Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez is a man consumed by an obsession. That obsession is the United States. The United States wants to assassinate him; steal his oil; invade his country, etc. Hugo Chavez wakes up in the morning obsessing about the Empire, shorthand for the U.S. and beds down at night with the same thoughts. Most certainly he suffers nightmares about the horrors of the U.S. from dusk to dawn. The U.S. Southern Command! The Fourth Fleet! The Colombian Defense Agreement! Even the sinister designs of the hospital ship, USNS …
Heritage constitutional scholar Matthew Spalding has quite a few things to say about Americans’ love of liberty in his book, “We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future.” Some of the passages stand out all the more this week as the nation again saluted its defenders on Veterans Day, which this year fell six days after the Fort Hood shootings. “An understanding of our deepest principles, as well as an appreciation of our history, tells us why this nation is a noble achievement, and worth defending,” writes …
Pakistan is a crucial state in U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan. Unfortunately, militant groups within Pakistan are currently using the state as an “operational safe haven where [they] can plan local, regional and international terrorist attacks,” hindering the U.S.’s endeavors. Al-Qaeda isn’t doing all the work on its own though. Yes, “al-Qaeda aims to destabilize the Pakistani government divert U.S. attention from the fight in Afghanistan and undermine Islamabad’s alliance with the United States,” but there also is mounting evidence that these groups receive assistance and protection from Pakistan’s intelligence …
If President Obama is intent on listening to military commanders, as he promised during the campaign, why is he now ignoring the military’s own requirement for additional F-22s? Why would the President want to compromise America’s half-century dominance in the air that has led to one powerful result: There has not been a single soldier or Marine who lost his life in combat due to a threat from the air in over 56 years. As legacy aircraft retire at ever-increasing rates, however, maintaining that superiority is not guaranteed. Sufficient numbers …
As we have discussed before, President Obama’s fiscal year 2010 defense budget suffers from serious conceptual flaws concerning the nature of future warfare and the force structure the American military needs to fight and win. But there is another related issue that must merit the serious consideration of Congress as it prepares to make lasting decisions about the future: the stability and health of America’s defense industrial base. Since World War II, the United States has benefited from the skills of a robust defense manufacturing workforce. America’s Air Force and …
This Memorial Day, Heritage honors those who serve in the United States Armed Forces, their families, and all military retirees and veterans. From the battlefields of the Civil War–after which the first Memorial Day was observed–to the Forest of Argonne, the beaches of Normandy, the islands of the Pacific, the Chosin Reservoir, the jungles of Vietnam, the deserts of Iraq, the mountains of Afghanistan, and all the other fields, territories and theaters American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen have fought bravely, we remember those fallen men and women …
There’s not been a lot of good news for, or about, the British armed forces recently. When the Economist asked, in its Jan. 29, 2009 issue, if the Army was losing its way, the story’s lead summed up their answer: “The British army suffers from lack of soldiers, lack of money and lack of conviction.” And that was putting an optimistic spin on things: in reality, the situation was a good deal worse than the Economist allowed. There’s no reason to be happy about the recession. But you know what …
Maintaining and modernizing our armed forces doesn’t just protect America, it fulfills the Constitution’s mandate to “provide for the common defense.” Yet the defense budget appears to be one place where President Barack Obama and Congress are looking to offset massive new spending elsewhere – “stimulating” or otherwise. “The Pentagon faces a $100 billion annual shortfall in its procurement and modernization accounts,” warns Kim Holmes, Heritage’s vice president for defense and foreign policy studies. “The question facing Mr. Obama is not whether to trim a few expensive and unnecessary weapons …
MOSCOW — The drastic military reform plans articulated by Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov in mid-October are meeting with a sweeping opposition in the armed forces. The planned cuts among officers more than twofold — from 315,000 to 150,000 — are a matter of grave concern among mid-ranking officers that are going to be the reform’s main victims. Unrest in the officer corps is translating into open protest here and there. What measures is the Russian military leadership taking to ease the situation? They are typical of the Soviet-era approach to …
