The Atlantic has published an excellent new article by Robert D. Kaplan, What Rumsfeld Got Right, summarizing Donald Rumsfeld’s career, including a well-balanced argument of the rights and wrongs of his strategic thinking from the 1990s U.S. intervention on the Balkans to present day Iraq. As usual, Kaplan is thought provoking, smart and beautifully versed – a good antidote [...]
Filed under: News/Current Affairs, Uncertainty | 1 Comment »
It’s not all about energy resources when it comes to Russian interests in its former Central Asian republics. As this RFE/RL article reports, the Russians are deploying further troops to their air base at Kant outside the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek. Reportedly housing some 400 personnel currently, the base has a U.S. “rival”, the 1000 [...]
Filed under: Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan, Russia | Leave a Comment »
With George W. Bush paying his last tribute to European allies, and the potential for a strategic inflection point with the choice for a new American president, here are some thoughts for more benign supporters of the current administration (i.e. myself) on what I consider the President’s most enduring legacy of his mandate, namely The [...]
Filed under: Ethics, Patriot Act, intelligence failure, intelligence reform | 13 Comments »
Today, 16 June, is Bloomsday. It is the day on which events take place in James Joyce’s novel Ulysses and which has become a commemorative occasion for Joyce’s afficionados celebrating the Irish genius.
For me, personally, it also commemorates 7 years since I first came to Zürich, the city where James Joyce rests in peace under the beautiful [...]
Filed under: Literature | 2 Comments »
