The start of a new year and of a new administration is a good time to think about the future. A key challenge facing the new Obama administration and the Congress is to ensure that US military capabilities continue to innovate and evolve in challenging times. Paul Bracken has underscored that we are in a… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: North Korea’s recent successful launch of a satellite into orbit raises “lots of concerns for lots of reasons,” and means that the secretive state now possesses the capability of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, the head of Air Force Space Command, Gen. William Shelton said this morning. The ability to sling a warhead across continents… Keep reading →

SYDNEY: The early signs from the Australian military’s new strategy make it clear that this demographically tiny nation that fights far above its weight is readying itself to refocus on China and Indonesia as it prepares to cope with the end of the war in Afghanistan. ANALYSIS The Ministry of Defence in Canberra is deep… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Japan is the proverbial linchpin of US strategy in East Asia. But linchpins sometimes break. As the US struggles to afford a “pivot” to the Pacific, its most important ally in the theater is undergoing a slow and painful shift of its own. The new prime minister, Shinzo Abe of the Liberal Democratic Party… Keep reading →

Pundits tend to forget that the 21st century is not the 20th repeated. As much as the US competition with a rising China is framed as a reprise of the Cold War with the Soviets or of the Pacific war with Japan, the game has changed. The rise of China changes the opposing player. The… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: There’s an increasing consensus in Washington that America’s future lies in the Pacific. It’s one of the few things both parties can agree on. Unfortunately, if we can’t reach an agreement to get our fiscal house in order, the governments in the Asia-Pacific region will have every reason not to take our strategy seriously.… Keep reading →

The pivot to the Pacific started more than a century ago. The United States first became a Pacific power in 1898, the year the US first annexed Hawaii and then gained Guam and the Philippines (as well as Puerto Rico) from Spain after a “short, victorious war.” The United States is at a turning point… Keep reading →

Energy security is a key element of national security. The missing piece of America’s energy security policy, in turn, is the glaring absence of a strategy to coordinate and secure the enormous energy resources of the Western hemisphere. Today, America is over-dependent on the increasingly volatile Middle East, China is increasingly aggressive in its quest… Keep reading →

As the old year dies, Breaking Defense has asked its expert Board of Contributors to look ahead at the next (click here for the whole 2013 forecast series). Today we hear from Col. (retired) Douglas Macgregor, a decorated combat veteran of the first Gulf War, prolific author, and a passionate skeptic of conventional strategic wisdom.… Keep reading →

The U.S. aerospace industry got an early Christmas present this week, when House and Senate conferees approved defense authorization legislation that gives the President discretion to determine export jurisdiction for satellites. The legislation next will be voted on by the full Congress, and signed by the President. That process will conclude a necessary-but-not-sufficient, long-awaited first… Keep reading →