ArcaMax

On the morning of March 16, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told Fox News the latest U.S. airstrikes on Yemen's Houthi terrorists is a campaign "about freedom of navigation and restoring deterrence. The minute the Houthis say, 'We'll stop shooting at your ships, we'll stop shooting at your (U.S. recon) drones,' this campaign will end. ...Read more

Late on March 11, the Trump administration announced Ukraine had agreed to a 30-day ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine War.

A joint American-Ukrainian statement said the U.S. will "immediately" resume full intelligence sharing and military-security aid to Ukraine. The Trump administration also said Ukraine had agreed to the strategic minerals ...Read more

During his remarkable March 4 address to Congress, President Donald Trump said this about his efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine War: "If you want to end wars, you have to talk to both sides."

That's the truth for would-be peacemakers in any era. For what it's worth, a 2002 peacemaking handbook sponsored by the Anglican Church of Kenya said as...Read more

The 21st century may well be the new age of privateers -- armed commercial sailors fighting pirates, terrorists and cartel criminals threatening offshore oil rigs.

Why hire private naval security? Because national navies and coast guards are stretched thin by lack of funding or threat of war. Or, in the case of the USA, vexed by short-sighted...Read more

The political hacks opposing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are laughable -- until you realize these hysterics present a serious threat to U.S. national security.

President Dwight Eisenhower's no longer with us, but we have his National Security Council 162/2 report, dated Oct. 30, 1953. Once top secret, it's now on the ...Read more

The island is named Diego Garcia, the biggest little island in the Indian Ocean's isolated Chagos Archipelago.

Never heard of it? Consult the map -- it's south of India and kinda sorta between Indonesia (Java) and East Africa (Tanzania).

Nowhere? Recall the real estate agent's lingo for valuable acreage: Location, Location, Location.

In our...Read more

The Great 21st-Century Creative Strategic Thinker (Donald Trump, aka, The Great Disruptor) wants to make rubbled Gaza the Riviera of The Middle East.

That's a fair translation of what President Donald Trump said in a Feb. 4 news conference he held with Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu at the other podium.

Fantasy?

If you understand the threat ...Read more

President Donald Trump's Jan. 27 strategic defense executive order includes this hard-nosed truth about current air and space weaponry and our enemies who possess them: "Over the past 40 years, rather than lessening, the threat from next-generation strategic weapons has become more intense and complex with the development by peer and near-peer...Read more

Post-inauguration President Donald Trump repeated his Jan. 7 declaration that the U.S. should buy Greenland and regain control of the Panama Canal.

My Jan. 8 column addressed Greenland's strategic value in the defense of North America and the Arctic -- which is precisely why Trump wants to make certain China and Russia don't control it.

I ...Read more

The Japanese called their intercontinental weapons "fusen bakudan" -- trans-Pacific balloon-delivered firebombs riding the trans-Pacific jet stream and targeting the U.S. West Coast in late 1944 and 1945.

That the "Fu-Go" offensive occurred and that it failed to do any significant damage are historical facts.

However, 2025's Los Angeles ...Read more

Donald Trump's media genius strikes again, this time calling national and international attention to two slowly developing but strategically treacherous threats to North America's military and economic security: 1) Russian and potentially Chinese military and commercial encroachment on the North American Arctic; and 2) an enemy physically and/...Read more

In January 2022, I wrote my first formal annual Strategic Challenges column -- a quick assessment of what I called "strategic challenges to the post-World War II international order." That column listed four Strategic Challenges (big problems). 2023's essay listed five. 2024's added a sixth.

About a month after I wrote the 2022 column, I ...Read more

The Great Drone Hysteria first afflicted New Jersey and New York -- with maybes from Maryland and Virginia. Then California and Nevada residents reported odd airborne night lights -- flickering, hovering, then disappearing.

Airplanes, helicopters and/or authorized drones flying in the night sky?

The WhatEverTheyAre -- these lights and noises...Read more