John Glaser

January 6, 2014

In a New York Times Op-Ed, two former U.S. officials, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon warn of the potential for Egypt’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood to engender Islamic extremism. “Egypt’s crisis threatens to add fuel to the ongoing terrorist activity across North Africa and to spawn a new wave of attacks against Western targets just as […]

John Glaser

January 3, 2014

Historian Margaret MacMillan has published a lengthy report for the Brookings Institution exploring the “lessons of the Great War” and drawing parallels between the state of international affairs prior to WWI and today. In one section, she discusses “The Temptations of the Client State” and the problems that arise when great powers staunchly support smaller client […]

John Glaser

January 2, 2014

I’ve predicted failure for Secretary of State John Kerry’s push for peace negotiations and a settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One of the (many) reasons past efforts to “broker” a deal have failed is because Israel makes a handful of demands that are beyond the pale and obviously unacceptable to the Palestinians, thus triggering a […]

John Glaser

January 2, 2014

It’s rare that I write about good news. But the editorial from yesterday’s New York Times is really good news. Entitled “Edward Snowden, Whistle-Blower,” the Times editorial board praises and defends Snowden’s decision to leak information about the NSA and argue he deserves some kind of clemency or pardon. Considering the enormous value of the […]

John Glaser

January 2, 2014

Much has been made recently of the apparent tension between the U.S. and its longtime ally, Saudi Arabia. The thinking essentially goes like this: Washington hasn’t sufficiently bowed to Saudi interests on issues like post-Mubarak Egypt, the Syrian civil war, and the diplomatic opening with Iran. The Saudis would have preferred the Obama administration to […]

Lucy Steigerwald

December 31, 2013

Almost 100 years ago, nearly 100,000 men on the Western Front in Europe stopped fighting the Great War for a while. Some stopped for a few days, some — especially those who began the truce on Boxing Day or later — lasted until the start of 1915. In some places, this friendliness only stopped because […]

John Glaser

December 30, 2013

The CIA and JSOC are engaged in a covert war in Colombia that involves intelligence cooperation and help in carrying out an assassination campaign against domestic rebels with U.S.-provided “smart bombs,” according to an investigative report from the Washington Post‘s Dana Priest. “The secret assistance, which also includes substantial eavesdropping help from the National Security […]

Ray McGovern

December 28, 2013

Barring a last-minute frantic call from the White House, CBS’s “Face the Nation” will interview whistleblowers Thomas Drake (ex-senior executive at the National Security Agency) and Jesselyn Radack (ex-ethics adviser at the Justice Department). Michael Hayden, who headed the NSA and CIA and now is a chief NSA defender on CNN and Fox News, will […]

John Glaser

December 27, 2013

Five years after the devastating Israeli war on Gaza, called ‘Operation Cast Lead,’ Israel has again bombed the densely populated open air prison strip to its south. Several Gazans have been reported injured and at least one toddler has been killed. All of the media accounts, as per usual, report the strikes as retaliatory, coming […]

John Glaser

December 26, 2013

When the NSA’s bulk collection of every single American’s phone records was disclosed this past summer, defenders of the program argued it was not invasive surveillance because it’s only metadata (who you called, when, and for how long) and doesn’t include the identity of the callers or the content of the conversation. “There are no […]