ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal at a news conference in Islamabad on Jan. 7. (AAMIR QURESHI/AFP/Getty Images) Summary Saudi Arabia is running into trouble in its strategy to weaken Iran by supporting rebels who are trying to topple the Syrian regime . Riyadh is working to develop a more independent foreign policy doctrine after its biggest ally, the United States, opted not to engage in military action against Syria and opened talks with the kingdom's biggest enemy, Iran. Between a lack of sufficient international support for the Syrian rebels and the fact that Syria has become a major destination for jihadists of varying ideologies, Riyadh will find it difficult to achieve its goals in Syria. Analysis Saudi Arabia is looking for alternative means to remove the Syrian regime, following the divergence in Saudi and U.S. interests pertaining to the Levant. From Washington's point of view, ousting Syrian President Bashar al Assad is not worth the cost of supporting

Russia is using Ukraine to show its neighbors, and indeed the world, that it is still a military power to be reckoned with. On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered snap military drills to test the combat readiness of the armed forces across the Western and Central military districts of Russia. Some 150,000 troops, 90 aircraft, 880 tanks, 1,200 piece of military hardware and more than 120 helicopters participated in the exercises, which involve operations along Russia's western borders, including those with Ukraine. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that the drills are not related to the events in Ukraine. "Routine" military drills might not be so concerning had they not preceded military invasion before. Russia performed several exercises in the North Caucasus before invading Georgia in 2008 , and the type of exercises -- not to mention the rhetoric coming out of Moscow -- is too similar for Kiev to ignore. Russia already has military personnel st

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (R) and British Prime Minister David Cameron at the 2013 G-20 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia. (ALEXANDER VILF/Host Photo Agency via Getty Images) Summary The European Union will eventually need to reform its treaties to satisfy some members' demands, but reform may not come soon enough for the United Kingdom. British Prime Minister David Cameron will host German Chancellor Angela Merkel in London on Feb. 27 to discuss the United Kingdom's plans to renegotiate its role in the European Union. If the ruling Conservative Party is re-elected in the British general elections in 2015, Cameron will want the British Parliament to repatriate some powers from Brussels and for national parliaments to have veto power on EU issues, all before the United Kingdom holds a referendum on its EU membership in 2017. Germany, Europe's largest economic and political power, does not necessarily disagree with enhancing the union's democratic accountability but

Pro-Russian demonstrations take place in the Crimean city of Sevastopol on Feb. 23. (VASILIY BATANOV/AFP/Getty Images) Summary As the crisis in Ukraine enters a new phase , the key to the country's political and security future may be held in an unsuspecting place: Crimea, an autonomous peninsular republic in southern Ukraine. The Crimean parliament will hold an extraordinary session Feb. 26 to discuss the situation in Ukraine amid signs that the autonomous republic is aligning even more closely with Russia than it was before the outset of protests. As one of Russia's strongest sources of leverage in Ukraine, Crimea will be an avenue through which Moscow influences its western neighbor. Already there are rumors that Russia could act militarily, but ultimately how far Russia goes will depend on how the political situation plays out in Kiev. Analysis Crimea has long been firmly within Russia's sphere of influence . More than 60 percent of the republic is populated by ethnic

By Glenn Greenwald - " The Intercept " - - I’m going to have a story published later today about a new document, but until then, this new interview with (and profile of) Director of National Intelligence James Clapper by the Daily Beast‘s Eli Lake is worth spending a few moments examining. Last week, Lake published one excerpt of his interview where Clapper admitted that the U.S. Government should have told the American people that the NSA was collecting their communications records: as pure a vindication of Edward Snowden’s choice as it gets, for obvious reasons. But there are several new, noteworthy revelations from this morning’s article: Thanks to rogue contractor Edward Snowden, the machinations of the shadow bureaucracy Clapper heads have for the last eight months been exposed one news story at a time. Clapper is often the guy who has to call newspaper editors to tell them not to print stories that they usually publish anyway. This process of pre-publication notice

By Israel Shamir - I am a great fan of Kiev, an affable city of pleasing bourgeois character, with its plentiful small restaurants, clean tree-lined streets, and bonhomie of its beer gardens. A hundred years ago Kiev was predominantly a Russian resort, and some central areas have retained this flavour. Now Kiev is patrolled by armed thugs from the Western Ukraine, by fighters from the neo-Nazi -Right Sector, descendants of Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian Quisling’s troopers, and by their local comrades-in-arms of nationalist persuasion. After a month of confrontation, President Viktor Yanukovych gave in, signed the EC-prepared surrender and escaped their rough revolutionary justice by the skin of his teeth. The ruling party MPs were beaten and dispersed, the communists almost lynched, the opposition have the parliament all to themselves, and they've appointed new ministers and taken over the Ukraine. The Brown Revolution has won in the Ukraine. This big East European country of fi

By RT - " RT " - Secret units within the 'Five Eyes" global spying network engage in covert online operations that aim to invade, deceive, and control online communities and individuals through the spread of false information and use of ingenious social-science tactics. Such teams of highly trained professionals have several main objectives, such as “to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet” and “to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable,” The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald reported based on intelligence documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden . The new information comes via a document from the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) of Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), entitled 'The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations,' which is top secret and only for dissemination within the Five Eyes

By Glenn Greenwald A page from a GCHQ top secret document prepared by its secretive JTRIG unit - One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It’s time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents. Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about “dirty trick” tactics used by GCHQ’s previously secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These were based on four classified GCHQ documents presented to the NSA and the other three partners in the English-speaking “Five Eyes” alliance . Today, we at the Intercept are publishing another new JTRIG document , in full, entitled “The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations”. By publishing these stories one by one, our NBC reporting highlighted some o