– New York Review of Books – Ahmed Rashid on the current situation in Pakistan.

– Real Clear World – Robert D. Kaplan states that great powers are rarely appreciated in their own time, for the benevolent order they spread goes unacknowledged by those who benefit most from what they provide. Global civilization — and the system of legal norms that arises from it — survives to a significant extent because the American military remains robust and widely deployed. And that, in turn, is not a situation that is necessarily permanent, or one that can ever be taken for granted.

– Global Guerrillas – John Robb’s interesting take on Russia’s grand strategy – Russia is an energy company with all the trappings of nation-state…Everything Russia does militarily is aimed at expanding it’s energy interests.

– New York Post – Ralph Peters analyses Putin’s long game.

– New York Review of Books – Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdoğan and the Syrian rebels. A very interesting look at who is really behind the chemical weapon attacks in Syria…

– StratFor – Robert D. Kaplan writes that a noteworthy geopolitical shift is emerging that the media have yet to report on. In future years, a sizable portion of the US Navy’s forces in the Middle East could be spending less time in the Arabian Gulf and more time in the adjacent Indian Ocean. Manama in Bahrain will continue to be the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet. But American warships and their crews, as well as the myriad supply and repair services for them, could be increasingly focused on the brand new Omani port of Duqm, located outside the Arabian Gulf on the Arabian Sea, which, in turn, forms the western half of the Indian Ocean.

– Washington Post – The West has made NATO’s military alliance the heart of its response to Russia’s power grab in Ukraine. But we may be fighting the wrong battle: The weapons Russian President Vladimir Putin has used in Crimea and eastern Ukraine look more like paramilitary “covert action” than conventional military force. Putin, the former KGB officer, may in fact be taking a page out of the United States’ playbook during the Ronald Reagan presidency, when the Soviet empire began to unravel thanks to a relentless U.S. covert-action campaign. Rather than confront Moscow head-on, Reagan nibbled at the edges, by supporting movements that destabilized Russian power in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Angola and, finally, Poland and eastern Europe. It was a clever American strategy back then, pushing a wounded Soviet Union and opportunistically exploiting local grievances wherever possible. And it’s an equally clever Russian approach now, offering maximum gain at minimum potential cost.

A brilliant analysis by David Ignatius.

– Stratfor – Robert D. Kaplan on the geopolitics of energy.

– New York Times Magazine – Our supposed ally had a special desk devoted to managing Osama bin Laden. How can the U.S. fight extremism when we’re unable to confront it where it really lives?

– Gulf News – Robert D. Kaplan writes that the parallels of history have obsessed the foreign policy elite for years, and are building towards a fever pitch: Is the Asia of 2014 the new Europe of 1914?

– The Atlantic – Robert D. Kaplan writes that Empire can ensure stability and protect minorities better than any other form of order. The case for a tempered American imperialism.

– Stratfor – Robert D. Kaplan on the situation in Crimea.

– Stratfor – Robert D. Kaplan says that nationalism is in the air.

– StratFor – Robert D. Kaplan surveys the current situation in Asia.

– Washington Post – An excellent overview of the history of Crimea.

– Stratfor – Robert D. Kaplan on why anarchy is increasing in the world.

– Center for International Maritime Security – The Suez Canal is one of the most militarized zones in the world due to its strategic importance, reflected in the Suez Crisis in 1956 and its closure from 1967–1975 during the Arab-Israeli wars. The passage through the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb is considered to be the second most important waterway for global oil trade after the Strait of Hormuz. A blockade of the Suez Canal could have disastrous effects on the world economy.

– Globe and Mail – While all eight countries that border the Arctic, including Canada, are making claims – and countries as far away as China are expressing an interest – Russia is the technological and military superpower of the far north. And after two decades of post-Soviet neglect, the region is once again a Kremlin priority.

– Politico – Robert D. Kaplan writes that as the events of the past week demonstrate, the Middle East has still not found a solution to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Melting away before our eyes is the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, in which the British and French carved out spheres of influence in the Levant, leading to the creation of Syria and Iraq. A terrorist Sunnistan has now emerged between the Lebanese city of Tripoli and the Iraqi cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, while a messy child’s finger-painting of different tribalized sovereignties defines Sunni and Shia areas of control between the eastern edge of the Mediterranean and the Iranian plateau. This happens even as a sprawling and fractious Kurdistan sinks tenuous roots atop the corpses of Baathist regimes. But Middle Eastern chaos is but prologue to the drama sweeping much of the temperate zone of Afro-Asia all the way to China. Indeed, so much else is going on beyond the Levant that the media overlooks: not necessarily violent, but increasingly and intensely interrelated. Understanding it all requires not a knowledge of Washington policy alternatives, but of classical geography.

– Economist – A century on, there are uncomfortable parallels with the era that led to the outbreak of the first world war.

– Forbes – Robert D. Kaplan writes that the Eastern Question strikes at the heart of present-day debates over humanitarian intervention in the Balkans, Libya and Syria. Simply put, the Eastern Question was about how to respond to the slow-motion demise of the Ottoman Empire, whose territory included not only much of the Near East but much of Southeastern Europe besides.

– London Review of Books – Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack. In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports, culminating in a formal Operations Order – a planning document that precedes a ground invasion – citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time, but it’s not just an environmental concern. It poses a real threat to our homeland security.

– Forbes – Robert D. Kaplan says that North Korea would have to be crazy to give up its nuclear capability. Why? Because of one word: Libya. American behavior toward Libya over the past decade may have convinced North Korea’s ruling elite never to negotiate away its nukes.

– Geopolitics / Syria – Augustine’ World – Robert D. Kaplan on what What Late Antiquity says about the 21st century and the Syrian crisis.