The Cold War is an increasingly distant memory in American military minds, except in the minds of the arms control community, and in particular those who seek the elimination of nuclear weapons. Alas, our president is a member in good standing of this community—indeed, an organizer.So, too, it...

The new government in Yemen has extracted several of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s cronies from the country’s power structure, including demotion of Saleh’s half-brother Mohammed al Ahmar and nephew Tareq Mohammed Saleh, the former heads of the Air Force and Presidential Guard, respectively.

The U.S. military faces a readiness crisis - one confronting not just its people and end-strength cuts - but pushing equipment to the breaking point. Across all services, long-standing readiness problems are worsening and breakdowns are happening more frequently.

This event is the first in a series of four campaign-season seminars on the critical issues of U.S. foreign and defense policy.

Either the Navy is retiring these ships too early or its lifecycle estimates are hopelessly optimistic. But service leaders cannot have it both ways. Similarly, the administration cannot realistically “pivot” to Asia—a region defined by the “tyranny of distance”—and cut the fleet at the same time.

On Thursday, the Pentagon will begin detailing its plans to cut $500 billion from the military's budget over the next decade. The reason, insists President Barack Obama, is that "since 9/11, our defense budget grew at an extraordinary pace." That's true in top-line numbers—but it's anything but true when examined strategically.

The smallest and oldest Air Force in U.S. history needs to get bigger and newer, quickly. Without an Air Force capable of responding to multiple crises around the world—and almost every major conflict in history has played out on more than one front—the Obama administration’s new strategy is a recipe for decline. 

If there is one success story since 9/11, it has been the efforts to combat terror finance. If military action is sometimes akin to conducting surgery with an axe, efforts to dry up sources of funding are like wielding a scalpel.