ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

By Alastair Beach Iraqi officials have issued a desperate plea for America to bring US ground troops back to the embattled country, as heavily armed Islamic State militants came within striking distance of Baghdad. Amid reports that Isil forces have advanced as far as Abu Ghraib, a town that is effectively a suburb of Baghdad, a senior governor claimed up to 10,000 fighters from the movement were now poised to assault the capital. The warning came from Sabah al-Karhout, president of the provisional council of Anbar Province, the vast desert province to the west of Baghdad that has now largely fallen under jihadist control. The province’s two main cities, Fallujah and Ramadi, were once known as “the graveyard of the Americans”, and the idea of returning there will not be welcomed by the Pentagon. But were the province to be controlled by Isil, it would give their forces a springboard from which to mount an all-out assault on Baghdad, where a team of around 1,500 US troops is already ac

By Andrew Korybko A global shift in US strategy is currently underway, with America transitioning from the ‘ world policeman’ to the Lead From Behind mastermind. This fundamental shift essentially entails the US moving from a majority forward-operating military to a defensive stay-behind force. Part of this transformation is the reduction of the conventional military and its replacement with special forces and intelligence recruits . Private military companies (PMCs) are also occupying a higher role in the US’ grand strategy. Of course, it is not to say that the US no longer has the capability or will to forward advance – not at all – but that the evolving US strategy prefers more indirect and nefarious approaches towards projecting power besides massive invasions and bombing runs. In this manner, it is following the advice of Sun Tzu who wrote that “supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” The outcome is a mixture of Color Revolutions, unc

According to Edward Snowden, people who care about their privacy should stay away from popular consumer Internet services like Dropbox, Facebook, and Google. Snowden conducted a remote interview today as part of the New Yorker Festival, where he was asked a couple of variants on the question of what we can do to protect our privacy. His first answer called for a reform of government policies. Some people take the position that they “don’t have anything to hide,” but he argued that when you say that, “You’re inverting the model of responsibility for how rights work”: When you say, ‘I have nothing to hide,’ you’re saying, ‘I don’t care about this right.’ You’re saying, ‘I don’t have this right, because I’ve got to the point where I have to justify it.’ The way rights work is, the government has to justify its intrusion into your rights. He added that on an individual level, people should seek out encrypted tools and stop using services that are “hostile to privacy.” For one thing, he sa