ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Washington still thinks it's calling the shots—and we'll fight forever to prove it. By Charles V. Peña   Speaking at the Hoover Institute, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson  laid out  the Trump administration’s vision for “a stable, unified, and independent Syria, free of terrorist threats and free of weapons of mass destruction.” Such a vision sounds a lot like what previous administrations said about Iraq and Afghanistan, which should be cause for worry. Afghanistan has become America’s longest running war and we still have troops in Iraq more than a decade after what some war supporters said would be a “ cakewalk .” Moreover, a long-term U.S. military presence in both those countries has not made them stable or unified—and nothing indicates they will be anytime soon. Nonetheless, Secretary Tillerson made clear that “[t]he United States will maintain a military presence in Syria” that is “conditions-based.” But why commit to do in Syria what we haven’t been able to accom

A photo of the Taliban special forces with western weapons. On January 31, Taliban fighters attacked a joint position of the Afghan Army and the NATO around the city of Mehtarlam, the capital of the eastern Laghman province, according to the Taliban news agency Voice of Jihad. The agency said that seven Afghan soldiers were killed and five armored vehicles of the Afghan Army were destroyed by Taliban fighters. Taliban fighters also killed five Afghan soldiers and injured six others during a series of hit and run attacks on several checkpoints of the Afghan Army and Police in the district of Alishang in the province of Laghman. The Voice of Jihad also reported that Taliban fighters ambushed a convoy of the Afghan Army in Shalgar district of Ghazni province, also in eastern Afghanistan, on February 1. Twelve Afghan Army soldiers were reportedly killed and nine others were injured in the attack. Taliban fighters also destroyed four armored vehicles of the Afghan Army, accordin

North Korea may be run by a deranged, tyrannical psychopath, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t a direct threat to the United States and the people that live here. During an interview with “CBS This Morning” earlier this week, CIA Director  Mike Pompeo  placed a significant amount of emphasis on a new report that suggests that the North Korean regime will be able to strike the United States with a nuclear warhead in just a “handful of months.” Previously, the intelligence community thought that North Korea wouldn’t be able to launch a successful nuclear strike on the United States for at least a year, but now it appears that there is less time than the U.S. government originally thought. (Related:  Watch this video lecture from the Health Ranger on how North Korea can exterminate 90% of the U.S. population .) “Here’s what we can say,” the CIA director said in the interview. “We can always identify that the program is continuing. …We’ll never know the exact nature of what’s