Word out of Washington is that the Trump Administration has started to restructure the State Department and particularly the Under-Secretariat for Civilian Security, Democracy & Human Rights.  “J” (as it is called around Foggy Bottom) encompasses a number of Bureaus and Offices, including the Bureau of Counter-Terrorism and Countering Violent Extremism (CT/CVE), the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM), and the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP).…   continue »

In a transcript of a Pentagon Press Briefing, released this week by Airwars, Central Command’s Deputy Director for Operations made a striking admission about U.S. investigations into civilian casualties in Syria:

Q:  Okay.  So, you didn’t talk to anybody on the ground and nobody visited the site. 

As the Trump administration enters its sixth month, fears that it would unilaterally rip up its predecessor’s landmark Iran nuclear agreement are beginning to fade.

But the chances for confrontation between the United States and the Islamic Republic remain worrisomely high as the two sides test each other’s defenses and proxies in regional conflicts.…   continue »

This story is being cross-posted with Foreign Policy.

Inside the White House, opponents of Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, President Donald Trump’s second national security adviser, want him out. This week, they’ve made their campaign against him public, leaking to reporters details about the rocky relationship he has with his boss and trying to paint him as someone hell-bent on overseas nation-building projects that are doomed to fail.…   continue »

The Massive Ordnance Air Blast Weapon (MOAB, known informally as the “Mother of All Bombs” and formally as the Guided Bomb Unit, or GBU, 43/B) has attracted a great deal of attention since it was dropped on ISIS fighters in eastern Afghanistan on 13 April. …   continue »

President Donald Trump has been in office for 83 days, and almost everywhere you look, the US military is escalating its operations. US warships are steaming toward North Korea, airstrikes against al-Qaeda in Yemen have ramped up, and, in the biggest show of force so far, the Trump administration bombed a Syrian airfield last week.…   continue »

When I graduated from West Point in 2009, the war in Afghanistan was one of the hottest topics. President Barack Obama’s campaign and young presidency had been defined, in large part, by the debate about what should be done in Afghanistan.…   continue »

Today, the UK Supreme Court gave judgment (full text) in the joined appeals of Al Waheed v Ministry of Defence and Serdar Mohammed v Ministry of Defence (in which I represented the First Interveners, with Paul Luckhurst). It is the latest in the post-Al Skeini line of cases in which English courts, and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) have grappled with the application of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to extra-territorial military operations carried out pursuant to UN Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs).…   continue »

The election of Donald Trump has triggered an anxious conversation about how President Obama can entrench some of his accomplishments before January 21, 2017.  Importantly, given the Trump campaign’s embrace of waterboarding and “worse”, President Obama would do well to ensure that he has fully dismantled the Bush Administration’s post-9/11 detention and interrogation system.…   continue »

The Pentagon will soon have permission from Congress to make condolence payments to the families of civilians killed or injured by American airstrikes in Syria, as well as Iraq and Afghanistan. The new funding is buried deep in the annual defense policy bill, which is quickly on its way to becoming law.…   continue »