ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

According to some analysts,  Americans may be overly confident in our military’s ability to shoot down North Korean missiles if the country were to attempt to strike. Maybe the reason we haven’t shot down North Korea’s test missiles is that we can’t.  While we all certainly hope that our military would be able to successfully defend the country against incoming missiles, we need to be prepared for any possibility. According to an article by Joe Cirincione of Defense One, the reason we don’t shoot down North Korea’s missiles when they fire them over Japan is because… We don’t have the capability. Joe Cirincione is the president of  Ploughshares Fund  and the  author of several books  about nuclear weapons, including  Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It Is Too Late . According to Cirincione, when Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said,  “We didn’t intercept it because no damage to Japanese territory was expected,”  this was only partially true.

Official fears violence after 25 September independence vote, as disputes grow in areas controlled by Kurd forces outside original KRG borders. Fears of fresh conflict in northern Iraq are bubbling to the surface weeks before Iraqi Kurds hold a contentious vote on independence, with warnings of war over disputed, ethnically mixed border regions and reports of Shia forces pushing Kurd officials from a town to prevent voting. The Kurdistan Regional Government, or KRG, has refused repeated requests from Baghdad, the US and regional powers to postpone its 25 September referendum, saying it would only do so if an alternative was presented by Iraq’s central government. Tensions have risen in areas liberated by KRG forces outside the region’s original 2003 borders, including the city of Kirkuk. On Monday the KRG’s president, Massoud Barzani, said “any attempt to change the reality using force” in Kirkuk “should expect that every single Kurd will be ready to fight.” Dr Jutyar Ma

Since the 1928 Red Line Agreement between British and French and American oil majors to divide the oil riches of the post-World War I Middle East, petroleum or more precisely, control of petroleum has constituted the thin-red-line of modern geopolitics. During the Soviet time Russian oil exports were largely aimed at maximizing dollar hard currency income in any possible market. Today, with the ludicrous US and EU sanctions on Russia and the Washington-instigated wars in the Middle East, Russia is evolving a strategic new frame for its oil geopolitics. Much has been said about how Russia under the Putin era has used its leading role as a natural gas supplier as a vital part of its geopolitical diplomacy. Nord Stream and soon Nord Stream II gas pipelines direct from Russia undersea, bypassing the political NATO minefields of Ukraine and of Poland, have the positive benefit of building an industry lobby in the EU. Especially in Germany, which would think twice about the more lunatic R