President Obama said Wednesday that his administration had too often failed the families of American hostages held overseas by groups like the Islamic State, announcing a policy overhaul that will publicly state for the first time that the United States government can communicate and negotiate with hostage takers.
Security researchers say a proposed set of export rules meant to restrict the sale of surveillance software to repressive regimes are so broadly written that they could criminalize some research and restrict legitimate tools that professionals need to make software and computer systems more secure.
Every spring, Jordan marks two national holidays that put the iconography of the state on proud display. May 25 is Independence Day, which fetes the 1946 formal (if not actual) termination of British colonial control and the establishment of an independent state.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is getting the buffer zone he’s campaigned for along the Syrian border. But instead of the rebels he favors, it’s controlled by Kurdish fighters Turkey brands as terrorists.
The Pentagon’s new thick book of instructions for waging war the legal way says that terrorists also can be journalists. The description appears in a 1,176-page, richly footnoted “Department of Defense Law of War Manual” that tells commanders the right and wrong way to kill the enemy.
From ISIS and Iran, to China and Russia, which threat should America focus on? In formulating its defense policy, the United States has to face four separate security challenges simultaneously: China, Russia, Iran, and Sunni jihadism. This is very different from the Cold War era when…
President Barack Obama’s decision to increase the number of American troops on the ground in Iraq, and to base them in Sunni-dominated Anbar province, has sparked wide discussion. In the United States, the public debate has turned to the lessons of Vietnam, where incremental deployments led to…
Syrian Kurds take a town 30 miles from the ISIS capital, but their goal of their own nation complicate the fight Ethnic Kurds—who on Tuesday scored their second and third significant victories over ISIS in the space of eight days—are by far the most effective force fighting ISIS in both…
An American drone strike last week killed a midlevel operative with the Islamic State who had been a conduit for the militant group’s outreach to extremists in North Africa, Defense Department officials said on Monday.
A United Nations Commission of Inquiry on last summer’s war in the Gaza Strip — taking pains to be evenhanded — found that both Israel and Palestinian militants were responsible for violations of international law that could amount to war crimes. But each side interpreted the commission’s long-awaited report according to its…