The Ritz-Carlton Moscow It's possible I'll be able to formulate some thoughts about this as soon as I'm done laughing about it, but for now let me just say one thing. While I have absolutely no problem believing that the Russian government has dirt, possibly serious dirt, on our president-elect, the story that Buzzfeed ran … Continue reading Conflict update: January 10 2017

Apologies; normally I like to keep things more active around here, but I'm working on a big piece for LobeLog and it's taking a while to get through it. It's a long Q&A with a couple of respected foreign policy analysts about the Obama foreign policy legacy. And while you might think that sounds easy, … Continue reading Conflict update: January 9 2017

Iraq Iraqi counter-terrorism forces in east Mosul say they've reached the eastern bank of the Tigris River. Some Iraqi politicians are claiming that as much as 88 percent of the eastern half of the city has been liberated, which is probably a substantial exaggeration, but it's impossible to dispute that the offensive has made significant … Continue reading Conflict update, January 8 2017

Ivory Coast I'm going to level with you and say that I wasn't going to write one of these tonight, but for the fact that something pretty big seems to have flared up in a country that doesn't get much American attention under any circumstances and that has been more or less pretty quiet for … Continue reading Conflict update: January 7 2017

Iraq Here's one terrifying side-effect of the Mosul campaign that, to be honest, I hadn't really thought much about: With the launch of the second phase of the Mosul operations Dec. 29, tens of bodies of killed Islamic State (IS) fighters were strewn across the streets in the neighborhoods of al-Salam, al-Intisar, al-Wihda, Palestine and … Continue reading Conflict update: January 6 2017

World War III Building on an earlier post, this seems problematic: Senior officials in the Russian government celebrated Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton as a geopolitical win for Moscow, according to U.S. officials who said that American intelligence agencies intercepted communications in the aftermath of the election in which Russian officials congratulated themselves on … Continue reading Conflict update: January 5 2017