Peter Seljan

A six-year archive of classified military documents made public on 25th of July offers an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal. The secret documents, released on the Internet by an organization called WikiLeaks, are a daily diary of an American-led force often starved for resources and attention as it struggled against an insurgency that grew larger, better coordinated and more deadly each year. WikiLeaks.org says its goal in disclosing secret documents is to reveal “unethical behavior” by governments and corporations.

China is the world’s next superpower. Should the West celebrate – or be afraid? Accessible and straightforward, China: Friend or Foe? is the first popular exploration of one of the biggest issues of the next hundred years. China’s economy is growing phenomenally, with half the world’s cranes currently on its soil. Its 1.3 billion people have around 300 million mobile phones, and a purchasing power second only to the US. Yet, especially in rural areas, there is widespread poverty.

This book provides us with some much needed criteria for distinguishing between terrorists and freedom fighters and an explanation of the uses of terrorism as a political, social, religious and criminal weapon. Wilkinson also links the use of terrorism to a wider repertoire of struggle. He proposes a variety of possible counter-measures and valuable principles carefully distilled from the recent past to help design a response that is compatible with democratic principles, the rule of law and respect for human rights. This study examines both the new terror networks and those that have been around for decades.

In the wake of the failed Christmas Day airplane bombing and the killing a few days later of seven CIA operatives in Afghanistan, Washington is, as it was after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, obsessed with "dots" - and the inability to connect them. "The U.S. government had sufficient information to have uncovered this plot and potentially disrupt the Christmas Day attack, but our intelligence community failed to connect those dots," the president said. But for all the talk, two key dots have yet to be connected: the Northwest Airlines Flight 253 attacker, and the CIA informant who turned assassin.

Nicholas D. Kristof's column is about the tragedy of Congo, world capital of murder, pillage and rape. He would love to see Congo rise on the global agenda and get the attention it deserves. Maybe if there would be an earthquake, or a tsunami. It might finally get the attention it needs. The civil war being waged in Congo is the most lethal conflict since World War II and has claimed at least 30 times as many lives as the Haiti earthquake. Yet no humanitarian crisis generates so little attention per million corpses, or such a pathetic international response.

After September 11, Americans agonized over why nineteen men hated the United States enough to kill three thousand civilians in an unprovoked assault. Analysts have offered a wide variety of explanations for the attack, but the one voice missing is that of the terrorists themselves. Mary Habeck's penetrating book is the first to present the inner logic of al-Qaida and like-minded extremist groups by which they justify September 11 and other terrorist attacks.

Obama was inaugurated as the first president to take office in the Age of Terrorism. He inherited two struggles — one with Al Qaeda, and another that deeply divides his own country. The first has proved to be complicated and daunting. The second makes the first look easy.
Obama volt az első elnök, aki a terrorizmus korában foglalta el hivatalát. Két háborút is örökölt, az egyiket az al-Kaida ellen, és egy másikat, amely saját országát is mélyen megosztja. Az első igen összetettnek és ijesztőnek bizonyult. A második fényében azonban már könnyűnek tűnik.

This book briefly discusses the history of neoconservatism, with particular focus on its major tenets and political implications. Fukuyama finds fault with many aspects of Bush's foreign policies, notably the inadequate planning for post-conflict reconstruction in Iraq, the conflation of the threat of radical Islamism with Iraq and the administration's non-cooperation with international organizations like the United Nations during a deluge of anti-Americanism. At the conclusion of the book, the author proposes a new order in international politics, stating the world needs a change in its actual institutions.

Talk to Russian veterans of Afghanistan and it's hard not to think that they're rooting for the U.S. to lose. For these men, seeing NATO succeed at a job they botched would deepen the humiliation of defeat. Easier to affirm that if the Soviets couldn't win there, no one can.
Afganisztánt megjárt orosz veteránokkal beszélve nehéz elhinni, hogy nem az USA vereségéért szurkolnak. Látni, hogy a NATO-nak sikerülhet az, amit ők korábban elfuseráltak, csak mélyítené megalázottságukat. Könnyebb kijelenteni, hogy ha a szovjeteknek nem ment, akkor senkinek sem fog.

This book has created a storm of controversy by bringing out into the open America's relationship with the Israel lobby: a loose coalition of individuals and organizations that actively work to shape foreign policy in a way that is profoundly damaging both the United States and Israel itself. The Jewish state is an important ally for the US, yet Mearsheimer and Walt show that, bye encouraging unconditional US financial and diplomatic support for Israel and promoting the use of its power to remake the Middle East, the lobby has jeopardized America's and israel's long-term security and put other countries at risk.

“A Different Kind of War” is the first installment of the Army’s official history of the war in Afghanistan, written by a team of seven historians and based on open source material. The New York Times obtained a copy of the manuscript which is still under review by current and former military officials.
A The New York Times 2009. december 31-én közzé tett egy amerikai történészek által írt - "Egy másfajta háború című" - dokumentumot, mely szerint a Bush-adminisztráció és a Pentagon hibát vétett, amikor nem biztosította a szükséges erőforrásokat Afganisztán stabilizálásához, még a háború elején.

Insurgency may be the most prevalent type of armed conflict since the creation of organized political communities. The persistence of many current insurgencies and the likely emergence of unforseen ones make Bard O'Neill's Insurgency & terrorism invaluable in today's turbulent political climate. This book is the product of a lifetime of research and widely respected fieldwork by the director of studies of insurgency and revolution at the U.S. National War College.

Every three weeks or so, when one Israeli leader or another making a statement about the threat of Iran's nuclear program, nervous hedge fund managers and securities research analysts trying to find out if this is "it." Are the Israelis on the verge of attacking Iran's nuclear facilities?
Amikor egyik-másik izraeli vezető nyilatkozik, hogy mekkora fenyegetést jelent Irán atomprogramja, ideges hedge fund managerek és kötvénypiaci elemzők próbálják kideríteni, hogy komoly-e a fenyegetés. Izrael tényleg közel áll-e ahhoz, hogy csapást mérjen Irán nukleáris létesítményeire?

McNamara is worried. He knows how close we’ve come. He helped the Kennedy administration avert nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today, he believes the U.S. must no longer rely on nuclear weapons as a foreign-policy tool. To do so is immoral, illegal, and dangerous.
McNamara aggódik. Ő tudja, hogy milyen közel jutottunk. A kubai rakétaválság idején tanácsaival segítette a Kennedy-adminisztrációt a nukleáris katasztrófa elkerülésében. Ma már úgy gondolja, hogy az USA nem bízhatja rá magát többé a nukleáris fegyverek külpolitikai eszközként való alkalmazására.

The Four Faces of Nuclear Terrorism is a 2004 book by Charles D. Ferguson and William C. Potter which assesses the motivations and capabilities of terrorist organizations to acquire and use nuclear weapons, to fabricate and detonate crude nuclear explosives, to strike nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities, and to build and employ radiological weapons or "dirty bombs." The authors maintain that there is a greater likelihood today than at any time in the past three decades that nuclear weapons will actually be used.