As Nawaz Sharif heads to Washington with his ISI approved new NSA, Naseer Khan Janjua, the outcome is already known. Obama has already given his preamble that Pakistan is an important player in Afghanistan. It is not material whether the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz was bombed accidentally and apologized for as collateral damage or bombed deliberately after the USSF ascertained that a Pakistani ISI operative was stationed in the hospital seized and styled into a Taliban operational headquarters.
From the beginning of the new century, the economic environment in India has rapidly improved despite the downturn of the last couple of years and our inability to live up to our potential. With an increasingly assertive and powerful China and a receding United States, there has been increasing pressure on India from the US, Japan and the other Asian nations to work in tandem with them to counter the former. However, a disjointed and poorly executed programme to enhance infrastructure along the Sino-Indian border has left India vulnerable with limited conventional ability to react against Chinese designs especially since infrastructure in Tibet has seen quantum improvement. While attempts are now underway to rectify the situation, it will take time for India to achieve conventional deterrence.
The British had for long treated Sikkim virtually as an Indian princely state. The Sikkim Darbar was accordingly invited to Delhi for discussion with the new Government of India and the Chamber of Princes in order to determine its future status. The official delegation, led by Maharajkumar Palden Thondup Namgyal, which participated in those discussions did not show any inclination to accede to the Indian Union as other princely states had done. Accordingly, a “Standstill Agreement” between the Sikkim Darbar and the Government of India was signed on Feb. 27, 1948. By this agreement, all administrative arrangements and relations as to the matters of common concern existing between the Crown and the Sikkimese State on August 14, 1947 were to continue between the Government of India and the Sikkim Darbar pending the conclusion of a new treaty. The “matters of common concern” specifically included Currency, Coinage, Customs, Postal and Telegraphic Communications, External Relations and Defence.1
In 2009 and 2010, the war in Afghanistan was the top national security issue that every pundit, columnist, and think-tank analyst in Washington was talking about. At that time, there were roughly 100,000 U.S. troops patrolling some of the most dangerous villages and valleys in Helmand and Kandahar province. An average of 41 U.S. soldiers were being killed in Taliban ambushes, roadside bombings, suicide attacks, and small-arms fire every month — an incredibly difficult period when U.S. and coalition objectives in Afghanistan centered on the tough and ambitious work of clearing insurgent fighters from key strongholds and ensuring that the Afghan national security forces were strong and capable enough to secure those areas once U.S. forces left.
Naval mines are especially potent. American air-dropped mines in Japanese waters in 1945--chillingly but accurately code-named Operation Starvation--sank more ships than U.S. submarines in the final months of the war. The 1972 mining of Haiphong harbor helped drive North Vietnam to the peace table, while Saddam Hussein's underwater booby traps threatened U.S. naval supremacy in Desert Storm. “In February 1991 the Navy lost command of the sea—the North Arabian Gulf—to more than a thousand mines that had been sown by Iraqi forces. Mines severely damaged two Navy warships, and commanders aborted an amphibious assault for fear of even more casualties,”says a U.S. Navy mine warfare history.
Without even thinking about the nine-dashed line claim, it is evident that China is a recidivist offender of UNCLOS. China has illegal straight baselines along its coast in violation of article 7 of UNCLOS, illegal claims to a territorial sea surrounding mid-ocean low-tide elevations in violation of article 13, and an illegal system of archipelagic baselines around the Paracel Islands in violation of article 47. Parenthetically, it is worth recalling that the Paracel Islands were seized from Vietnam by military invasion in 1974 – such action being in violation of article 2(4) the Charter of the United Nations.
An ADIZ is an airspace beyond a country’s sovereign territory within which the state requires the identification, location, and air traffic control of aircraft in the interests of national security. The mechanism is a legacy of the Cold War, having first been declared by the U.S. in 1950. More than 20 states now administer their own ADIZ.
A matter of international deliberation (or rather, contention), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has managed to capture the imagination of the entire globe, with the many speeches at the United Nations’ General Assembly (UNGA) session and a dedicated sideline summit bearing testimony to it. From the corridors of Kremlin to the alleys of the Senate, it can be said with staunch conviction that no country in the world today is unaware of the grotesque phenomenon that the ISIS is. 
Countless Syrian refugees died trying to cross that very same bay to reach the Greek island of Kos, the closest entry point to the European Union. Just a few months ago, a young Syrian boy tragically washed up on these shores, and with a single photo, catapulted the dire consequences of the Syrian conflict onto screens around the world. Little did I know that this same morning would be marked by the deadliest terrorist attack in Turkey’s history.
President Obama is about to add another dismal chapter to his foreign policy record. He may believe that his administration's “no war, no peace” response to Russia’s intervention in Syria will avoid subjecting the United States—or him—to the potential costs of making a choice between two unattractive alternatives. Unfortunately, this posture may well be the most dangerous approach of all for it conveys both weakness to U.S. allies and inflexibility to Moscow, thereby encouraging further assertiveness at America’s expense while allowing Syria’s civil war to rage and ISIL to gain ground.
LONDON — Fifty-one percent of Americans say they wouldn’t vote for a Muslim President. To be clear, that’s 51 percent too many. My fellow Muslims are naturally disturbed by the implications of this sentiment for everyday life, we rightly protest anti-Muslim remarks such as those made by presidential candidate Ben Carson, and we understandably expect solidarity from other communities in challenging such bigotry. But as 53 percent of Americans say that they wouldn’t vote for an atheist President, it must be accepted that no communities—not even my fellow Muslims— are as unpopular in America today as atheists. 
Commenting on the recent military Russian intervention in Syria, Jeremy Shapiro, a senior fellow in the Brookings Institution, said “the Russian intervention is so incredibly stupid that it took the US by surprise that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin would actually do it.” As to why the US would be happy to let Putin have his way in Syria, he quoted Napoleon, to say “When your enemy is making a mistake, do not interrupt him.”
Our Commission, empaneled in October 1998, was given a mandate to report to the next President on new realities, both threats and opportunities, affecting U.S. national security in the first quarter of the 21st century. It was the most comprehensive review of our national security since the passage of the National Security Act of 1947.
In 1968, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Scientific Advisory Committee found dangerous gaps in the communications network supporting the nation’s so-called Fleet Ballistic Missile boats, or FBMs. The FBM fleet included more than 40 submarines of five different classes all capable of carrying up to 16 Polaris nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, collectively known as the “41 for Freedom.”
Those who oppose the gift or sale of defensive weapons to Ukraine have long rested their argument on a simple supposition: that any level of help the West might muster will inevitably be exceeded by Russian military escalation. After all, they argue, Ukraine is more important to Russia than it is to the United States. Lost in this argument, though, is the clear fact that Ukraine is more important to Ukrainians than it is to Russians – including many Ukrainians who are Russian speakers and/or ethnically Russian.
Amidst Myanmar’s democratic birthing pains, the U.S. government has sought to provide succor to the country’s reform-minded leaders, while seeking to dispel criticism, which distracts from its overall strategy. As Myanmar prepares for nationwide elections, scheduled for November 8, U.S. officials see the country as a potential democratic partner in the region, hinting at further military cooperation down the road, and hoping to expand trade, education, and cultural ties, as well. Drawing Myanmar out of China’s sphere of influence was touted in Washington as a great diplomatic boon for the U.S. pivot to Asia.
The Russian military’s tactical and operational weaknesses became most blatantly apparent to the Kremlin during the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, when the U.S.-trained Georgian forces proved a much more agile and motivated adversary than expected.
But the meeting between Park Geun-hye and Barack Obama also inadvertently (but inevitably) drew attention to an increasingly fine balancing act being performed by South Korea: managing close U.S. ties in tandem with its growing relationship with an ascendant China.
One of the ring leaders of Boehner’s ouster, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, has been a vocal critic of existing NSA surveillance programs and has been successful two years in a row in securing House passage of surveillance-related warrantless search bans as appropriations riders. But the 2014 amendment was stripped out of the 2014 omnibus appropriations bill in a backdoor maneuver, orchestrated by Boehner and others in the House leadership who have consistently blocked efforts to rollback the programs exposed by Edward Snowden over two years ago. The same amendment passed again this year, with support from groups across the political spectrum. It might well have met the same fate again this year if not for the fall of Boehner and McCarthy.