servicing calls for fire with salvos of drones equipped with explosive charges.

The US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) criticized Chinese military activities in the South China Sea and in the East China Sea, but stressed that Beijing forces have posed no threat to US military assets deployed to the region.

"The Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group closely monitored all People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and Air Force (PLAAF) activity, and at no time did they pose a threat to US Navy ships, aircraft, or Sailors," INDOPACOM spokesperson, US Navy Capt. Mike Kafka, said in a statement on late Friday.

He also described the intensified Chinese activities in the region as the latest example of aggressive and destabilizing actions.

"These actions reflect a continued PLA attempt to use its military as a tool to intimidate or coerce those operating in international waters and airspace, to include their neighbors and those with competing territorial claims," Kafka said.

While front-line soldiers are often tormented for decades by the horrors they experience in endless wars conducted by the U.S. government—not to mention the hundreds of thousands who have been maimed and/or lost their lives—the political elite in the U.S. is not known to suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) because they are, perhaps in their own minds, too far removed from the scene. The events of January 6 seem to have left factions with a taste of their own medicine.

Notwithstanding, newly-elected president Biden characteristically does not appear to be haunted by any of his past actions; rather he is often boastful about policies that caused great misery. In this exclusive series of articles reviewing Biden’s positions on U.S. foreign policy, Kuzmarov focuses on some of the skeletons in Biden’s political closet.

Biden, the current occupant of the White House, and President Putin of Russia have had their first telephone meeting. President Putin stressed that it is in the interest of the US, Russia, and the entire world for the tense relationship between Washington and the Kremlin to be normalized. Biden apparently, was noncommittal on this overriding issue and although indicating agreement to renew the 1991 treaty to limit and reduce strategic offensive arms, Biden mainly raised American propaganda issues with Russia.

Considering Washington’s record since the Clinton regime of simply abandoning out of hand previous agreements with Russia, renewing the START Treaty might not mean much. The important issue is the normalization of relations between the nuclear superpowers. As Russia can wipe the US off of the face of Earth, Washington needs to be careful what impression it creates in the Kremlin.

Last week, US Indo-Pacific Command announced that a Navy carrier strike group led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt had entered the South China Sea for “routine operations”. The move was followed immediately thereafter by China deploying bombers, fighters, and an anti-submarine warfare turboprop for drills off Taiwan.

Last weekend’s Chinese air drills southwest of Taiwan appear to have been a direct response to the arrival of the US carrier group in the region, with radio chatter collected by the US and its allies indicating that Chinese bomber pilots had been given orders to simulate an attack run on the 88,000 tonne carrier using anti-ship missiles, FT reports, citing sources said to be ‘familiar with intelligence’.

The US accused China of ramping up tensions in the South China Sea amid new drills. The statement came shortly after a notorious pro-NATO lobby group published an anonymously-authored proposal for long-term conflict with Beijing.

PACOM (United States Indo-Pacific Command) announced on Friday evening that the Chinese military flights over the past week “at no time” posed any threat to US Navy ships, sailors, or aircraft, according to a statement cited by Reuters.

An official speaking on condition of anonymity said the Chinese warplanes never came within 250 nautical miles (463 km) of the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group, currently deployed in the South China Sea.

One of the top US weapons-makers, Northrop Grumman, is walking away from a contract to deal with the Pentagon’s cluster bomb stockpile. Is this a case of suddenly developed conscience, or a “woke-washing” PR move?

Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy Warden said on a quarterly earnings call on Thursday that the company will back out of a contract involving “testing of cluster munition components,” because inasmuch as they want to help the US military and its allies, they want to “be thoughtful about potential human rights implications, and how these technologies may be used in the future and provide equal consideration to safeguards associated with them.”

“We recognize that even supporting an area like cluster munitions for investors is of concern, because safe removal implies that at one point there was an embracing of the use of these products,” Warden reportedly said, according to Defense One.

On January 19th, the US Senate held confirmation hearings for Joe Biden’s Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken. Blinken has a reputation on both sides of the aisle for being exceptionally qualified for the job of America’s top diplomat, which is surprising considering he was on the wrong side of every major foreign policy blunder of the last 20 years; Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

When Senator Rand Paul asked Antony Blinken what lessons he has learned from his disastrous foreign policy record in Libya and Syria, Blinken replied that after "some hard thinking" he’s proud that he has done "everything we possibly can to make sure that diplomacy is the first answer, not the last answer, and that war and conflict is our last resort."

Amidst a deadly global pandemic and rising, a threat of climate change, and nuclear war, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (The Bulletin) has set its 2021 clock at 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to armaggedon.

In a press conference on Wednesday, January 27th, Rachel Bronson, the director of The Bulletin, stated that “we are now at the two-minute warning due to the man-made threats of climate change and nuclear war.”

According to Bronson, what is especially disturbing about our current moment is the “undermining of science and law-based approaches to solving major world problems and discarding of international agreements by influential leaders.”