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I would insert the word "allegedly" between "Trump" and "sent". There have been so many cases of edited or outright forged documents being circulated that I think it would be wise to treat any leaks like this with suspicion until some sort of official conformation is issued. Letters at this...

I'd agree that Putin is a realist; he has the very valuable gift for a politician, he sees things the way they are, not how he would like them to be. That fits in with your comment about Russia being a declining power and how Putin wants to reverse it. I think he does employ some strategic...

A long time ago (after ODS but before OIF) the Israelis sent an IDF Army unit, allegedly one of their best to a US Army training range, essentially the US Army equivalent to Red Flag. There's a regiment there as the aggressor force which was responsible for working with the Israelis. I was...

I don't think we did. Japan was an unusual case; most of the fundamental civil institutions remained largely unchanged (the Emperor for example remained in place). What actually happened was that a lot of additional and deleterious changes/additions that accumulated in the 1920s went out the...

This is covered in detail in the last parts of The Fifty Years War by Dr. Norman Friedman. The impact of the growing generations of precision-guided munitions was exactly as Lordsfire described it. The Soviet leadership realized that the rate these weapons were proliferating undermined the...

My point is that the reasons why something is sold to the public are often not the reason why the decisions were taken. In fact, they very rarely are and it often takes a lot of digging to find what was really happening. OIF was a good example of that and a lot of the necessary records are...

The situation was much more complicated than that. WMDs were the most easily "presented " rationale for removing Saddam Hussein but they were very far from the only one. That's a fairly common situation; a situation that needs handling for a complex variety of reasons but they would all need...

It's not a fact, it's an opinion, one that has much to be said for it but remains an opinion. Looking at the situation in detail, the original mistake goes back to 1991 and ODS. We didn't finish the job then and we paid for not doing so for a decade afterwards. We should have thoroughly...

The only additional information I have so far is that the Russians brokered the deal between the Kurds and the Official Syrian Government at a Russian Air Base.

It is a mark of the supreme humanity of the Russian regime that the occupants of their retirement resorts are fit young men with a penchant for wearing blue-and-white striped shirts and who unconsciously walk in step. :):):) I honestly don't know; I'm just reporting news as it comes. I'd say...

Some of the reports coming out of the area suggest that the Kurds have conditionally surrendered to the Assad government and that Assad's government is moving troops to engage the invading Turks - with Russian support. I wonder of the Russians are supplying the Syrian Air Force with two-seat...

WELL SAID!!!! My cut on what is going on right now is that PDJT has a long-term strategy of replacing the use of military power with employing economic and diplomatic muscle to achieve the same ends. In fact, he's doing what the Chinese have been doing very successfully for a decade or more...

That's a very neat summary of the situation and one that comes as a great relief after the much heat/little light tenor of the recent posts. The one point I would disagree on comes in point Three where you say I would say that a carefully-calculated level of doubt and uncertainty is valuable...

Well, there was always the theory in NATO Headquarters that the reason what NATO existed was not to defend Western Europe from the Russians as to convince the Russians that the rest of Europe was keeping Germany from invading Russia - again. There's enough truth in that to make one think . . . .

He built a hotel in Istanbul. If he really gets angry with them, he'll build a golf course there as well.

There's an old saying. "Nations do not have permanent friends or enemies. They have permanent interests." Sadly, this is one of those cases. Now, there was a window of opportunity that existed a few years back when we could have done what you suggest and put us in the position to do what you...

Once again, well said sir.

It's worth remembering that however awful Erdogan is (and that is seriously awful), the fighting wouldn't be with him, it would be with the Turkish Army who would be fighting for Turkey. Turkish soldiers have a long-standing reputation for staunch courage under fire that would make taking them...

Well said. I think that's probably the most succinct summary of the situation I've read.