ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

When it comes to nuclear weapons upon the international stage, the general consensus is certainly not  "the more the merrier."  Attempts to limit the number and variety of nuclear weapons and to take measures to avoid the use of those that do exist have been ongoing since the first nuclear weapons were developed at the end of World War 2. Today, however, one of the several nuclear-armed nations of the world and its behavior has jeopardized the hard-fought progress made toward this goal. America Reneged After the Cold War  One of several treaties singed during the later stages of the Cold War included the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABMT). It limited anti-ballistic missile systems to two per country. The reasoning was to hinder anti-missile technology development and leave nuclear-armed nations open to retaliatory attacks should they initiate a nuclear first strike. The treaty helped further enhance the concept of  "mutually assured destruction"  (MAD)...

Both Washington and Moscow are modernizing their nuclear arsenals, but military leaders worry that Russia is ahead. The Russian military on Wednesday test-fired  an  RS -24 Yars , one of their newest intercontinental ballistic missiles, Russian state media sources reported. The solid-fueled  ICBM , “equipped with a detachable warhead, arrived at the designated area on the Kura test range on the Kamchatka Peninsula at the state-owned  Plesetsk Test Space Cosmodrome  with the Yoshkar-Ola missile connection,” Russia’s Ministry of Defense announced via  TASS . Russia and the United States are both working to modernize their ICBMs, each to the chagrin of the other. In 2010, the countries signed the  New  START  Treaty , ostensibly limiting the number of nuclear weapons each could build and deploy. But Russia has continued to increase its stock of warheads, even as it hews to the treaty limit of 700 launchers, says Hans M. Kr...

BY PATRICK TUCKER READ BIO TOPICS ISIS SYRIA AIR FORCE US. AIR FORCE / STAFF SARGENT TREVOR MCBRIDE A A   FONT SIZE +   PRINT Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email this article U.S. airmen are rapidly developing and remixing new technologies and techniques in the fight against ISIS, but sometimes you can’t beat the tried and true. ISIS  doesn’t have an Air Force, but the Syrian skies are nevertheless a rapidly evolving “laboratory” for air warfare, said  U.S.  military leaders, who described how the  U.S.  is fusing cyber attacks with real bombs and using open-source intelligence to find and strike targets. Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, who leads  U.S.  Air Forces Central Command, described a “dynamic targeting tool” that lets analysts and airmen at al Udeid Air Base in Qatar send the latest targeting information to airborne pilots and ground-based commanders alike. “The tool pulls together everything from...

Kim Jong Un North Korea has threatened the US with a “horrible nuclear strike and miserable and final ruin” arguing that it’s ready to conduct a pre-emptive strike if it see “any slight sign of provocation.” “The U.S. cooked up another “sanctions resolution” at the United Nations Security Council as part of its unprecedented military threat and sanctions and blockade to stifle the DPRK [North Korea].  The U.S. describes the DPRK’s nuclear deterrence for self-defense as the “biggest threat to peace”, but it is no more than a shameful logic and a brigandish deed to justify its crimes against peace on the Korean Peninsula ,” the state-run media outlet Korean Central News Agency reported. “ The DPRK, which towered as the most powerful nuclear weapons state despite the unprecedented difficulties and trials, is not afraid of sanctions, pressure and war. “ On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump threatened North Korea with total destruction if it attacks the US or its allie...

Nasib border crossing The Free Syrian Army Groups (FSA) in southern Syria has agreed to hand over the Nasib border crossing on the Syrian-Jordanian border to the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), the Russian RIA Novosti news agency reported on September 20. According to the report, the FSA will hand over the crossing if the Syrian government agreed to release 100 prisoners of war. the Russian Centre for reconciliation of opposing sides informed Damascus of the FSA demand, according to a source of RIA Novosti. The report claimed that the FSA agreed to hand over Nasib border crossing after great pressure from Jordan, the main backer of the FSA in southern Syria. Likely, the Jordanian government is interested in the financial benefit of the border crossing that use to make 800 million USD a year before it was closed back in 2015 when the al-Nusra Front – now known as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – captured it. It’s very unlikely that HTS will allow such a deal to happen especi...

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Commander of PMU Operations Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis On Thursday morning, the Iraqi Army and  the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU)  launched a joint effort to liberate the area of Hawija from ISIS terrorists. According to the PMU media wing, the army and the PMU already liberated the villages of Kinaous, Hamid Sitayr, Shiyaleh Al-Imam and Taweenah located northeast of Sharqat. Sarqat is located northwest of the ISIS stronghold of Hawija – the main target of the operation. Hawija is located in Kirkuk province, west of the provinical cappital – Kirkuk city. Kirkuk is now mostly controlled by Kurdish Peshmerga forces, a military force of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Some Kurdish sources speculate that the army and the PMU use the anti-ISIS operation as a pretext to deploy additional forces in the area of Kirkuk. The KRG seeks to include non-Kurdish Kirkuk city into as well as some oil-rich area...

Back in 2007 I wrote Reinventing Collapse , in which I compared the collapse of the USSR to the forthcoming collapse of the USA. I wrote the following: “Let us imagine that collapsing a modern military-industrial superpower is like making soup: chop up some ingredients, apply heat and stir. The ingredients I like to put in my superpower collapse soup are: a severe and chronic shortfall in the production of crude oil (that magic addictive elixir of industrial economies), a severe and worsening foreign trade deficit, a runaway military budget and ballooning foreign debt. The heat and agitation can be provided most efficaciously by a humiliating military defeat and widespread fear of looming catastrophe.” (p. 2) A decade later these ingredients are all in place, with a few minor quibbles. The shortfall of oil is in the case of the US not the shortfall of physical oil but of money: against the backdrop of terminal decline of conventional oil in the US, the only meaningful supply increase h...