ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

By Owen Jones " The Guardian " - - The so-called war on terror is nearly 13 years old, but which rational human being will be cheering its success? We’ve had crackdowns on civil liberties across the world, tabloid-fanned generalisations about Muslims and, of course, military interventions whose consequences have ranged from the disastrous to the catastrophic. And where have we ended up? Wars that Britons believe have made them less safe ; jihadists too extreme even for al-Qaida’s tastes running amok in Iraq and Syria; and nations like Libya succumbing to Islamist militias. There are failures, and then there are calamities. But as the British government ramps up the terror alert to “severe” and yet more anti-terror legislation is proposed , some reflection after 13 years of disaster is surely needed. One element has been missing, and that is the west’s relationship with Middle Eastern dictatorships that have played a pernicious role in the rise of Islamist fundamentalist terr...

By Alastair Crooke " Huffington Post " - - BEIRUT -- The dramatic arrival of Da'ish (ISIS) on the stage of Iraq has shocked many in the West. Many have been perplexed -- and horrified -- by its violence and its evident magnetism for Sunni youth. But more than this, they find Saudi Arabia's ambivalence in the face of this manifestation both troubling and inexplicable, wondering, "Don't the Saudis understand that ISIS threatens them, too?"  It appears -- even now -- that Saudi Arabia's ruling elite is divided. Some applaud that ISIS is fighting Iranian Shiite "fire" with Sunni "fire"; that a new Sunni state is taking shape at the very heart of what they regard as a historical Sunni patrimony; and they are drawn by Da'ish's strict Salafist ideology.  Other Saudis are more fearful, and recall the history of the revolt against Abd-al Aziz by the Wahhabist Ikhwan (Disclaimer: this Ikhwan has nothing to do with the Muslim Brothe...

Following comments from Ukraine’s Defense Minister Valery Geletey of Moscow threatening with a nuclear attack on its neighbor, Moscow said it was shocked by the statement. Russia warned that such rhetoric only deepens the civil stand-off in Ukraine.  “Geletey’s calls to get ready for ‘tens of thousands’ of new victims in what he called ‘Great Patriotic War’ and what in fact is a new punitive operation in his own country are appalling. He only drags the Ukrainian people into a new round of the bloody civil stand-off,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement Monday. Earlier Geletey wrote in his Facebook that the operation “to cleanse Ukraine’s east from terrorists” was over. He, however, proceeded to accuse Russia of direct military involvement in the east that followed the rebels’ “defeat.” “A big war has come to our home, a war Europe has not seen since WWII,” Geletey wrote alleging that Russia not only attempted to secure its position on the rebel-held territories, but als...

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the start of World War 1, formerly called the Great War. Not surprisingly, this has brought all sorts of stories and op-eds discussing the disastrous events that killed some 16 million people and wounded an additional 21 million others. To this day, most observers continue to claim that World War I was an inadvertent war: that is, that none of the countries involved particularly wanted war but war came nonetheless. Some claim it was the major armament programs and offensive military doctrines adopted by European countries in the run-up to the war that made WWI inevitable. Others claim it was the hypernationalistic populaces that caused the war. Still others blame the tight alliances that European nations formed in the years prior to WWI, which created an environment in which the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by an anarchist could plunge the entire continent into a bloody war. And then there are those that blame the situation on the...