A year ago, it would have been tempting to write off President Trump’s “bull in a china shop” diplomacy as the product of inexperience and impulsiveness. However, after eighteen months in the White House tenure, Trump is looking like a man with a method, a leader acting according to a consistent ideology — if not…
President Trump will present the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor, to Master Chief Special Warfare Operator Britt Slabinski for embodying the U.S. military’s code of “leave no man behind.” The “Battle of Robert’s Ridge” claimed the lives of seven U.S. elite troops and was one of the bloodiest engagements for Special Forces up to that point in the post-9/11 Global War On Terror.
The great challenge for intelligence agencies in the age of Trump was dramatically highlighted this month when a senior South Korean delegation arrived at the White House carrying a secret bombshell message. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un wanted a face-to-face summit with President Donald Trump to discuss Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. Waiting to debrief…
When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrives in Ankara on Thursday, he will find Turkey unrecognizable as the ostensibly Muslim democracy and close ally that U.S. officials once held up as a model for the Islamic world. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is poised to complete his long transformation of Turkey from a raucous — if imperfect democracy — to an autocracy, one ruled by caprice and fear.
This is the second of James Kitfield’s in-depth analysis of the continuing challenges posed by America’s so-called “forever wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the height of its powers several years ago, ISIS was attracting an estimated one thousand new foreign fighters each month. While U.S. officials always believed that the U.S.-led coalition would take…
This is one of two pieces by our contributor James Kitfield, who’s won more Gerald Ford Defense Reporting awards than anyone else (3), on the challenges and mistakes America has made in grappling with the complex threat of global terrorism. As James puts it in his summary sentence: U.S. counterterrorism forces continue to learn and adapt…
When he stepped before the cameras last night to deliver his first prime time address to the nation, Donald Trump became the third president to reluctantly take ownership of the war in Afghanistan. After campaigning on ending costly entanglements for a war-weary country, the president admitted he was hemmed in by some hard realities. “A…
Breaking Defense contributor James Kitfield spoke with Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during Dunford’s swing through Japan, Singapore, Australia, Wake Island, and Hawaii. BD readers know that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis promised Sen. John McCain yesterday that America would get a new Afghan strategy by mid-July. In this second part of Kitfield’s interview,…
Breaking Defense contributor James Kitfield spoke with Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during Dunford’s swing through Japan, Singapore, Australia, Wake Island, and Hawaii. Dunford testifies before Congress this week on the administration’s defense budget request. Most important, the chairman tells us he will make the case that the Budget Control Act’s caps “have to be…
They’re surrounded, targeted by constant bombardments and slowly strangled of supplies and reinforcements for months so fighters for Daesh (aka ISIS) might reasonably have abandoned Mosul and tried to slink off into the night. That’s what happened last June in the battle to recapture Fallujah, when Daesh fighters were relatively quickly routed, and hundreds were killed by U.S.…
Who are Trump’s generals? This week, James Kitfield has already told us about James Mattis and Michael Flynn, both men shaped by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now we come to John Kelly, whose time in Latin America, ironically, led him to similar conclusions about America’s enemies. As chief of US Southern Command, General…
Who are Trump’s generals? Earlier this week, James Kitfield showed us the common crucible that shaped as a group and then profiled James Mattis, the prospective Secretary of Defense. Today, Kitfield tackles Trump’s most controversial general, intelligence officer turned political firebrand Michael Flynn. “Know your enemy and know yourself, and you will not be defeated in…
Who are Trump’s generals? Yesterday, James Kitfield told us what these retired soldiers have in common as products of our post-9/11 wars. Now we’ll go deep into the formative experiences and geopolitical worldview of each man, starting today with the prospective Secretary of Defense, Gen. Jim Mattis. He’s been nicknamed both “Mad Dog” and “Warrior…
