ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

AFP Photo / Rolex Dela Pena China has cautioned that US warnings to halt construction of a massive artificial island and airfield will not deter it from completing the project in disputed waters of the South China Sea. This is the fourth such undertaking in the last 12-18 months. China’s top general has defended the construction of the 3,000-meter island as “justifiable” in a scornful response to swift American criticism that followed evidence of large-scale military construction on the Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratly Islands area. China currently claims almost all of the South China Sea, with some claims being leveled by Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Taiwan and the Philippines. However, its land reclamation projects have been causing the West and its strategic partners in the area a headache, owing to the already-tense political situation in the region. Despite this, of all the claimants in the South China Sea, China is the only one currently not occupying an island with an airfield. ...

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius (3rd L), EU envoy Catherine Ashton (6th L), U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (3rd R) and Britain's Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond (front L) sit a a table during talks in Vienna November 21, 2014. (Reuters/Heinz-Peter Bader) Iran’s nuclear talks with the six world powers will carry on till the end of June, according to British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, confirming earlier reports that negotiations would not reach a conclusion by the deadline of November 24. An Iranian official confirmed Hammond's comments shortly afterwards. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that “considerable progress” had been made but there was no final agreement. Meanwhile, the Geneva agreement remains in place, he added, and he expressed expectations that the "basic principles" of a final agreement would be made within three or four months. Hammond also commented that “significant progress” was achieved. As of yet, the site of next mont...

Nairobi - Kenyan security forces have killed more than 100 suspected members of the Islamist terrorist group al-Shabaab who were pursued into Somalia after massacring 28 people on a bus, Deputy President William Ruto said on Sunday. At least 28 people were killed on Saturday in the bus attack, in which al-Shabaab later claimed responsibility. Insurgents of the al-Qaeda-linked group hijacked a passenger bus in the village of Arabia in Mandera county and shot dead everyone who failed to read verses of the Koran. The hijackers drove the bus, which was bound for Nairobi, towards the Somali border, where they shot the victims in the head, authorities said. Somali passengers were separated from non-Somali passengers before the killings, after which the insurgents fled into Somalia on foot. "Our security responded swiftly," Ruto said in a press conference, the Daily Nation newspaper reported online. "They identified, followed and struck the perpetrators of the heinous crime....

by CHRIS BUSBY Secret documents released to me as a result of an order by the Judge in the nuclear test veteran pension appeals (the late HH Hugh Stubbs) reveal valuable evidence about uranium in fallout. The documents show that fallout from atmospheric nuclear testing contains enormous amounts of uranium. This should be no surprise as nuclear bombs contain a lot of uranium, and most of it remains unfissioned after a nuclear explosion. But what will come as news to a great many people is the importance in the fallout of an isotope of uranium that few of us have even heard of: uranium-234, a highly radioactive alpha emitter which concentrates in the ‘enriched uranium’ (EU) used in nuclear bombs. All uranium binds to DNA and causes cancer and genetic effects in the children of those exposed – but U-234 is especially hazardous. A  restricted document  shows that the matter was raised as early as 1953 at a meeting at Harwell by the late Karl Z Morgan, who was in charge o...

by WILLIAM D. HARTUNG On Nov. 10 the White House forwarded a request to Congress for an additional $5.6 billion to fight the war against the Islamic State. This is pocket change by Pentagon standards. The president’s new war funding request equals only about 1 percent of the Pentagon’s $500 billion base budget, and just 10 percent of the $59.6 billion that is already in the administration’s proposal for war funding for 2015. With all this money at its disposal, why does the Pentagon need more funds now for the war against Islamic State? The short answer is, it doesn’t. It’s an open secret that the war budget – known in Washington-ese as the Overseas Contingency Operations account – has been used for years as the Pentagon’s personal piggy bank to pay for a whole array of projects that have nothing to do with any existing conflict. In fiscal year 2014, which ended Oct. 1, independent estimates suggest that as much as $30 billion of the $80 billion-plus OCO request was used for items unre...

by MEL CARRIERE Last September 26 forty-three student protestors on their way to a protest rally were abducted in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico by the police, then handed over to a drug trafficking gang that most likely murdered them. Since that time widespread protests have erupted in Mexico over this outrage. Although the United States shares a border with this troubled nation and a significant percentage of our population is either Mexican or of Mexican ancestry, very few reports surrounding this atrocity have appeared in the American media. This begs the question of whether or not this information is being deliberately concealed from the American public and if so, why? Although my wife is Mexican and stays more attuned to what is going on in Mexico than I do via the Spanish language media, the first I heard about the abduction and massacre came from the cover of the Wall Street Journal, which I happened to glance at last Saturday. On the way home from work I expected to hear more about ...

Moscow has strongly warned Washington against providing Ukraine’s military with lethal arms in its operations against pro-Russia forces in the east. “We repeatedly heard confirmations from the (US) administration that only non-lethal weapons would be delivered to Ukraine. If there is a change in this policy, then this is a highly destabilizing factor that could seriously influence the balance of power in the region,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told a news conference in the capital, Moscow, on Thursday. “That (would be) a direct violation of agreements reached, including (agreements reached) with the participation of the United States,” the Russian official added. Lukashevich’s remarks came a day after Tony Blinken, the US deputy national security adviser, told a US Senate committee that Washington should consider strengthening Ukraine’s armed forces through supplying weaponry. “I believe that, given the serious Russian violations of the agreement that the...

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will not leave the nuclear talks with the P5+1 in Vienna to come to Iran for consultations, a source in the Iranian negotiating team says. Earlier reports had suggested that Zarif, who is Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, may return to Tehran for consultations with “high-ranking officials.” Responding to a question about reports that US Secretary of State John Kerry has put proposals on the negotiating table, the Iranian source said the reports are not true, according to IRNA. “It’s been us who have offered various proposals since the Muscat talks up to now,” the source said, referring to the trilateral negotiations between Iran, the US and the EU held earlier in the Omani capital. The ideas raised in the talks have not yet reached a level to make it necessary for Zarif to take them to Tehran, the source said, adding that the negotiations will thus continue. Earlier, Zarif held fresh three-way talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry and EU ...