Last Friday, January 19th, the US Department of Defense published a summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS). The full document, which is classified, was written in conjunction with the National Security Strategy Report of last December. This is a result of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act which…
This past Thursday the State Department announced the cancellation of hundreds of millions of dollars in security aid for Pakistan. The point of contention is Pakistan’s continued alleged hesitance to cut ties to terrorist organizations such as The Taliban and The Haqqani network. Pakistan has been accused of providing a safe…
President Trump revealed the first National Security Strategy Report of his presidency on Monday, further displaying his ideological departure from previous presidents. Trump’s report takes a more grim perspective than past reports, painting a picture of a world overrun with jihadist terrorists, international crime organizations…
On December 6th, President Trump announced that the US formally recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and will begin the process of moving its embassy, which is currently based in Tel Aviv. The announcement was identified as a “new approach” for finding Trump’s promised “ultimate deal” for ending the Israeli-Palestinian…
On November 21st, President Trump announced that he had held a phone call with Putin lasting over an hour. The call reportedly focused on the Syrian civil war, the global fight against terrorism, the North Korea threat, and the Iran nuclear deal. Coming only a day after Putin was photographed embracing embattled Syrian President…
On November 20th, Trump returned North Korea to the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Originally added in 1988 after the bombing of South Korean flight 858 the year before, President Bush chose to remove them in 2008 after a U.S. report recognized their avoidance of state terrorism since the attack two decades earlier. This doesn’t…
President Trump returned this Tuesday night from a 12 day trip Asia, his third major international trip after visits to the Middle East and Europe earlier this year. Trump spoke to leaders in Japan, China, South Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines, with a focus on reining in the North Korean threat and forming “free and reciprocal” trade…
During the last election and a plethora of time after it, many congressional lawmakers and experts have hypothesized that the Russians had some form of influence during our national election. A group of senators introduced a bill that would mandate online political advisers to provide information about their aids. This information…
Last Thursday, the Trump administration officially announced plans to pull out of UNESCO — the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. The United States originally left the organization in protest in 1984, citing a pro-Soviet Union bias, only to return in 2002. The most recent departure was announced by the…
The Iran Nuclear Deal, which has been repeatedly maligned by President Trump as an “embarrassment” and “the worst deal ever” may be left in an uncertain position this Sunday, as Trump plans to decertify the agreement. The agreement, formed in 2015 with Iran, China, Russia, France, the UK, and Germany, agreed to remove…
The rebuilding of U.S.-Cuban relations experienced a strange hitch on Tuesday, as the Trump administration expelled 15 Cuban diplomats following an alleged attack on the U.S. embassy in Havana. The nature of the attack remains a mystery, as the only evidence is a shared set of inexplicable symptoms experienced by 21 U.S. diplomats…
In his first speech to the U.N. General Assembly, President Trump extolled the importance of state sovereignty and denounced the perceived enemies of global democracy on the world stage. Following the path of isolationism and nationalism that he described in his inauguration speech, Trump promised that the United States…