Word: wars
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...Russia. The truth is that Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands store nuclear bombs on their air-force bases and have planes capable of delivering them. There are an estimated 200 B-61 thermonuclear-gravity bombs scattered across these four countries. Under a NATO agreement struck during the Cold War, the bombs, which are owned by the U.S., can be transferred to the control of a host nation's air force in time of conflict. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dutch, Belgian, Italian and German pilots remain ready to engage in nuclear war. (See pictures...
While burden-sharing was tolerated during the Cold War, it has become an irritant at NPT review conferences, where some countries have used it as an example of the U.S.'s failure to take serious steps toward nuclear disarmament - part of its obligation under the treaty. Last year a U.S. Air Force report found that the European bases storing the weapons were failing to meet security requirements to safeguard the weapons. These revelations cemented the unpopularity of the agreement. Belgium's Parliament had already unanimously requested that NATO withdraw the weapons, while a 2006 poll found that almost...
...promises of outreach to adversaries and consultation and coordination with allies certainly cleared away some of the negative atmospherics left by the Bush Administration. However, his substantial policy positions have proven to be remarkably similar to those of the second-term, chastened-by-reality George W. Bush. Indeed, anti-war Democrats groaned when the President, in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, referred to "evil in the world" and hailed America's willingness to use force abroad over the past six decades as an essential component of global security. The neoconservatives cheered. (See a report card on Obama's first...
...reality is far more complex than that snapshot, of course, but a survey of Obama's handling of the main strategic challenges appears to affirm the old Cold War dictum that domestic political partisanship ends at the water's edge...
...Afghanistan: Having proclaimed it "the right war" on the campaign trail, Obama initially sought to lower the benchmark of success to avoid nation-building or expansive counterinsurgency and instead focus narrowly on preventing al-Qaeda from restoring its presence there. But the commander he appointed to take charge of the war, General Stanley McChrystal, warned the White House last summer that the U.S. side was losing in Afghanistan and requested tens of thousands more troops to stop the Taliban's advance. After months of internal debate, Obama opted to send reinforcements, with the hopelessly optimistic caveat that they would begin...