Army Maj. Gen. Todd Wasmund’s first Africa-focused assignment came a decade ago at the Pentagon, where the aftermath of the Benghazi terrorist attack loomed over a military mission in flux.
The 2012 assault on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya began on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by al-Qaida and ended in the deaths of four people, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya and two former Navy SEALs.
Over the past few days, footage has circulated across Azerbaijani social media appearing to show increased movement of Azerbaijani troops around Nagorno-Karabakh and along the border with Armenia.
Military shipments from Israel to Azerbaijan appear to have increased simultaneously, raising fears among Armenians of another impending attack from Azerbaijan.
There’s no denying that PiS’ faux nationalist project has utterly failed. Patriotic Poles won’t be distracted by vague foreign policy victories that have yet to even happen and might never transpire, nor will they let PiS’ rabid Russophobia influence them into forgiving it for their country’s forced Ukrainization.
A U.S.-Iran understanding may have calmed tensions, but this was followed by Kurdish-Arab fighting that did precisely the opposite.
The summer was hot in northeastern Syria, as has been the transition to autumn. The season began with increased tensions between U.S. forces, which maintain a presence in the northeast, on the one hand, and Russia, Iran, and the Syrian regime on the other. According to U.S. officials and leaked documents from the Pentagon, since late 2022 Moscow, Tehran, and Damascus have been cooperating to increase pressure on U.S. forces and drive them out of the northeast. Russia has harassed U.S. and allied aircraft, and has also damaged U.S. drones. Iran-linked groups, in turn, have attacked American forces and carried out escalatory moves such as transporting anti-aircraft missiles into Deir al-Zor Governorate.
Ukraine has finally started ramming Russia’s first line of defenses near Zaporizhzhia, piercing through the outer ring of the Surovikin Defensive Line, a complex set of fortified positions named after the dismissed commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces (VDV), General Sergei Surovikin.
Pope Francis made headlines last week when he described the Russian Empire as “enlightened” and invoked the names of two expansionist Russian czars as examples of Russia’s “great culture.” In impromptu remarks, Francis said to a group of Russian Catholics, “You are the heirs of the great Russia: the great Russia of saints, of kings, the great Russia of Peter the Great, of Catherine II, of that great, enlightened Russian empire, of great culture and great humanity.”
Salami tactics offer an attractive option for expansionist powers in the shadow of major war — using repetitive, limited faits accomplis to expand influence while avoiding potential escalation. Despite its long history of colloquial use, however, the term has never received a thorough conceptualization. Modeling a state’s decision to initiate salami tactics reveals five conditions that increase their appeal to policymakers: when retaliation would be costly, reversal is unlikely, faits accomplis are easy, fears of future predation can be undercut, and further gains are possible. Two case studies 200 years apart illustrate how these conditions operate: the U.S. annexation of Florida and Russia’s interventions in Georgia and Ukraine. Deterring salami tactics poses unique strategic challenges to current U.S. foreign policy, which should work to ensure that the key escalation decision remains with potential aggressors rather than being foisted onto defenders via faits accomplis.
Salami tactics offer an attractive option for expansionist powers in the shadow of major war — using repetitive, limited faits accomplis to expand influence while avoiding potential escalation. Despite its long history of colloquial use, however, the term has never received a thorough conceptualization. Modeling a state’s decision to initiate salami tactics reveals five conditions that increase their appeal to policymakers: when retaliation would be costly, reversal is unlikely, faits accomplis are easy, fears of future predation can be undercut, and further gains are possible. Two case studies 200 years apart illustrate how these conditions operate: the U.S. annexation of Florida and Russia’s interventions in Georgia and Ukraine. Deterring salami tactics poses unique strategic challenges to current U.S. foreign policy, which should work to ensure that the key escalation decision remains with potential aggressors rather than being foisted onto defenders via faits accomplis.
For over 30 years, policymakers and scholars have taken for granted that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait simply to seize its oil. That narrative misleadingly suggests that the Iraqi invasion happened to coincide with, but was unrelated to, the dawn of the post-Cold War era. In fact, Saddam’s decision-making was inextricable from his interpretation of the end of the Cold War. In late 1989 and early 1990, he posited that Soviet retrenchment portended a five-year period of American unipolarity, after which Japan and Germany would restore a global balance of power. Until that new equilibrium emerged, Saddam genuinely feared that the United States and Israel would use their unchecked power to destabilize his regime in pursuit of their hegemony over the Middle East. In the summer of 1990, Kuwait’s oil overproduction persuaded the Iraqi leadership that the Kuwaiti royal family was complicit in the U.S.-led plot that they believed was already in full swing.
Key points
Due to an overly broad definition of threat, the United States currently commits far too many military resources to counterterrorism, especially in Africa.
The United States is pursuing military action against at least thirteen terrorist groups in Africa, but only one of those groups has the “global reach” to be a threat to Americans. Consequently, the U.S. military is fighting a slew of counterinsurgency—not counterterrorism—wars in Africa today, a strategy that borders on nation-building.