PUBLICATIONS BY Peter Brookes
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2009 Commentary
November 20, 2009
O's China Kowtow
By Peter Brookes
If you were troubled by President Obama's "Wow Bow" in Japan, you won't be any happier with the "kowtow" during his just-concluded trip to the People's Republic of China.
November 09, 2009
Why We Can't Walk Away
By Peter Brookes
There is certainly a lot of hand-wringing, chin-rubbing and forceful exhaling going on these days over the increasingly challenging war in Afghanistan, where nearly 70,000 U.S. troops are duking it out with the Taliban, al-Qaida and war lords.
November 04, 2009
CIA Clash: The Left Assaults Langley--Again
By Peter Brookes
You would think with hot wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and on Terror, the Left would rule out declaring war on the Central Intelligence Agency, too, one of this country's key intelligence collection and analysis organizations.
November 02, 2009
Visit the War Zone, Mr. President
By Peter Brookes
Despite all the Obama administration's chin- rubbing and hand- wringing about how to proceed in Afghanistan, the president hasn't been to the war-torn country since entering the White House.
October 28, 2009
Biden's missile-defense missteps
By Peter Brookes
Vice President Joe Biden's trip last week to Poland and the Czech Republic may have helped soothe rattled allies after Team Obama pitched overboard the W-era, anti-Iran missile shield that was to be deployed in both countries. But the new missile-defense plan he pitched has problems.
October 13, 2009
Why China Won't Help Stop Tehran
By Peter Brookes
So why did President Obama opt last week to become the first president since 1991 to not meet the Dalai Lama during his visit to Washington?
October 07, 2009
Why China Worries the Pentagon
By Peter Brookes
Replete with Olympian fanfare, China just a few days ago "celebrated" the 60th anniversary of the founding and achievements of the People's Republic.
October 07, 2009
Son of START
By Peter Brookes
A move toward a nuke-free world or a pipe dream. Early in his tenure, President Barack Obama outlined a broad nonproliferation agenda in a Prague speech.
September 25, 2009
Seven Things to Note on Iran
By Peter Brookes
What a shock: Iran has another undeclared nuclear facility that is likely supporting a nuclear weapons program!
September 15, 2009
Too much at stake to abandon Afghanistan
By Peter Brookes
There's certainly a lot of hand-wringing these days on both the left and right over the war in Afghanistan. Among Americans, support for the fight is slipping, almost eight years after U.S. forces entered the country.
September 09, 2009
Yet Another Foreign-Policy Fumble: Throwing Missile Defense Under Bus
By Peter Brookes
The Obama administration is getting ready to throw the proposed Eastern European-based US missile-defense system under the bus. The move is a sop to the Russians (and to lefties here at home) -- but will render us increasingly vulnerable to the growing Iranian nuclear/missile threat.
September 01, 2009
Don't Get Scammed By Russia Again
By Peter Brookes
American and Russian teams will start another round of talks as early as today on a new nuclear-arms-reduction pact to replace the expiring Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Problem is Russia isn't meeting its obligations on some old arms-control agreements.
August 27, 2009
Inquest of CIA None Too Smart
By Peter Brookes
The Obama administration's decision to release a previously classified 2004 CIA interrogation report and appoint a special prosecutor to look into possible misdeeds by personnel involved in questioning high-value terrorists is a huge mistake.
August 10, 2009
Warning Sign: Russian Subs No Threat
By Peter Brookes
The Pentagon says it's not worried about a couple of Russian Akula-class attack submarines patrolling some 200 miles off the US Eastern coast -- that it raises no "red" flags at the moment.
August 04, 2009
Foreign policy fizzling: Down south, things don't go better with Obama
By Peter Brookes
With dictators on the rise, democracy under assault and foreign powers making inroads in Latin America, it's not clear the Obama administration has a plan for dealing with it--other than more of its "Have a Coke and a Smile" brand of foreign policy.
August 04, 2009
North Korea: Master of Mayhem
By Peter Brookes
Perhaps no country is in the news more these days for troublemaking than North Korea. Run by a diminutive dictator, the Stalinist police state is adept at causing problems on--and beyond--the Korean peninsula.
July 27, 2009
The Danger of Bad Foreign Policies
By Peter Brookes
Most Americans have noticed that President Obama's economic policies aren't getting the job done. Fewer, however, realize that the administration's foreign policies are flagging after just six months in the White House, too.
July 24, 2009
O's foreign failures: bad guys refuse to be charmed
By Peter Brookes
Most Americans have noticed that President Obama's economic policies aren't getting the job done. Fewer, however, realize that the administration's foreign policies are flagging after just six months in the White House, too.
July 08, 2009
Flashpoint: The Great Wall goes to sea
By Peter Brookes
Militarily, China has not been well-known for its navy. The army has long been the dominant service in the People's Republic of China (PRC), a country celebrating the 60th anniversary of its founding by Mao Zedong in 1949.
July 02, 2009
Learning to Love Missile Defense
By Peter Brookes
The Obama administration is reacting to the anticipated launch of another North Korean long-range ballistic missile, expected to fly over the Pacific toward Hawaii sometime soon, by putting missile defense on alert.
June 22, 2009
Korean Cargo-Ship Conundrum
By Peter Brookes
Hardly a week seems to go by without North Korean leader Kim Jong Il deciding to once again chest-thump President Obama in an increasingly dangerous game of school-yard bullying. US planes and spy satellites are now monitoring the movements of a ship that looks to be the latest provocation.
June 11, 2009
The horrors of North Korea's gulags
By Peter Brookes
If there's a shred of good news in the sentencing of American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling to 12 years in a North Korean prison labor camp, it's that they'll probably never see the inside of one.
June 09, 2009
The Bear Is Back: We face increasing challenges from a resurgent Russia
By Peter Brookes
Both Russia and the United States insist one Cold War was enough. But considering the frosty rhetorical winds blowing back and forth between the two former, bitter rivals the last few years, one has to wonder.
June 05, 2009
Flashpoint: Satellite subterfuge
By Peter Brookes
The famous Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud is believed to have once said: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar," meaning that at times you should take things at face value and not search for any deeper meaning. Fair enough.
June 03, 2009
Iran: Elephant in the Room
By Peter Brookes
Unfortunately, President Obama is likely to use this week's visits to Saudi Arabia and Egypt as stops on his Apology World Tour, repudiating Bush-era Middle East and War on Terror policies.
May 28, 2009
North Korean Nukes: O's Kick in the Teeth
By Peter Brookes
A North Korean nuclear- weapons test, taken in isolation, is bad enough. But put into a wider context, the underground blast over the Memorial Day weekend is worse than many realize.
May 18, 2009
Deadly Distraction
By Peter Brookes
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a senior Democrat, and the White House-appointed CIA director, Leon Panetta, are having a tiff about "who told whom what when" regarding the interrogation of al Qaeda terrorists.
April 29, 2009
The Cyberspy Threat: Foreign Hackers Target Military
By Peter Brookes
America needs to pay a heckuva a lot more attention to the cyberthreat. Now.
April 16, 2009
Keep the Embargo, O
By Peter Brookes
In another outreach to roguish regimes, the Obama administration on Monday announced the easing of some restrictions on Cuba.
April 16, 2009
Let's take it slow on overtures to Cuba
By Peter Brookes
If you're hoping for major changes in Cuba following the White House's announcement Monday of the easing of some restrictions on interactions with the island - think again.
April 03, 2009
North Korea Going Ballistic
By Peter Brookes
If you think reactions to President Obama's arrival on the world stage from the likes of the Russian, Chinese, Iranian, Venezuelan and even European leaders have been lukewarm at best, check out the North Koreans.
March 30, 2009
Closing Gitmo-A Dangerous Decision: Are al Qaeda and Taliban coming to a prison near you?
By Peter Brookes
On only his second day in office, newly minted President Barack Obama promulgated an executive order closing the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base on the island of Cuba within one year-if not sooner.
March 20, 2009
Russia's 'Reset': A Military Buildup
By Peter Brookes
From the looks of it, the Kremlin hasn't bought into the whole "reset but ton" gimmick the White House has put forward as a framework for the Obama administration's new Russia policy.
March 20, 2009
Better Green Jobs: The One-Word Solution
By J.D. Foster
"Green jobs" are all the rage. Supposedly, we can strengthen the economy by government spending and regulating to advance the development of environmentally friendly, or “green” technologies. Green jobs, President Obama and others would have us believe, are the elixir for both our environmental and economic problems.
March 13, 2009
China Tests--And Team Bam Blinks
By Peter Brookes
Just two weeks after the Obama Pentagon crowed that the recent US-China military-to-military talks were practically the best ever, Beijing's navy confronted a US ship operating in international waters in the South China Sea.
March 07, 2009
Rendezvous with Russia musn’t be rollover
By Peter Brookes
While better relations with Russia, a resurging major power, are a laudable goal, we have to make sure that this notion of a reboot in relations doesn’t equate to a rollover on our part.
March 06, 2009
US-Russia: Reboot or Rollover?
By Peter Brookes
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will get her chance to mash the Obama administration's "reset button" on US-Russian relations when she parachutes into Geneva to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov tomorrow.
March 04, 2009
Mexican mayhem: Narcotics traffickers threaten Mexico and U.S.
By Peter Brookes
Largely invisible to most Americans, just to the south, the security situation is worsening as a result of an intense conflict between the Mexican government and domestic drug cartels — and even among the narco-gangs themselves.
February 24, 2009
Atomic Ayatollahs: 10, 9, 8, 7...
By Peter Brookes
Get this: The Obama administration has put plans for our missile-defense system in Eastern Europe under review - even as fresh signs pop up that Iran is closing in on nuclear and ICBM capabilities.
February 18, 2009
Tough love for Tehran: Danger in a careless seduction
By Peter Brookes
Apropos of this Valentine’s Day just past, there’s a lot of flirting going on between the United States and Iran, leading some to day-dream of improved relations between the long-time foes.
February 07, 2009
Iran’s situation explosive:It’s not just a satellite
By Peter Brookes
Normally, a satellite launch isn’t newsworthy. They happen all the time. But Iran’s launch of its first domestically built satellite this week is a very big deal for U.S. national security.
January 31, 2009
Help Mexico Beat the Narco-Gangs
By Peter Brookes
Mexico may be headed to hell in a handbasket as a result of grisly fighting between the federal government and drug cartels - and among the narco-gangs themselves.
January 10, 2009
It's a Real Cold War
By Peter Brookes
Russia's decision to cut off natural-gas shipments to Ukraine - and essentially 13 other European states that receive gas via its pipelines - is a lot more than a business decision based on failed year-end contract negotiations.
A lot more.
January 01, 2009
The new president's global security challenges
By Peter Brookes
With at least two ongoing wars, President-elect Barack Obama may well be entering the Oval Office facing the toughest national security landscape for any American president in some time.
A tour of the foreign policy horizon shows that America’s 44th president will have his hands full with a panoply of problems that would vex any head of state, much less one who is expected to be the leader of the Western world.
He and his national security team can expect no honeymoon that would allow them to ease into their new jobs. They’ll have to hit the ground running to protect and advance U.S. interests at home and across the globe
2008 Commentary
December 22, 2008
Outside View: Iran talks trap
By James Phillips and Peter Brookes
There is no guaranteed policy that can halt the Iranian nuclear program short of war, and even a military campaign may only delay Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons capability. But U.S. policymaking regarding the Iranian nuclear issue inevitably boils down to a search for the least-bad option, and as potentially costly and risky as a preventive war against Iran would be, allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons could result in far heavier costs and risks.
December 12, 2008
Bush's Better World: His Overlooked Successes on Foreign Policy and Security
By Peter Brookes
If you asked Americans to list President Bush's foreign policy and national security accomplishments, you'd likely get some laughs - surely some snarky comments. Perhaps, at best, a short list.
But, in truth, there are a number of great successes. So as the Bush administration gets ready to exit the national and world stage in the coming days, it's time to give credit where credit's due.
December 11, 2008
Buccaneers are back: The challenges of modern piracy
By Peter Brookes
The thought of pirates usually evokes Hollywood blockbusters involving swashbuckling buccaneers, tropical isles and buried treasure marked on a tattered map with an “X.”
December 02, 2008
Was the Real Target Indo-Pakistan Peace?
By Peter Brookes
In the wake of the terror attacks that killed more than 180 people (including at least six Americans) and wounded another 300 in Mumbai, India, last week, the burning question is: Who done it - and why?
It's still speculative, but most fingers are pointing toward Pakistan and such terrorist groups as Lashkar e Tayyiba (LeT) and Jaish e Mohammed (JeM).
November 27, 2008
Russia, China, Move In on Latin America
By Peter Brookes
Medvedev, Chavez, Venezuela, China, Latin America, Russia
November 19, 2008
Stakes Rising on Prez-Elect's First Test
By Peter Brookes
Barack Obama campaigned on the promise of "change," but one change the president-elect may be planning on - not deploying a US missile defense in Eastern Europe - would be a big mistake.
November 13, 2008
China's Cyber Spies
By Peter Brookes
In the last few weeks, the media have been filled with reports of Chinese cyber spies penetrating the computer networks of both presidential campaigns and even the White House, reading unclassified, but clearly privileged, e-mails.
November 08, 2008
Conservatism's vital signs
By Ed Feulner
How fitting that, having campaigned on conservative themes throughout the fall, President-elect Barack Obama's acceptance speech concluded with words that should warm the heart of conservatives everywhere.
November 06, 2008
Arctic security heats up
By Peter Brookes
By many accounts, the sea ice that covers much of the earth’s Arctic region is melting. The size — that is, the extent — and thickness of the Arctic ice floes are diminishing, following a three-decade trend and brushing up against last year’s historic lows.
October 29, 2008
Now El Loco's Pursuing the Bomb
By Peter Brookes
Russia's alliance with Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez just keeps getting tighter - and worse for America. Now, Moscow could be putting "El Loco" on the road to getting the bomb.
October 06, 2008
The Need for Missile Defense
By Peter Brookes
Despite iran’s runaway nuclear program, North Korea’s atomic assistance to Syria, and robust ballistic missile production and testing by Russia and China, a missile defense system for protecting the homeland and U.S. interests overseas remains a controversial idea in some corners. It should not be. The security challenge arising from the proliferation of ballistic missiles and the dangerous payloads they might carry, including weapons of mass destruction (wmd) like nuclear arms, is a threat that — in fact — may be growing.
September 10, 2008
Korean Conundrum: What if Kim's Kaput?
By Peter Brookes
NEWS reports that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has had a stroke could certainly be true. At 66, he's no spring chicken, especially considering his reportedly colorful lifestyle.
August 18, 2008
Bad News Bear
By Peter Brookes
The good news is that nearly seven years after Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida appears to be battered. The bad news is that like a prize fighter, it is bloodied, but not bowed — leaving it still capable of dealing a devastating blow.
August 08, 2008
Al-Qaida Shifting Tactics, Finding New Recruits
By Peter Brookes
The good news is that nearly seven years after Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida appears to be battered. The bad news is that like a prize fighter, it is bloodied, but not bowed — leaving it still capable of dealing a devastating blow.
August 07, 2008
Hugo's Arms Spree
By Peter Brookes
While Colombia has gone great guns in quashing the narcoterrorist FARC insurgency here - including a daring July hostage-rescue raid - trouble is still brewing right next door in Venezuela.
July 25, 2008
Marking the boundaries of weapon use in space
By Peter Brookes
China and Russia are seeking to update the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which, in its new form, would serve to hinder the US's space capabilities and ambitions.
July 24, 2008
IAEA indicts Iran
By Peter Brookes
New intelligence continues to blast away like a sledgehammer at Iran’s rocklike insistence that its nuclear program is purely peaceful and not a nuclear weapons effort as many strongly believe.
July 10, 2008
Mullahs and Missiles
By Peter Brookes
It's not unusual for a state to conduct military exercises, but Iran had a lot more in mind when it literally went ballistic yesterday - launching nine medium- and long-range missiles during its "Great Prophet" war games.
July 07, 2008
IAEA indicts Iran: Nuclear innocence claim is strongly contested
By Peter Brookes
New intelligence continues to blast away like a sledgehammer at Iran’s rocklike insistence that its nuclear program is purely peaceful and not a nuclear weapons effort as many strongly believe.
June 27, 2008
Korean nukes: Don't get giddy
By Peter Brookes
North Korea gave the world some good news this week - finally handing over a declaration about its nuclear program and promising to blow up the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear facility. But don't break out the best bubbly just yet.
June 06, 2008
The not-so-final frontier
By Peter Brookes
China destroyed one of its own aging, low-Earth-orbit (LEO) weather satellites last winter while it was circling at 500 miles above the planet, using a ground-based, direct ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon.
June 03, 2008
The Newest Trends in Terror
By Peter Brookes
The good news is that al Qaeda's in bad shape; the bad news is that the terrorist threat is evolving. If we don't adapt, the tide could turn back.
June 03, 2008
Flashpoint: The not-so-final frontier The race for space is back on
By Peter Brookes
China destroyed one of its own aging, low-Earth-orbit (LEO) weather satellites last winter while it was circling at 500 miles above the planet, using a ground-based, direct ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon.
May 09, 2008
Looking beyond Iran's space launcher desire
By Peter Brookes
Iran's space programme may be about launching its communications or scientific satellites, but Peter Brookes warns of the intercontinental ballistic missile capability that could soon follow.
May 02, 2008
Flattop Follies: Navy cuts back on carriers
By Peter Brookes
Check this: After cutting the number of active aircraft carriers from 12 to 11 last year, the Navy is now requesting Congress' permission to go down from 11 flattops to 10 for the years 2012 to 2015.
April 21, 2008
America's Perils in the Orient
By Peter Brookes
While the world seems ablaze with problems, no area or issue, including terrorism, will shape the course of the 21st century for good - or bad - more than the region across the Pacific Ocean: East Asia.
April 14, 2008
War & Pieces
By Peter Brookes
New information continues to blast away at last November's controversial National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the supposed dormant state of Iran's nuclear weapons program, which the US intelligence community believes ended in 2003.
April 14, 2008
Copy of War & Pieces
By Peter Brookes
New information continues to blast away at last November's controversial National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the supposed dormant state of Iran's nuclear weapons program, which the US intelligence community believes ended in 2003.
April 07, 2008
Separation anxiety
By Peter Brookes
While it was welcomed in some parts of the world — including Washington, London, Paris and Berlin — many other capitals viewed Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in mid-February as nothing if not controversial.
March 24, 2008
Perils From Across the Pond
By Peter Brookes
If asked, most Americans wouldn't say that Europe is going to be a big challenge for the next president, especially in comparison with the hotspots that splash across the headlines everyday.
March 14, 2008
The Case for European Missile Defense
By Peter Brookes
After seemingly endless rounds of talks with its Polish and Czech counterparts about fielding a missile defense system in Europe, the United States made some progress
in early February when Warsaw and Washington jointly announced they had reached an agreement—in principle—to move forward with the deployment of ten interceptors in Poland.
March 10, 2008
South Asia: Cauldrons of Chaos
By Peter Brookes
The next occupant of the White House better have an iron grip on the national-security challenges facing the United States in the geopolitical hotbed of South Asia well before taking the oath of office next January.
March 10, 2008
The Cyber Challenge
By Peter Brookes
It is no secret that modern warfare is increasingly dependent on advanced computers — and no country’s armed forces are more reliant on the digital age for information superiority than those of the U.S. This is both the American military’s greatest strength— and potentially its greatest weakness.
February 27, 2008
Mullahs In Space
By Peter Brookes
As the world continues to hem and haw about Iran's "peaceful" nuclear program, Tehran continues, slowly but surely, to present clues as to its likely true intentions.
February 13, 2008
Saving the Sailors: Greens vs. National Defense
By Peter Brookes
In spite of a presidential waiver, last week US District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper re-issued a January injunction against the Navy's use of active sonar in anti-sub training off southern California, claiming it violates existing environmental statutes.
February 12, 2008
Israel vs. Iran: 1st Strike Strategies
By Peter Brookes
In late December, Tehran crowed that its 1,000-megawatt Bushehr nuclear plant, supposedly meant to produce peaceful nuclear energy, would be “online” as early as this spring, cementing in place another important building block of its questionable nuclear program.
February 06, 2008
Missile Defense Delay Undermines Security
By Peter Brookes
The US and its allies are leaving themselves dangerously vulnerable to attack if they fail to implement the ballistic missile defense system that has been proposed for Europe, argues Peter Brookes
January 31, 2008
Uncle Sam's Latin Challenge
By Peter Brookes
MAINTAINING - or regaining - America's influence in our own neighborhood will be a key challenge for the next US president.
January 23, 2008
Bad News Bears
By Peter Brookes
The next American president will likely face an increasingly frosty relation ship with an increasingly mighty Mother Russia.
January 09, 2008
The Pakistan problem
By Peter Brookes
Perhaps no word better describes Pakistan today than "uncertainty." From questions about the security of its nuclear arsenal to its political turmoil, from the resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaida to its trying relations with India, the moniker fits.
January 03, 2008
Iran's Dangerous Nuke Game: Why Israel Might Rush to Strike
By Peter Brookes
Iran turned up the heat this week on still-simmering concerns about its atomic aspirations. It crowed that its 1,000-megawatt Bushehr nuclear-power plant would be "online" as early as this spring, putting in place another important building block of its nuclear program.
2007 Commentary
December 27, 2007
The UN's Metastasizing Budget
By Peter Brookes
Government spending will not be curbed by wishful thinking.
December 19, 2007
Bear Paws with Iran's Nukes: Fuel Delivery Stokes Dangerous Game
By Peter Brookes
Like the bone-chilling Siberian winter winds, the bad news just keeps howling out of Mother Russia these days.
December 07, 2007
Missile mistrust
By Peter Brookes
In a way, Russian-American relations since the fall of the Berlin Wall haven’t changed that much. During the Cold War, the security relationship was characterized as one of mutually assured destruction (MAD). Today, it's still MAD — but now it's mutually assured distrust.
December 06, 2007
Iran nuke report shows need for vigilance
By Peter Brookes
With President Bush talking just weeks ago of the possibility of World War III if Iran developed a nuclear weapon, the newly-released National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the Iranian program this week is nothing if not a shocker.
November 26, 2007
A Small Mideast Step: Annapolis Meeting is Progress
By Peter Brookes
The Bush Administration's long-awaited Middle East conference to resuscitate the near-dead Israeli-Palestinian peace process is slated to converge this week on tiny Annapolis, Md.
November 20, 2007
The Tribal Option: Lessons Learned in Iraq Might Help in Pakistan
By Peter Brookes
The US Special Operations Command is considering a forward-leaning plan to aid and train Pakistani tribes for operations against both al Qaeda and the Taliban that have found safe haven along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
November 06, 2007
A Friend in France-Finally
By Peter Brookes
Nicolas Sarkozy, the recently elected leader of America's oldest ally - and possibly the most pro-U.S. president in France's history - begins his first official visit to the United States today, a country he's called the world's "greatest democracy."
November 05, 2007
Arms racing
By Peter Brookes
Instability in Iraq, sectarian violence, Islamic extremism, ethnic rivalries, the rise of Iran and questions about America's long-term commitment to the region are making for a Middle East more unsettled than at any time in recent memory.
October 22, 2007
Turkey's Iraq Threat: Real Fears on Kurdish Terrors
By Peter Brookes
This week, the Turkish parliament gave the central government the go-ahead to undertake cross-border operations into Iraq against the Kurdish terrorist-separatist group, the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK.)
October 18, 2007
Putin's Persian Pals
By Peter Brookes
At his press conference yesterday, President Bush seemed surprised to learn of Russian President Vladimir Putin's comments in Tehran rejecting the use of force in the Caspian region - a clear warning to the United States not to use the military option to deal with Iran's nuclear program.
October 15, 2007
Countering the art of information warfare
By Peter Brookes
While France, Germany, the UK and the US do not see eye to eye on everything, there is one thing they probably can agree on: the growing problem of Beijing's intrusions into their government computer systems.
September 27, 2007
Iran the Bully
By Peter Brookes
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spent much of his U.N. speech yesterday complaining of "bullying" by the West. Funny - in addition to its well-known bloody works in Iraq and Lebanon, Tehran's meddling in Afghanistan is a major, and rising, menace.
September 18, 2007
Nukes in Syria?
By Peter Brookes
With Congress' hearings on Iraq grabbing the nation's attention last week, hardly anyone took notice of the news that Israel may have conducted a military air strike on a suspected nuclear facility in northern Syria.
September 13, 2007
Putin's Puzzling PM Pick
By Peter Brookes
Russia has been nothing if not full of (mostly unpleasant) surprises recently, from the resumption of bomber patrols to planting flags on the Arctic seabed. And while the collapse of Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov's government yesterday really came as no surprise, Russian President Vladimir Putin's pick for a successor certainly did.
September 05, 2007
Is Moscow revisiting Soviet era?
By Peter Brookes
Despite consistent Kremlin claims that Moscow isn't trying to resurrect the Cold War, a landslide of Soviet-style actions over the last few weeks is doing a pretty darn good job of indicating the exact opposite.
September 04, 2007
Checking China
By Peter Brookes
Starting today, the navies of India, Japan, Singapore, Australia and the United States will hold several days of exercises in the Bay of Bengal in the largest multilateral, peacetime naval maneuvers in the Indian Ocean - ever.
August 27, 2007
Bear Chooses Chill
By Peter Brookes
Despite consistent Kremlin claims that Moscow isn't trying to resurrect the Cold War, a landslide of Soviet-style actions over the last few weeks is doing a pretty darn good job of indicating the exact opposite.
August 04, 2007
Flashpoint: Russia resurgent
By Peter Brookes
Both Moscow and Washington insist one Cold War was enough. But considering the chilly rhetorical winds blowing back and forth between the two capitals recently, it appears at least a passing cold front has descended on the relationship.
August 02, 2007
Barack's Blunder
By Peter Brookes
In an "I am too tougher than Hillary" speech, Sen. Barack Obama warned Pakistan yesterday that as commander-in-chief he might act unilaterally if Islamabad didn't do more against the terrorists there.
July 25, 2007
Tea with Iran: Risky At Best
By Peter Brookes
There will be no shortage of people gnashing their teeth today when the United States —once again--meets with Iran in Baghdad over the issue of stabilizing Iraq.
July 11, 2007
The Forgotten Front
By Peter Brookes
When the U.S. counterterrorism operations against the Abu Sayyaf Group, the Philippines-based al Qaeda affiliate, kicked off in late 2001, the Bush administration dubbed it the "Second Front" in the War on Terror. Today, it's more like the "Forgotten Front."
July 10, 2007
Venezuelan Vagaries
By Peter Brookes
If you think the passing of Cuban President Fidel Castro -- the larger-than-life leader of the anti-Yanqui, Latin left for almost 50 years -- will eliminate a major problem for us in the Americas, think again.
June 25, 2007
China: World's Polluter-Ama
By Peter Brookes
China last week became the world's biggest air polluter, according to a Dutch government-funded environmental watchdog. The People's Republic now out-belches the United States as the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases - two years ahead of predictions.
June 18, 2007
The Siege of Lebanon: After Gaza, the next domino?
By Peter Brookes
The Gaza Strip may be only the first domino to fall this summer in Iran and Syria's push to establish an arc of influence across the Middle East, stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Eastern Mediterranean. Lebanon, already teetering on the brink of instability, could easily be next.
June 04, 2007
A Turkey-Iraq War? Ankara Seething with Rage at Kurdish Terrorists Group
By Peter Brookes
Turkey could send troops into Iraq any day now. It's massing ground forces on its southeastern border for a possible strike against the terrorist/separatist group the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
June 04, 2007
Peril in Pakistan: Mountainous border with Afghanistan provides haven for the Taliban
By Peter Brookes
In the global struggle against Islamic extremism and terrorism, Pakistan may be the most important country most Americans don't know is important. That state of blissful ignorance had better change — and soon.
May 31, 2007
Putin's Excuses: Missiles and Misdirection
By Peter Brookes
Yesterday the Kremlin seemed to put another nail in the coffin of U.S.-Russian relations by testing a new intercontinental ballistic missile supposedly capable of penetrating any missile-defense system.
May 29, 2007
Messing Up the Mullahs: Dubya's Covert Action Plan
By Peter Brookes
According to a news account supposedly based on a leak from inside the government, President Bush recently signed off on a classified intelligence "finding," authorizing the CIA to undertake a non-lethal covert-action program to destabilize Iran's nearly out-of-control government. If true, it's about time.
May 23, 2007
The Niger Delta Blues
By Peter Brookes
With U.S. gas prices at record highs--and the peak summer driving season upon us--most Americans still think we get the bulk of our imported oil from the sands of the Middle East.
May 14, 2007
Where Jackals Play Watchdog
By Peter Brookes
The U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development last week elected Zimbabwe as its chair. It's obscene: The panel is supposed to facilitate economic growth as well as environmental integrity - while Zimbabwe's government has transformed Africa's breadbasket into Africa's basket case due to gross economic mismanagement.
May 07, 2007
Iran v. The Saudis: Their Proxy Wars Rage in Iraq and Across the Muslim World
By Peter Brookes
Sunni insurgency, Sunni-Shia sectarian violence, al Qaeda terror - Iraq doesn't need more problems.
April 30, 2007
Congress & Iraq: Declaring Defeat
By Peter Brookes
Early this week, Congress will finally deliver on the president's request for emergency war spending for Iraq and Afghanistan - after more than 80 days (yes, 80 days) of needless dithering with our national security.
April 27, 2007
Horn hotbed
By Peter Brookes
Since the early 1990s, the Horn of Africa - the descriptive name for the East African countries of Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan - has been considered by many a major source of Islamic terrorism, radicalism and political instability. Unfortunately, that conclusion is accurate.
April 23, 2007
Squeeze Sudan: To End Darfur's Agony
By Peter Brookes
Despite endless rounds of shadowboxing with the dodgy Sudanese government over the ongoing nightmare in Darfur, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is asking us to give appeasement, er, diplomacy, one more chance.
April 16, 2007
Iran's Evil Game: Arms Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis
By Peter Brookes
Last week's U.S. military re port alleging Iran is now giving weapons to Iraqi Sunni insurgents may seem downright illogical next to earlier claims that Tehran was arming Iraq's Shia militias.
April 09, 2007
Empowering Evil China Aids Sudan's Killers
By Peter Brookes
The death, destruction and human misery in Sudan's western region of Darfur may now be worse than at any time since the conflict started four years ago - if that's possible.
April 02, 2007
Iran emboldened: Tehran seeks to dominate Middle East politics
By Peter Brookes
With the creeping possibility of a nuclear breakout, its vigorous sponsorship of international terrorism and its escalating intervention next door in Iraq, the Islamic Republic of Iran is a triple threat - at least - to international security and America's Middle Eastern interests.
March 26, 2007
The Next Threats: Military Able But Stretched
By Peter Brookes
The U.S. military has now made over 2 million individual deployments to Iraq and or Afghanistan. The preponderance, of course, has been our "ground-pounding" soldiers and Marines - many on multiple tours.
March 19, 2007
Pacific Power Play: China's Naval Expansionism
By Peter Brookes
Recent military news out of China includes double trouble. First, Beijing announced a jaw-dropping 18 percent jump in its defense budget - 5 percentage points more than last year's alarming rise -at the yearly meeting of the National People's Congress.
March 12, 2007
Japan: A Needless Dishonor
By Peter Brookes
For well over a week now, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been insisting that Japan's Imperial Army didn't "coerce" as many as 200,000 to work as "comfort women" in its military brothels before and during World War II.
March 06, 2007
Japan: Coming of Age
By Peter Brookes
Arguably, the U.S.-Japan alliance has never been better. Building on efforts begun in the latter years of the Clinton administration—and accelerated on President George W. Bush’s watch by a combination of unforeseen events and determined efforts on both sides of the Pacific—bilateral security ties between Tokyo and Washington have expanded beyond all expectations. As both Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and President Bush look back over the last five years, they can take satisfaction in knowing that they have taken bold steps toward developing the U.S.-Japan alliance into a truly global partnership, capable of addressing more international security challenges than ever before.
March 05, 2007
Korea: A Long Way To Peace
By Peter Brookes
Some have gotten a bit giddy - or a bit nervous - about the prospects for vastly improved U.S.-North Korean relations coming out of the bilateral talks that start this week.
February 28, 2007
Terror formula intensifies
By Peter Brookes
In a satanic race to the depths of depravity against their evil sidekicks, the Shia militias and al-Qaeda-suspected Sunni insurgents have now begun to use what the Iraqis are calling “dirty weapons.”
February 19, 2007
Iran's Iraq meddling: Pointing the finger
By Peter Brookes
The confusion among the White House, Pentagon and our military in Baghdad last week over the presence of Iranian weapons in Iraq - and whom to finger for sending them there - was, let's just say, a bit awkward for the administration.
February 13, 2007
Putin's Pique
By Peter Brookes
RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin went off on the United States and the West this past weekend in a keynote at a German security conference, claiming Washington and its European allies were jamming their agenda down the world's throat.
February 05, 2007
Where Iraq Stands
By Peter Brookes
The long-awaited National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq - "Prospects for Iraq's Stability: A Challenging Road Ahead" - is finally on the streets after months of delay.
January 29, 2007
Bear Growls at U.S. Missile Plan
By Peter Brookes
The Russians are going ballistic over the possibility the United States will deploy a missile-defense system in Central Europe in the coming years.
January 22, 2007
China's Space-Attack Test
By Peter Brookes
After several attempts, the People's Republic of China has successfully tested an anti-satellite weapon. The kinetic-energy "kill vehicle" destroyed its target - one of Beijing's own aging weather satellites - orbiting over 500 miles above Earth.
January 16, 2007
Persian Peril: Prez Hones in on Tehran
By Peter Brookes
Almost nobody noticed last week's second most important speech. President Bush's address on Iraq deserved our undivided attention - but so did Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte's Senate testimony on the intelligence community's consensus views of global threats.
January 08, 2007
When the U.N. Fails
By Peter Brookes
Topping the New Year's resolution list for new Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon should be a good hard scrub of U.N. peacekeeping operations.
2006 Commentary
December 18, 2006
When Jackals Play Watchdog
By Peter Brookes
What do China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia have in common? Well, for one, they have dreadful human-rights records.
December 11, 2006
A Big Problem with Pakistan
By Peter Brookes
Pakistan's getting worse on the terrorism front - or maybe the problem has just grown more obvious. Either way, we've got a major terrorism threat on our hands.
December 04, 2006
Baker's Iraq Advice: Too High a Price
By Peter Brookes
With Defense Secretary- designate Robert Gates' confirmation hearings starting tomorrow, and the Baker-Hamilton Commission report out on Wednesday, it's going to be Iraq, Iraq and more Iraq this week.
November 27, 2006
Putin's Poison?
By Peter Brookes
The death of former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, last week from radioactive Polonium-210 poisoning is the latest in a series of politically motivated attacks on the outspoken opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
November 20, 2006
Ukraine: A Revolution Recedes
By Peter Brookes
Just two years after Ukraine's Orange Revolution inspired the world's democratic imagination, the movement has all but collapsed - and many of the antidemocratic politicos swept away by "people power" are making a strong comeback.
November 13, 2006
A Mideast Nuke Mistake: Arabs May Arm in Fear of Iran
By Peter Brookes
We may have a nuclear-arms race on our hands in the Middle East.
November 06, 2006
Hez Power Grab
By Peter Brookes
Political tensions are again at the boiling point in Lebanon as Hezbollah attempts an overt power grab this week, seeking to wrest the reins of the largely pro-Western central government from the hands of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.
October 31, 2006
The Defeatocrat Agenda
By Peter Brookes
If the "Defeatocrats," er, Democrats, triumph next week, taking the majority in Congress, expect U.S. foreign and defense policy to veer sharply left, with little guiding philosophy beyond ABB - Anything But Bush.
October 16, 2006
Korea's Nightmare: Horrors of Life in the North
By Peter Brookes
As many problems as North Korea's Stalinist dictatorship makes for the rest of the world, what it inflicts upon its captive population is far, far worse. Life in Kim Jong Il's iron-fisted police state is a hellish nightmare.
October 10, 2006
Korean Fallout
By Peter Brookes
It appears that North Korea's kooky leader, Kim Jong Il, did exactly what he said he'd do: conduct Pyongyang's first nuclear-weapons test.
October 06, 2006
Korean Ka-Boom: "Dear Leader” feels ignored
By Peter Brookes
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il is known for being mercurial, but this time he's promising to go absolutely nuclear: Pyongyang announced Tuesday that it will test its first nuclear weapon - perhaps this weekend.
October 02, 2006
Pakistan Pickle
By Peter Brookes
The Pakistani government's summer truce with the pro-Taliban tribesman in northern Waziristan, on the Afghan border, may be good for President Pervez Musharraf's political health, but it's sure hurting Afghanistan - where the Coalition fight with the Taliban is definitely on.
September 25, 2006
El Loco's Next Gig: He May Nab a Security Council Seat
By Peter Brookes
Despite his lunatic anti-American rant last week, El Loco is in the running for a seat on the United Nations Security Council.
September 18, 2006
Afghan anxiety: No 'Cut & Run'
By Peter Brookes
Last Thursday, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the Democrats' 2004 presidential nominee and a potential '08 candidate, tried to turn the rhetorical tables on the Bush administration by accusing it oddly enough of a "cut and run" strategy in - of all places - Afghanistan.
September 11, 2006
9/11: Five Years On
Connecting a lot more dots
By Peter Brookes
There has been no bigger whipping boy in the shadow of 9/11 than the U.S. intelligence community (IC) - and rightly so.
August 22, 2006
Lebanon's soul at stake
By Peter Brookes
Now that the guns in southern Lebanon have gone silent - at least for the moment - the real battle for the political hearts and minds of Lebanon begins.
August 21, 2006
Dealing with Damascus: Isolate Assad
By Peter Brookes
Notice anything different about the recent round of diplomatic efforts to resolve Lebanon's latest crisis? Strikingly, Syria was nowhere to be found. Thankfully, for the first time in years, Damascus played no visible role in resolving a Lebanese predicament. Just like Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon last year after a 30-year occupation, this is good news.
August 16, 2006
Triumphant Iran's Next Moves
By Peter Brookes
As Hezbollah's sugar daddy, Iran clearly profited from the death and destruction. In fact, though criticized at the conflict's outset for spurring Hezbollah into provoking a war, in the end, Iran actually burnished its image and elevated its standing in the Middle East - and the Muslim world.
August 11, 2006
The other enemy: Lessons of the latest plot
By Peter Brookes
The British busting up of a terrorist plot - one that was within days of blowing up as many as 10 U.S. airliners somewhere over the Atlantic - demonstrates once again that we have two enemies in the War on Terror: terrorists and our own complacency.
July 31, 2006
Lebanon: The U.N. dance
By Peter Brookes
Fireworks started yesterday as the U.N. Security Council met in emergency session to craft a resolution that would - among other issues - deploy a stabilization force to Lebanon to end the fighting between Israel and its terrorist nemesis, Hezbollah.
July 27, 2006
Hire This Temp: Bolton merits permanent job
By Peter Brookes
You don't often get an opportunity to right a terrible wrong. But the Senate has a chance to do just that when it gives the nomination of John Bolton to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations a second look starting today.
July 24, 2006
Ground zero for Mideast instability is Iran: Arab world, take notice
By Peter Brookes
While the world focuses on the smoldering conflict in the Middle East, the war's instigator and puppeteer, Iran, must be pretty darn pleased with itself.
July 17, 2006
What China really wants
By Peter Brookes
China's foot-dragging on getting tough with North Korea and Iran at the U.N. Security Council has been giving the United States and others fits recently - and for good reason.
July 15, 2006
Why Japan is so concerned
By Peter Brookes
There's nothing like a whiff of possible resurgent militarism from the Land of the Rising Sun to get people – on both sides of the Pacific – to sit up and pay attention. Yet Tokyo's assertion this week that it may choose to deal with the North Korean ballistic missile threat using pre-emptive military strikes doesn't mean we should now call Japan the "Land of the Rising Gun."
July 10, 2006
Putin's new low: Vlad Punks America
By Peter Brookes
Next weekend's meeting between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin before the Group of Eight (G-8) summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, will likely mark a new post-Cold War low in U.S.-Russian relations.
July 06, 2006
Missile Miscue
By Peter Brookes
Despite worldwide calls for restraint, North Korea chose to honor July 4 by going ballistic, launching seven missiles of various ranges into the Sea of Japan. It was a classic moment out of "Fatal Attraction" - a Glenn Close "I will not be ignored!" scream.
July 04, 2006
Why they need us: Imagine a world without America
By Peter Brookes
For all the worldwide whining and bellyaching about the United States, today - America's 230th birthday - provides an opportune time for them to consider for just a moment what the world might be like without good ol' Uncle Sam.
June 29, 2006
The price of leaks
By Peter Brookes
The unauthorized exposure of the overseas terrorist-finance-tracking program in The New York Times is just the latest example of gutless bottom-feeders advancing their own agendas at the expense of national security. These people have betrayed their colleagues, and Americans have - or will - die as a result.
June 19, 2006
It's time for wrath over Khan
By Peter Brookes
Check this out: While the United States gives Pakistan $700 million a year in aid, Islamabad still won't give us access to the former CEO of Pakistan's nuclear Walmart, A.Q. Khan - the only outsider with insider knowledge of Tehran's nuclear program.
June 12, 2006
Club For Dictators: An ugly agenda for Asia
By Peter Brookes
Some see it as a NATO counterweight. Others call it a Club for Dictators - or at least near-dictators. Some consider it an anti-American stalking horse for Chinese and or Russian hegemony, with the potential to become "OPEC with nukes."
June 08, 2006
The Oil Weapon
By Peter Brookes
As Iran mulls a fresh offer of U.S. and European Union incentives to halt its nuclearweapons program, the regime's top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, this week brandished the oil state's most powerful weapon - disrupting Middle East energy supplies.
June 05, 2006
The FBI's failure
By Peter Brookes
This weekend's arrest of 17 homegrown al Qaeda wannabes just across the border in Canada is a nightmarish reminder of the horrors that have been - and could be - right here at home again if we don't fully get our counterterrorism act together soon.
June 02, 2006
Iran's friends prevent progress
By James Phillips and Peter Brookes
When you live in a tough neighborhood, it's important to have friends -- and the Middle East is one of the world's toughest neighborhoods. So on one level, it makes sense that Iran has gone out of its way to cultivate friendships with some of the world's most powerful countries.
June 01, 2006
The Spies among us
By Peter Brookes
A recently-released FBI report about the compromising ties between a Chinese-American Mata Hari and her FBI-agent lover is a stark reminder that after terrorism, the greatest threat to our national security at home is espionage.
May 22, 2006
Living with the Crazy Colonel
By Peter Brookes
The Bush administration's decision last week to normalize diplomatic relations with Libya is — without doubt -- an exercise in big-picture foreign-policy thinking.
May 16, 2006
Connecting Dots: NSA needs phone records
By Peter Brookes
GEN. Michael Hayden is going to get an early Memorial Day BBQ-ing on Thursday. The CIA director-nominee will appear before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the senators are sure to go ballistic over the National Security Agency's telephone-calling-record database.
May 08, 2006
The rap on W's new CIA pick
By Peter Brookes
Today the White House will name Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, now the principal deputy director of National Intelligence (PDDNI), as the new Central Intelligence Agency director, replacing Porter Goss, who was unceremoniously sacked last Friday.
April 29, 2006
Iran vs. UN: Tehran ups the ante
By Peter Brookes
Tossing a little fat on the fire before today's U.N. Security Council deadline calling on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, Tehran upped the ante this week by offering to share its nuclear know-how with others.
April 24, 2006
Reform-and-Dagger: Fixing U.S. intelligence
By Peter Brookes
Last thursday, Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, had a chance to appease his growing chorus of critics. He failed.
April 17, 2006
Back to the Maoist Future: China's African ambitions
By Peter Brookes
Amid festering concerns about China's burgeoning global power, Beijing has set its sights on expanding its influence in Africa
April 17, 2006
Hu's not coming to dinner
By Peter Brookes
In the world of diplomacy, form is often way more important than substance. Consider Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Washington this Thursday.
Last September, Hurricane Katrina postponed what was to have been Hu's first D.C. trip since taking the helm as president in 2003. Remarkably, Beijing engaged in nearly eight months of diplomatic kung fu over the level of pomp and circumstance.
April 10, 2006
Drug-War Don't: It's a Bad Time to Neglect Colombia
By Peter Brookes
In largely unheralded good news, the Bush administration has made great strides helping Colombia fight the double-barreled threat of a deadly insurgency and ultra-powerful drug lords.
April 03, 2006
A Bit less special
By Peter Brookes
Although he's likely to stay in power for another year, British Prime Minister Tony Blair is on something of a valedictory tour - making foreign-policy speeches at home, in Australia and (as soon as this week) in the United States.
March 27, 2006
Ugly Entente
By Peter Brookes
A Blossoming Sino-Russian romance is undercutting U.S. global interests on an unprecedented scale. Indeed, Russia and China seem to have their eyes on restraining European and Japanese power, too.
March 21, 2006
Pushing Iran
By Peter Brookes
While the world dithers over Iran's runaway nuclear (weapons) program, the House International Relations Committee last week called for action against the Tehran regime: It passed the Iran Freedom Support Act by an overwhelming 37-3 margin.
March 13, 2006
Growing Iran-Syria ties
By Peter Brookes
TOP Iranian officials just threatened to inflict "harm and pain" on the United States, vowing to "use any means" to "resist any pressure and threat" over its nuclear program. It's not just rhetoric. Iran is making preparations to deliver on both promises by expanding its alliance with its evil twin, Syria.
February 27, 2006
Outreach to India: W's Atomic Pickle
By Peter Brookes
President Bush finds himself in a bit of a "proliferation pickle" as he begins an historic visit to South Asia this week.
February 21, 2006
New Radical Chic: UNESCO's Bizarre Hero
By Peter Brookes
Here's one for you: Early this month, in front of 200,000 screaming supporters in Havana's Revolutionary Square, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro bestowed Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez with UNESCO's 2005 International José Marti Prize for promoting Latin American heritage, liberty and values.
February 13, 2006
Back to Rebuilding: The Next Challenge in Iraq
By Peter Brookes
Conventional wisdom has long been that without security in Iraq, political and economic progress would be stymied. But a corollary is becoming equally true: Halting advances in reconstruction and economic development are hampering progress on the political and security fronts.
January 30, 2006
How Iran Buys Friends
By Peter Brookes
Masterfully pitting the East versus the West, this week Iran is once again likely to slip the noose over its nuclear (weapons) program — avoiding a vote of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors, meeting in emergency session in Vienna, to refer the Iran case to the U.N. Security Council.
January 23, 2006
Iran: Our Military Options
By Peter Brookes
A reporter last month asked Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, the Israel Defense Force's chief of staff, how far Israel is willing to go to stop Iran's nuclear (weapons) program; the general answered: "2,000 kilometers" — the flying distance from Israel to Iran's key nuclear sites.
January 17, 2006
Mob Nation
By Peter Brookes
North Korea has become a gangster nation, pocketing $700 million to $1 billion a year from counterfeiting of U.S. greenbacks, trafficking illicit narcotics, smuggling contraband smokes and even peddling knockoff Viagra, according to U.S. government estimates.
January 09, 2006
Osama: Quiet as a Corpse
By Peter Brookes
OSAMA bin Laden hasn't made a single peep publicly in over a year — his longest absence since 9/11. The ghoul's eerie silence is both disturbing — and odd — for the leader of a global terrorist organization hellbent on changing world order.
2005 Commentary
December 27, 2005
Hearts and Minds
By Peter Brookes
Military operations against terrorism are essential in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, but Islamic extremism will be defeated as much — if not more — in the Muslim heart and mind as on the battlefield
December 14, 2005
Breeding Freedom
By Peter Brookes
Tomorrow's historic Iraqi election is about a heck of a lot more than choosing 275 new parliamentarians for Iraq's first full-term, post-Saddam government.
December 05, 2005
Gaining Ground: Clear Progress in Iraq
By Peter Brookes
The "Cut and Run Crowd" are proving to be the worst kind of pessimists on Iraq - refusing to see the significant evidence that things are starting to go our way militarily.
November 28, 2005
Planning to Win
By Peter Brookes
American, or even future Iraqi, military prowess won't be enough to defeat Iraq's bloody insurgency. Victory in Iraq is going to come as much — or more — from political/economic progress in that battered nation as it will from military dominance.
November 22, 2005
Military Diplomats
By Peter Brookes
Scuttlebutt has it that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his new top Pacific brass, Adm. William Fallon, have been going at it hammer-and-tong over the depth and breadth of our relationship with China's military, the People's Liberation Army (PLA).
November 14, 2005
A Vital Alliance, Built by Bush
By Peter Brookes
When President Bush lands here tomorrow, he deserves a victory lap for a singular foreign policy accomplishment — growing and deepening the U.S.-Japan alliance.
November 07, 2005
The Torture Test
By Peter Brookes
A key factor in planning any covert operation is full consideration of "blowback" — the painful consequences of an "op" gone bad.
October 31, 2005
Iran-Al Qaeda Axis: Tehran Protects Top Terrorists
By Peter Brookes
The most immediate threat Iran poses to American national security isn't its nuclear (weapons) program. It's the safe haven Tehran is giving al Qaeda terrorists, who are planning and directing jihad across the globe.
October 19, 2005
Mauling MacArthur
By Peter Brookes
This time, South Korea's anti-American crowd has gone too far.
Uncle Sam-bashing is, unfortunately, quite popular these days among South Korea's left, teachers and youth - burning the Stars and Stripes and massive anti-U.S. street protests are all too common.
October 11, 2005
CIA's Bad Show
By Peter Brookes
October 10, 2005---CIA Director Porter Goss decided last week to not release the CIA Inspector General's report on 9/11 intelligence failures - and also to not convene accountability review boards.
September 26, 2005
Goss' Good Grades
By Peter Brookes
The only good thing about taking over an organization that's hit rock bottom is that the only direction to go is up.
September 19, 2005
Nuclear Nightmare
By Peter Brookes
Not only has Tehran thumbed its nose at diplomatic efforts to settle disputes over its nuclear (weapons) program, now it's offering to share its nuclear know-how with others.
September 13, 2005
Why Kofi Can't Fix the U.N.
By Peter Brookes
The damning, 840-page Volker Independent Inquiry Commission report on the United Nations' horrific mismanagement of the pre-war Iraqi Oil-for-Food program wasn't exactly the type of "birthday present" the international body was hoping for as it turns 60 years old this week.
September 12, 2005
Freedom as nothing more than a concept
By Peter Brookes
The only thing I remember from grad school is the "hypothetical counterfactual" - an idea that attempts to answer the intellectually elusive question: What if?
August 30, 2005
The Art of (Cyber) War
By Peter Brookes
Modern warfare is increasingly dependent on advanced computers, and no country's armed forces are more reliant on the Digital Age than ours are.
August 23, 2005
Facing the Facts About Iran
By Peter Brookes
Iran is becoming a foreign-policy problem of almost immeasurable proportions — from its nuclear-weapons brinkmanship to its feverish support of Islamic fundamentalism and international terrorism.
August 17, 2005
Australia and the U.S.: Regional and Global Partners
By Peter Brookes
Despite a long, righ history of partnership, especially on the battlefield, the US-Austalia alliance is, arguably, stronger than it has ever been. Re-forged in the crucible of the tragic events of 9/11, Australia has more than proven its mettle as America's ally.
August 15, 2005
An Alarming Alliance: Sino-Russian Ties Tightening
By Peter Brookes
The first- ever joint Chinese-Russian military exercises kick off Thursday in Northeast Asia.
August 01, 2005
Cozying up to India
By Peter Brookes
THE Bush administration's most unheralded foreign policy success — besides Libya's WMD disarmament and freeing Lebanon from Syria's iron grip — is the dramatic upswing in U.S.-Indian relations.
July 19, 2005
Cold Shoulder
By Peter Brookes
Last Thursday, the French embassy in Havana decided to invite Fidel Castro's communist cronies over to help celebrate France's Bastille Day — a day similar in significance and symbolism to our Fourth of July.
July 11, 2005
The Targets Here
By Peter Brookes
WITH more than 50 killed and 700-plus wounded, last week's horrific terrorist attacks in London serve as a stark reminder that we have two enemies in the War on Terror: al Qaeda — and complacency.
June 28, 2005
The War in Iraq: Dubya's Duty
By Peter Brookes
In the face of the American public's cooling support for the Iraq war, President Bush's national address tonight — noting the first anniversary of the transfer of sovereignty to the new Iraqi government — will be the most important of his presidency.
June 25, 2005
Memo manipulation
By Peter Brookes
You've got to ask yourself: How many times are the Bush-bashers going to throw the same infamous Downing Street memo at the wall of public opinion hoping it'll stick?
June 21, 2005
Pyongyang's Empty Promise
By Peter Brookes
Don't hold your breath over North Korea's recent conditional "promise" to return to the Six Party Talks next month — after a year's hiatus — if the U.S. gives the communist nation more respect.
June 14, 2005
Congress' Call for U.N. Cleanup
By Peter Brookes
It's an important, but unwritten, rule of American politics: When Congress feels the need to get involved in your business, you're in big trouble.
June 07, 2005
Militarizing Space
By Peter Brookes
It's as predictable as the rising and setting of the sun: Every time the United States moves to develop a new strategic weapons system that would improve national security, the left starts whining and moaning.
May 31, 2005
Legion of Amateurs: How China Spies
By Peter Brookes
Islamic terrorism is still the greatest threat to our national security, but Chinese espionage against the United States is gaining ground.
May 23, 2005
CAFTA: New Front in Freedom Fight
By Peter Brookes
Americans might be so focused on expanding freedom and democracy in the Muslim world that we'll blow an historic opportunity to promote those causes in our own backyard.
May 09, 2005
Stalin's Ghost
By Peter Brookes
President Bush's Moscow visit today, commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Allies' WW II Victory in Europe, must be as carefully choreographed as a Bolshoi ballet if it's going to be chalked up as a diplomatic success.
May 02, 2005
Syria's Spy Lie
By Peter Brookes
Don't get too giddy about the "historic" withdrawal of 14,000 Syrian troops from Lebanon last week.
April 26, 2005
W's Saudi BBQ
By Peter Brookes
Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Ab dullah bin Abdul Aziz, visits President Bush's Crawford ranch today.
April 19, 2005
Provoking Japan
By Peter Brookes
A long-festering Sino-Japanese rivalry is becoming increasingly apparent. If tensions between the Asian giants continue to sky-rocket, Northeast Asian peace and stability may crumble, provoking serious consequences for American interests.
April 12, 2005
The Right Pick
By Peter Brookes
The fireworks start this morning: Sen. Dick Lugar's Foreign Relations Commit tee begins three days of what promises to be grueling, partisan hearings on President Bush's nomination of John Bolton to be America's ambassador to the United Nations.
April 05, 2005
Hugo Chavez: Castro's Mini-Me
By Peter Brookes
'One darned thing after another': That's how former Secretary of State Dean Acheson once defined foreign policy.
March 28, 2005
Euro Embargo Imbroglio
By Peter Brookes
Undeterred by reality, commonsense or even the vehement, growing opposition of their own citizens and media
March 15, 2005
China Challenge
By Peter Brookes
Beijing will be the last stop on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's latest globetrot to six Asian countries this week — but you can be sure it will be her top priority.
March 09, 2005
Truths of Power
By Peter Brookes
It's been almost a full year since Spanish voters re jected the chosen successor of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.
February 28, 2005
Syria: W's Next Win?
By Peter Brookes
The last few weeks have seen multiple vindica tions of President Bush's policies in the Muslim World.
February 22, 2005
What the Prez Can Do in Europe
By Peter Brookes
President Bush wings his way to Europe this week for one of the most important trips of his presidency — patching things up with the Europeans after four stormy years.
February 08, 2005
Europe's Gripes
By Peter Brookes
Easy, it won't be. This Wednesday, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice breezes into Brussels, advancing President Bush's upcoming trip to the European Union.
February 04, 2005
Korean Nuke Games
By Peter Brookes
For the second time in three years, the North Koreans have been caught with their hand in the nuclear cookie jar.
January 24, 2005
Defying Doom
By Peter Brookes
There are those out there — and you know who you are — more interested in seeing the Bush administration fail in Iraq than in seeing democracy succeed.
January 18, 2005
Run Silent, Run Nuke
By Peter Brookes
Imagine the thoughts going through the minds of the captain and crew of the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus, when it put to sea for the very first time — 50 years ago this morning.
January 17, 2005
Separated at Birth: How North Korea Became the Evil Twin, By Gordon Cucullu
By Peter Brookes
As President Bush surveys the international landscape on the eve of his second term, he knows that his national-security team has its work cut out for itself.
January 10, 2005
Egypt's Nuclear Option
By Peter Brookes
As if North Korean and Iranian nuclear weapons programs weren't enough, now it seems Egypt may be pursuing the bomb as well.
January 03, 2005
Beijing Bear Hug
By Peter Brookes
With each passing week the news from Russia be comes increasingly glum. First, there was Moscow's meddling — and blustering — over the recent Ukrainian presidential elections.
2004 Commentary
December 28, 2004
The Yukos Affair
By Peter Brookes
After so much promise, a political winter has de scended upon Mother Russia. Last week's murky, forced sell-off of parts of Russia's $40 billion oil giant, Yukos, at the bargain basement price of $9.4 billion is just the latest proof.
December 20, 2004
Osama's Plan B
By Peter Brookes
Whatever you do, don't dismiss Osama bin La den's newest audio mes sage. Sure, it's just the latest of 17 cameos by the terrorist thug since 9/11. But it may be his scariest yet.
December 14, 2004
What Happens After Iraq Votes
By Peter Brookes
Despite the prospect of increased violence, Iraq's interim government is holding firm on its commitment to hold the first post-Saddam elections next month.
December 06, 2004
The Bear is Back
By Peter Brookes
If you didn't know better, you'd think the Cold War was back: The chill in rela tions between Russia and the West recently hit a new low for the post-Soviet era.
November 29, 2004
Oil Obsession
By Peter Brookes
If you think gas prices are through the roof now, beware the advent of the Chinese family car.
November 22, 2004
Goss's Got Guts
By Peter Brookes
When a new CEO takes over a failing company, it's not at all uncommon to fire (or force out) a couple of senior people. After all, senior management is responsible for an organization's poor performance, so why keep the deadwood around?
November 16, 2004
A Fine Legacy
By Peter Brookes
Colin Powell is leaving the Bush administration under his own steam after four, over-the-top busy years (and countless "frequent flyer miles") as the nation's chief diplomat.
November 15, 2004
Tokyo's Turn
By Peter Brookes
Japan is evolving away from a wall flower national-se curity policy. Once restricted to defending the home islands, Tokyo's military is playing a heftier role in global affairs than at any time since World War II.
November 08, 2004
Mending Fences
By Peter Brookes
Irretrievable and irrevocably lost. A hopeless mess. A disaster. This is how some analysts describe the U.S.-European relationship over the last couple of years.
November 03, 2004
What the Winner Faces
By Peter Brookes
The next president will have no grace period for dealing with the broad spectrum of national-security problems that confront our nation.
October 25, 2004
Syria-S Trouble
By Peter Brookes
If Syria doesn't couple words with deeds soon, Damascus should suffer appropriate consequences.
October 18, 2004
Iraq Looking Up
By Peter Brookes
You wouldn't know it from most of the pun dits or the evening news broadcasts, but things are looking up in Iraq.
October 15, 2004
Bunker-Buster Brouhaha
By Peter Brookes
Bush and Sen. John Kerry agree upon one thing - the proliferation of WMD, especially into the hands of terrorists, is the single greatest threat to America.
October 08, 2004
Afghans' Fateful Vote
By Peter Brookes
Every election is important, but none more so than the first.
October 04, 2004
Why Kerry's Wrong On Korea
By Peter Brookes
Kerry has strongly criticized the Bush administration for its "go it alone" - or unilateral - approach to foreign policy.
September 29, 2004
An Iran-Israeli War?
By Peter Brookes
Time after time, the 35-nation International Atomic Energy Agency has demanded that Iran stop enriching uranium.
September 21, 2004
Islam & Liberty Alive in Jakarta
By Peter Brookes
The lack of freedom and democracy in the Muslim world is one of today's most pressing foreign-policy challenges.
September 13, 2004
Persian Power
By Peter Brookes
The Bush administration is actually pursuing a vigorous, multilateral policy for grappling with the growing Iranian threat.
September 12, 2004
The World is a Safer Place
By Peter Brookes
Interview-style op-ed on U.S. casualties in Iraq by Peter Brookes for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
August 31, 2004
Consider Other Priorities
By Peter Brookes
You can pin blame for 9/11 and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq on many things.
August 26, 2004
Keep the Pressure on China
By Peter Brookes
Early next month, the European Union will be considering the lifting of the "Tiananmen arms embargo" against China. The embargo is so named because it was imposed in reaction to the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.
August 23, 2004
Incoming
By Peter Brookes
The vast majority of Americans believe that the United States can defend itself against a ballistic-missile attack.
August 13, 2004
Imagine Fidel Castro with Oil
By Peter Brookes
Sunday is a red-letter day for democracy and for the price of oil: Vene zuelans vote on a referendum on whether to recall President Hugo Chavez.
August 09, 2004
A Deluge of Dots
By Peter Brookes
Recent terrorism-related arrests in America, Britain and Pakistan make a mockery of claims that the Bush administration raised the terror alert to "high" for crass political reasons.
August 05, 2004
Terror Tradecraft
By Peter Brookes
The mother lode of intelli gence recently plucked from al Qaeda computers in Pakistan shows that we're not dealing only with lethal terrorists, but highly capable spooks as
August 02, 2004
Show of Force
By Peter Brookes
Seven American aircraft- car rier strike groups are plying the world's seven seas right now in one of the biggest military exercises since the end of the Cold War.
July 23, 2004
Bumpy Road to Better Security
By Peter Brookes
Now that the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, the 9/11 Commission, has reported its findings and recommendations, the dirty, roll-up-your-shirtsleeves work begins.
July 19, 2004
Arming China
By Peter Brookes
The French and the Germans are trying to stick it to us again. No, not over Iraq — over China.
July 16, 2004
Saying 'Yes' To Terror
By Peter Brookes
Once dubbed the "sick man of Asia" for its anemic showing during the 1980s Asian economic boom, the Philippines has now earned the title "weak man of Asia."
July 12, 2004
The Senate Intel Report: Slam Flunk
By Peter Brookes
The CIA's chief called it a "slam dunk" back in the spring of 2003. But yester day the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence confirmed that "slam flunk" is more like it.
July 06, 2004
Spooks, Lies & Videotape
By Peter Brookes
Those security guards at the Iranian mission to the United Nations sure are avid shutterbugs.
June 28, 2004
Atomic Ayatollahs
By Peter Brookes
Iran ratcheted up international nuclear tensions late last week by announcing it would resume (as soon as tomorrow) building nuclear centrifuges — an essential element in nuclear-weapons development.
June 24, 2004
Defending South Korea
By Peter Brookes
The United States-South Korean defence relationship took a major step into the 21st century last week with the announcement that Washington would withdraw one-third of its 37,000 troops from Korea by the end of 2005.
June 21, 2004
Al Qaeda's Saudi Agenda: Terror vs. Oil
By Peter Brookes
The brutal killing of American defense worker Paul Johnson last week is the latest iteration of al Qaeda's plan to destabilize Saudi Arabia — this time by driving out highly-skilled "infidel" technocrats from the Muslim holy land.
June 16, 2004
Compromising Cracked Codes
By Peter Brookes
Cracking the communications code of an adversary's secret governmental transmissions is the crown jewel of the intelligence business.
June 15, 2004
The Chinese Age
By Peter Brookes
A Storm is brewing across the Pacific and almost no one seems to be paying at tention — except the Pentagon.
June 08, 2004
Move It Along
By Peter Brookes
The ground-shaking announcement that the Pentagon will withdraw one-third of its troops from South Korea by the end of 2005 is just the beginning of a process of realigning U.S. forces around the globe.
June 04, 2004
Wrong Way to Leave
By Peter Brookes
IT was expected to come even tually, but the timing stinks. Director of Central Intelli gence (DCI) George Tenet's abruptly-announced decision to leave his post in less than six weeks leaves the Bush administration — and perhaps the country — in a terribly vulnerable position.
June 01, 2004
Cashing in on Iraq
By Peter Brookes
Listening to the French, Germans, Russians and Chinese demand changes to the proposed American-British U.N. resolution on Iraq last week, you'd think they hit the beaches with us on the march to Baghdad last spring.
May 27, 2004
Tokyo's Tasks
By Peter Brookes
The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says it appears that North Korea sold Libya nearly two tons of uranium for use in its (now defunct) nuclear-weapons program.
May 24, 2004
The Troops We Need
By Peter Brookes
Sometime you just have to do things the old-fashioned way. Despite America's tremendous battlefield advantages in military technology, sometimes it takes good old-fashioned boots on the ground to get the job done.
May 18, 2004
Washington War Wobbles: Powell's Misplay
By Peter Brookes
Never make a promise you're not willing to keep. Someone just might call your bluff.
May 13, 2004
Stealing Defeat from the Jaws of Victory in Iraq
By Peter Brookes
President Bush's political opponents are trying to make electoral hay over the Abu Ghraib prison nightmare. That's predictable. But it's unfortunate, too, as the political broadsides tend to obscure the fact that -- after a couple of tough weeks -- things are going well militarily and politically in Iraq.
May 09, 2004
The Rule of Pain
By Peter Brookes
The prisoner had decided to tell his inquisitors anything (untruthful) to get the torture to stop. "They raise cows and chickens," he told his interrogator.
April 26, 2004
Solving the Iraqi Standoff
By Peter Brookes
Successfully ending the festering insurgencies in Fallujah and Najaf in the upcoming days could be the most important event of the entire Iraqi campaign.
April 22, 2004
Time to Slap Syria
By Peter Brookes
Syria is helping foreign fighters and terrorists - and their supplies - slither across the 600-mile border into Iraq. In other words, Damascus is supporting the killing of American and Coalition soldiers and civilians - like the five Marines lost along the border last Saturday.
April 19, 2004
Spook Shakeup
By Peter Brookes
The American intelligence community is quickly becoming a dinosaur. It has to stop fighting the Cold War and transform itself to combat new security challenges, such as terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and rogue states - now.
April 12, 2004
Iraq- What To Do
By Peter Brookes
In war, sometimes the only easy day was yesterday. That military maxim would seem to apply to Iraq over the last 10 days - one of the toughest periods since Baghdad fell to Coalition forces last April.
April 05, 2004
A New Terror Central
By Peter Brookes
The American intelligence community is quickly becoming a dinosaur. It has
to transform itself to combat new security challenges, such as terrorism,
weapons of mass destruction and rogue states - now.
March 29, 2004
Musharraf's Minefield
By Peter Brookes
Sometimes the third time's the charm. At least that's what al Qaeda hopes as it ramps up for its third assassination attempt in as many months on Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf.
March 22, 2004
War Wobblies
By Peter Brookes
In the rough and tumble world of international politics, you can count on your enemies - but you can't always count on your friends.
March 15, 2004
The New Front
By Peter Brookes
Rousting us violently from our false sense of security, the vicious attacks last week in Spain, which killed 200 and wounded 1,500, reminded us that the War on Terror is far from over. In fact, the terrorist cancer isn't only still with us - it's spreading. And Europe is the War on Terror's newest front.
March 08, 2004
Tehran's Nuke Two-Step
By Peter Brookes
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. The Board of Governors of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), meeting today in Vienna to discuss Iran's increasingly troubling nuclear program (again), should keep that principle in mind.
March 01, 2004
Hunting Osama
By Peter Brookes
Better to underpromise and overdeliver-- than overpromise and underdeliver. Someone should share this sage advice with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, which has recently been promising Osama bin Laden's head on a silver platter by year's end.
February 24, 2004
Korean Conundrum
By Peter Brookes
Representatives from the United States, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, China and Russia will meet for a second round of Six Party Talks in Beijing tomorrow in another arduous attempt to resolve the Pyongyang nuke problem.
February 09, 2004
Nuclear Wal-Mart
By Peter Brookes
Pakistan has become the world's nuclear Wal-Mart. The father of the Pakistani bomb, jetsetter scientist A.Q. Khan, turns out to be the godfather of global nuclear proliferation.
February 02, 2004
Spook Clean-up
By Peter Brookes
Politics is the art of shifting blame. And that is exactly what's going on in Washington right now over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program-or the conspicuous absence thereof.
January 26, 2004
Afghan Abyss
By Peter Brookes
'Long, hard slog" might soon describe Afghanistan as well as Iraq. Despite reports of progress coming out of Kabul, there are signs of serious trouble ahead.
January 21, 2004
Suicide Psyche
By Peter Brookes
Another day, another terrorist suicide bombing in Israel. Atop more than 100 Palestinian suicide attacks in three years, it's almost not even news. Yet last Wednesday's bombing in Gaza was different. The suicide killer was the first to be a mother and the first female bomber from the terrorist group Hamas.
January 12, 2004
The Perils of Pakistan
By Peter Brookes
Pakistan may be the most important country Americans don't know is important. What happens in Islamabad profound affects the War on Terror, nuclear proliferation and the prospect of nuclear war.
January 05, 2004
Anti-Terror To-do's
By Peter Brookes
Looking back at 2003, it's clear we've made tremendous advances in the War on Terror. But resting on our laurels isn't an option. With much work still to be done, here are some New Year's resolutions.
2003 Commentary
December 29, 2003
AL QAEDA'S CA$H
By Peter Brookes
It's clear that many countries - and international institutions - aren't doing enough to stem the flow of terrorist financing. The result: Terrorists have money for recruiting, training, planning and operating.
December 22, 2003
Jihad Juniors
By Peter Brookes
After two years, al Qaeda and its allies continue to find new foot soldiers to wage a jihad against the West. Italian police, for instance, made multiple arrests in the last few weeks related to jihadist recruiting networks for Iraq (by al Qaeda franchise Ansar al Islam) and presumably elsewhere. The network had recruited at least 200 Islamic militants, 70 of them from Italy.
December 15, 2003
The Terror War Goes On
By Peter Brookes
The capture of Saddam Hussein is reason for real celebration for the Bush administration and for the Iraqi people, but its effect on the War on Terror is unclear.
December 08, 2003
Wen Comes to Push
By Peter Brookes
The dogs of war are barking as China's No. 2 government official, Premier Wen Jiabao, prepares to meet with President Bush tomorrow.
December 07, 2003
Wen is Now: Bush Must Set China Straight on Taiwan
By Peter Brookes
Last week, Chinese military officers howled that Taiwanese talk of independence is pushing the island nation and the mainland toward 'the abyss of war.' Just what we need! Here's what President Bush should tell Chinese Premier Wen when the latter comes calling Tuesday.
December 02, 2003
More Than a Visit
By Peter Brookes
NO question, President Bush's derring-do visit to Iraq last week was a major public relations coup for the White House and a great morale boost for the troops. But the visit was really a lot more than that. Above all else, it was a policy power play.
November 23, 2003
Iran Runaround
By Peter Brookes
The European Union is Iran's largest trading partner. And it appears that the EU values its $8 billion in Iranian trade privileges more than the principle of opposing proliferation of nuclear weapons.
November 17, 2003
A U.S. Retreat?
By Peter Brookes
Is Uncle Sam getting a bit weak in the knees after hitting a rough patch in Iraq? The abrupt recall of Coalition Provisional Authority czar Paul Bremer to Washington for emergency consultations must have left jihadists cheering and Ba'athists guerillas high-fiving each other.
November 10, 2003
Forward Freedom
By Peter Brookes
Some argue that democracy and the Muslim faith are incompatible, that our quest for freedom and liberty in the Middle East is a fool's errand. Nonsense. This is the same misguided mindset that said democracy wouldn't work in post-World War II Japan or Germany.
November 03, 2003
Why America Needs a Free Iraq
By Peter Brookes
President Bush is right to stay the course. But to succeed, he must actively engage his opponents - and skeptics - about the continuing U.S. role in post-Saddam Iraq. The president must clearly explain to the American people why their continued support and sacrifice is justified, because victory on the battleground of ideas at home is key to winning the battle abroad.
October 24, 2003
Iran's Insidious Intentions
By Peter Brookes
So the EU has cut a deal with Iran to curb the Mullahs' nuclear energy program. Don't break out the champagne just yet. The agreement may actually help Tehran keep the international community at bay while it clandestinely rushes to become a nuclear power.
October 21, 2003
The Beast's Belly
By Peter Brookes
This trip takes President Bush deep into the belly of the terrorism beast. Though the bulk of U.S. anti-terror efforts have far concentrated on Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East, Southeast Asia remains on the forward edge of the War on Terror.
October 13, 2003
W's Mission
By Peter Brookes
The administration's efforts to explain the challenges of Iraq is an uphill fight, but a necessary one. The White House faces an American public that agreed that Saddam Hussein should go, but is now not quite sure how reconstructing Iraq supports the War on Terror.
October 06, 2003
Spies Like Us
By Peter Brookes
Little did the CIA operations officer know she would become the subject of Washington's newest tempest in a partisan teapot.
September 29, 2003
Seeing China Straight
By Peter Brookes
Though China has helped get North Korea to the bargaining table and played an even more limited (Sino-centric) role in the War on Terror, serious concerns remain: human rights, weapons proliferation, trade and Beijing's prodigious military buildup.
September 22, 2003
Syria-ous Problem
By Peter Brookes
Ignoring complaints and warnings from most of the rest of the world, Syria continues to sponsor terrorism, pursue weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and allow foreign fighters and terrorists to seep into Iraq. This behavior must meet serious consequences, and soon.
September 15, 2003
Japan's Jitters
By Peter Brookes
Many Japanese believe their nation is the most likely target of North Korean aggression. They're convinced North Korea would never nuke their South Korean brethren. (They're probably right.) They realize that Pyongyang can't reliably reach the continental United States with its long-range missiles. (Although it is working on it.) And they don't see China or Russia as the likely targets.
September 03, 2003
Not a New Nuke Threat
By Peter Brookes
As predictable as Yosemite's Old Faithful, North Korea blew off some thermonuclear steam last week in Beijing.
September 02, 2003
Time to Tinker
By Peter Brookes
CRUSTY old warhorse colonels admonish their young charges with Murphy's Law of Combat: "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy." This is because war, especially today, is exceedingly dynamic and complex. Anything that can go wrong, often will.
Iraq is no exception. Any expectation of unmitigated success in warfare is foolhardy.
August 25, 2003
Nuclear Poker
By Peter Brookes
A TOM Clancy thriller looks ho-hum in comparison to the international intrigue taking place as the United States, Russia, China, the two Koreas and Japan jockey for position in preparation for Wednesday's Six-Party Talks in Beijing.
August 18, 2003
Keep Khadafy Caged
By Peter Brookes
Wielding a hefty checkbook, the Libyan government has offered a $2.7 billion mea culpa to the families of the 270 (including 189 Americans) killed in the 1988 Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland.
August 11, 2003
The Nuclear Cosa Nostra
By Peter Brookes
North Korea finally agreed to discuss its nuclear weapons program next month in Beijing at the Six-Party Talks.
August 04, 2003
In Cambodia, Hope for Iraq
By Peter Brookes
Building democracy abroad is a key element of American foreign policy -- and a necessary tool in the War on Terror.
July 28, 2003
It Ain't Over
By Peter Brookes
Just a little more than 53 years ago, President Truman sent American troops to fight in a land few of them had heard of before -- and for a people they didn't know.
July 21, 2003
Liberating Liberia
By Peter Brookes
Finally, a regime change we can all agree upon. Not North Korea's Kim Jong Il this time. Or even Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei. But Liberia's bad boy Charles Taylor.
July 14, 2003
Containing Asia's Crises
By Peter Brookes
Despite the whining and complaining of the "Henny Penny the Sky Is Falling" crowd, America's straight-talking, hard-nosed internationalism is having a salutary effect on hot spots around the globe, especially in Asia.
June 27, 2003
Halting Proliferation
By Peter Brookes
The only thing worse than one nuclear-armed rogue nation is two. But Iran is well on its way to joining North Korea as the world's newest nuclear nightmare. This is hardly shocking. President Bush didn't dub Tehran a charter member of the Axis of Evil by chance.
June 18, 2003
Iran Amok
By Peter Brookes
The ongoing showdown between young, reform- minded students and Iran's aging Islamic clergy portends Iran's likelihood as America's next major foreign policy crisis. A storm is brewing in U.S.-Iranian relations.
June 13, 2003
Dr. Strangeblix
By Peter Brookes
Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan. Perhaps that is why top U.N. weapons cop, Hans Blix, feels bitter and alone.
June 10, 2003
Shaken, Not Spun
By Peter Brookes
A small chorus of disgruntled intelligence analysts from the CIA and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) are claiming that senior Bush administration officials, such as Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, bullied them into manipulating intelligence on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to bolster support for a war against Iraq.
May 29, 2003
Sending a Strong Message to Iran
By Peter Brookes
Sending a Strong Message to Iran
May 22, 2003
Ending Appeasement in the Kingdom
By Peter Brookes
Ending Appeasement in the Kingdom
May 19, 2003
How to Defang Pyongyang
By Peter Brookes
How to Defang Pyongyang
May 12, 2003
Time to Pressure Iran
By Peter Brookes
Time to Pressure Iran
May 07, 2003
What Does North Korea Want?
By Peter Brookes
What Does North Korea Want?
April 21, 2003
Syria's Fate
By Peter Brookes
Syria's Fate: Peter Brookes questions the possibility of war with Syria given Syria's indirect support of Iraq. Syria has provided an asylum for certain wanted Iraqis, supported terrorist groups, and was involved in illegal trade that gave a financial benefit to Iraq.
April 17, 2003
The U.N.'s Strong Suit in Iraq
By Peter Brookes
The U.N.'s Strong Suit in Iraq: Peter Brookes describes how both the U.N. and the Coalition can be involved in the rebuilding of Iraq. And he believes this is the best solution.
April 11, 2003
North Korea on the Boil
By Peter Brookes
North Korea on the Boil: According to Peter Brookes, North Korea has taken advantage of the recent focus of interest on Iraq to announce its withdrawal from the U.N.'s Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Russia and China have different ideas than the U.S. on how to address the issues with North Korea.
April 04, 2003
Hard Fight Ahead
By Peter Brookes
Hard Fight Ahead: As coalition forces gain control at least 45 percent of Iraq and more than 95 percent of its airspace as they penetrate Baghdad, Peter Brookes comments on how Saddam Hussein and his Special Republic Guard are not expected to go down without exhausting all means of battle.
April 03, 2003
How to Deal With Pyongyang
By Peter Brookes
How to Deal With Pyongyang: Peter Brookes of The Heritage Foundation supports the Bush Administration's plan of seeking a multi-nation, or "multilateral," diplomatic solution to the North Korean problem.
January 16, 2003
Pointing the Finger of Blame
By Peter Brookes
The ominous drumbeat coming out of North Korea's state-controlled media is threatening, but it's nothing new. The dark mutterings about a "Third World War" that "knows no mercy" waged against the "U.S. warmongers" and turning Seoul into a "sea of fire" is a familiar screed for the Pyongyang regime, which considers such colorful saber-rattling just another way of doing business.
2009 Research
June 30, 2009
What Americans Need to Know About Missile Defense: We're Not There Yet
By Kim R. Holmes, Ph.D., James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., Peter Brookes, and Baker Spring
(WebMemo #2512)
President Obama is cutting missile defense spending by over $1 billion. This makes no sense at the same time that North Korea is testing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to deliver them and when Iran may be just one year away from producing its first nuclear weapon. Washington's reluctance to pursue missile defense makes little sense because Americans overwhelmingly support missile defense. The problem is that too many of us still think we already have all we need. We don't.
June 15, 2009
Rogue States and Rising Powers Continue to Pose a Strategic Risk to American Security
By Peter Brookes
(Special Report #56)
The world remains a dangerous place, populated with countries that will compete with the United States for political, economic, and military preeminence and could hold American interests around the world at risk. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and against al-Qaeda certainly should be at the forefront in defense spending and planning, but we also need a balanced force that can address emerging conventional and strategic challenges from rogue states and rising nations.
2008 Research
December 03, 2008
Moving Forward with Ballistic Missile Defense
By Baker Spring, Peter Brookes, and James Jay Carafano, Ph.D.
(Special Report #26)
President-elect Obama, during the campaign you said you were committed to protecting the United States and its allies against attacks that employ weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
December 03, 2008
Yes, a Nuclear Iran Is Unacceptable
By James Phillips and Peter Brookes
(Special Report #28)
President-elect Obama, you are right that the United States cannot allow Iran to attain a nuclear weapon. Your statement during the second presidential debate indicates that you appreciate the unacceptable dangers posed by a nuclear-capable Iran.
November 24, 2008
Why the World Still Needs America's Military Might
By Peter Brookes
(Heritage Lecture #1102)
As one American statesman said, diplomacy without the credible threat of military force is nothing but a prayer. America should seek consensus before making a decision, understanding that this end state is not always possible, while other nations should recognize that they must also bear the burden of maintaining the international order because freedom and democracy are superior to oppression and tyranny.
February 08, 2008
International Missile Defense: Washington and Warsaw's Postive Step Toward Final Agreement
By Sally McNamara and Peter Brookes
(WebMemo #1803)
A comprehensive missile defense system would offer protection to America, its forward deployed troops, and its allies.
2007 Research
November 06, 2007
Missile Defense: Debunking Arguments Against the Third Site in Eastern Europe
By Sally McNamara, Baker Spring, and Peter Brookes
(WebMemo #1694)
Policymakers must show the resolve and leadership necessary to move forward with a system that is critical to the national security of the United States and its friends and allies in Europe.
September 26, 2007
Iran: Time for Sanctions of the Willing
By Peter Brookes
(WebMemo #1643)
Major powers should work outside of the U.N. framework to impose tough economic sanctions on Tehran.
March 26, 2007
Into Africa: China's Grab for Influence and Oil
By Peter Brookes
(Heritage Lecture #1006)
China is seeking new markets for its export-driven economy and access to Africa’s abundant natural resources, especially sources of energy. However, Beijing’s broad energy, trade, political, diplomatic, and military interests and activities in Africa threaten to undermine long-standing international efforts to promote regional peace, prosperity, and democracy.
February 01, 2007
A Successful Test Shows the Way Forward on Missile Defense
By Peter Brookes and Baker Spring
(WebMemo #1335)
A big step forward for the U.S.'s leverage against hostile regimes that would develop ballistic missiles.
January 24, 2007
State of the Union 2007: What the President Should Have Said on Missile Defense
By Peter Brookes and Baker Spring
(WebMemo #1328)
Despite the deployment of launchers in Alaska and California for dealing with the North Korean nuclear and missile threat, more work needs to be done on missile defense.
2006 Research
September 27, 2006
NIE Confirms that the Outcome of the Iraq War is Critical to the War on Terrorism
By Peter Brookes and James Phillips
(WebMemo #1226)
According to the NIE, victory in Iraq is critical to the war against terrorism.
May 11, 2006
Iran's Friends Fend Off Action at the U.N. Security Council: Here's Why
By James Phillips and Peter Brookes
(WebMemo #1071)
Iran has cultivated close relations with Russia and China.
February 22, 2006
China's Influence in Africa: Implications for the United States
By Peter Brookes and Ji Hye Shin
(Backgrounder #1916)
China is rapidly expanding its influence in Africa through copious diplomatic, financial, and military assistance, endangering U.S. goals and visions for the region. In order to protect and advance American interests in Africa, Washington should look beyond traditional partners in Europe to the democratic nations of Asia and Latin America to seek broader international cooperation.
2005 Research
November 28, 2005
Meeting the 21st Century Security Challenges in Asia
By Peter Brookes
(Heritage Lecture #913)
Asia is rife with major security challenges for the United States: from the unprecedented rise of China, to the North Korean nuclear weapons program, to Southeast Asian terrorism, to the Indo-Pakistani conventional and nuclear rivalry. A one-size military or defense policy will not fit all of the challenges that the United States faces in Asia over the coming decades.
April 19, 2005
China's Influence in the Western Hemisphere
By Peter Brookes
(Heritage Lecture #873)
To neutralize China's growing influence in the Western Hemisphere and counter China's grand strategy of replacing the United States as the world's most powerful nation, the U.S. should expand its own free trade network, help friendly nations develop strong market economies, and foster closer, more cooperative security relations with our Latin American and Caribbean neighbors.
March 02, 2005
The Lifting of the EU Arms Embargo on China: An American Perspective
By Peter Brookes
(Heritage Lecture #866)
The European Union's decision to lift the arms embargo against China will not help close the trans-Atlantic divide, and may perhaps even widen it. The decision will also be perceived as an imprimatur of dismal human rights records everywhere and could increase the likelihood of military conflict in the Pacific by accelerating China's military buildup.
February 23, 2005
A Bad Idea Whose Time Has Come: The Lifting of the EU Arms Embargo on China
By Peter Brookes
(WebMemo #672)
Later this year, the European Union (EU) will consider lifting the Tiananmen Square arms embargo against the People's Republic of China (PRC).
2004 Research
September 23, 2004
What a Comprehensive Intelligence Bill Should Contain
By Edwin Meese III, Larry M. Wortzel, Ph.D., Peter Brookes, and James Jay Carafano, Ph.D.
(Backgrounder #1799)
As it considers recommendations to reform the intelligence community, Congress should not rush to pass legislation that overburdens a National Intelligence Director with too many roles and responsibilities, misses other opportunities to improve the performance of intelligence collection (particularly for sharing information and protecting civil liberties), or neglects reforms that may strengthen and improve the capacity of individual agencies to do their jobs.
2003 Research
November 14, 2003
U.S.-Taiwan Defense Relations in the Bush Administration
By Peter Brookes
(Heritage Lecture #808)
The United States expects the Taiwan armed forces to be able to fight efficiently and effectively should they be called upon to do so.
August 26, 2003
The Six Party Talks: Same Bed, Different Dreams
By Peter Brookes
(WebMemo #331)
These talks will test North Korea's diplomatic intentions regarding its nuclear ambitions. It will also test China's willingness to be part of a nuclear nonproliferation solution and not a continuing part of its problem. Success resolving the North Korean nuclear nightmare will have a salutary effect on the challenge of global nuclear nonproliferation should it be achievable.
August 14, 2003
Don't Lift Sanctions Against Libya
By Dr. Nile Gardiner, James Phillips and Peter Brookes
(WebMemo #329)
The Libyan government has announced that it will pay $2.7 billion in compensation to the families of the 270 victims of the 1988 Pan Am Lockerbie bombing, including 189 Americans. The compensation offer is expected to result in a UN Security Council resolution calling for the lifting of sanctions against Tripoli, which have been in place since 1992.
April 10, 2003
The Anti-Terrorist Coalition in the Pacific
By Peter Brookes
(Heritage Lecture #781)
The fight against terrorism means greater multilateralism in our approach to security, and that is true even in Asia. Unlike Europe, which has NATO, the Asia-Pacific region does not have an overarching treaty-based security organization.
February 03, 2003
The Challenges and Imperatives
By Peter Brookes
(Heritage Lecture #775)
Continuing to help Taiwan deter China's use of force and maintain a robust defense capability is in America's interest, Taiwan's interest, and the best interest of the entire region.
2002 Research
October 11, 2002
Promise and Progress: Homeland Security One Year Post-9/11
By Peter Brookes
(Heritage Lecture #764)
The terrorist attacks last September placed homeland security at the top of the nation's priorities. Since then, the President, Congress, state and local authorities, and the private sector have done much to meet new challenges to our security. There are still many areas that require additional attention--including maritime security.
October 09, 2002
The Diplomatic and Political Dimension
By Peter Brookes
(WebMemo #167)
The United States has a very strong interest in the security of Taiwan's democracy and in having a constructive relationship with China. As long as policymakers look to the past with a weather eye to the future, peace and stability in the U.S.–China–Taiwan relationship is possible.
2000 Research
August 17, 2000
Theater Missile Defense: How Will It Recast Security and Diplomacy in East Asia?
By Peter Brookes
(Heritage Lecture #683)
Theater Missile Defense: How Will It Recast Security and Diplomacy in East Asia?
November 20, 2009
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