America counts heavily on a cordon of allies stretching from Japan to the north down to Thailand, and across to India, in the highly unlikely event of war with China. But these same allies could draw the U.S. into strictly local disputes in which America does not always have a clear security interest and which… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Nixon, Ford, and Carter aren’t anyone’s three favorite presidents. But defense policymakers today could learn something from how they handled the hard times of the 1970s: They shifted costly security burdens to foreign partners while pulling US forces out, and they cut defense budgets generally while protecting long-term investments in “seed corn” technologies that… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Just back from his trip to Asia, the jet-lagged Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff attended graduation ceremonies at the Pentagon’s National Defense University, where he singled out NDU’s first-ever Vietnamese graduate, a colonel in the People’s Army of Vietnam, as an example of the kind of relationship-building the US military must do… Keep reading →