The strategic importance of Montenegro is inversely proportional to its size. With it, NATO will have full control of the Adriatic Sea, finish the encirclement of Serbia, and be emboldened to pursue a more aggressive stance towards Russia. Last week, the government of Montenegro signed a protocol on joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. [...]

Three-quarters of federal agencies’ IT budgets go on operation and maintenance rather than upgrades, and some legacy technologies, such as floppy disks used by the Pentagon for nuclear missiles, are over 50 years old. The overview of how the US government continues to use archaic technologies in some vital areas was given in a report released on Wednesday by the Government Accountability Offi [...]

Germany is pushing NATO to holding a meeting with Russia ahead of the upcoming summit of the alliance in Warsaw. It comes as NATO continues to ignore Russia’s concerns over its expansion and military build-up in Europe. “There was broad agreement yesterday that NATO should convene a new meeting of the NATO-Russia Council before our next summit in July," [...]

Less than a week after Russia marked its annual Victory Day commemoration of the end of the Second World War, NATO troops began planned military exercises in Estonia all the way up to Russia’s border. It begs the question – are these people actually mad? [...]

Russia will restore a missile attack warning station near Crimea’s Sevastopol to counter increasing NATO activity in the Black Sea, Izvestia daily reported, quoting a source in the Russian defense industry. The source told reporters that the installation will be based on the Soviet-era Dnepr station (NATO code name Hen House), but that it would be thoroughly modernized. [...]

India's defense minister expressed that India is not interested in acquiring US F-16 fighter aircraft despite aggressive lobbying by Lockheed Martin. In what can be seen as a sharp denial to the US, India has dismissed a proposal made by Lockheed Martin Corp to build F-16 fighter jets in India. [...]

The German newspaper Bild has raised questions as to how Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s children amassed their vast wealth, including one fortune worth tens of millions, when their father only earns some €50 thousand a year as head of state. [...]

There is a kind of drip-drip strategy of the Western media to make a correlation in people’s minds between atrocities and the Syrian government, Dan Glazebrook, political writer and journalist, told RT. An air strike on a refugee camp in the Syrian town of Sarmada, which is close to the Turkish border, has left at least 30 people dead and dozens more injured. [...]

Paleo-conservative commentator Pat Buchanan slams NATO hawks for working to expand the alliance's presence all along Russia's borders, while calling Russia out as the aggressive power. Instead of touting Putin's belligerence, Buchanan suggests, observers should think about what it would be like to walk a mile in the Russian president's shoes. On Friday, Buchanan recalls, "a Russian Su-27 did a [...]

Lee Hamilton has always flinched at implicating important Americans and “allies” in crimes of state – citing the need for near perfect evidence – but that has let complicit parties go unpunished, says 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser. Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton wrote an opinion piece last week in USAToday, trying to “temper” feelings surrounding the release of “the 28 pages.” [...]

Two new divisions will be set up in the Western Military District while one division will be set up in the Southern Military District. Russia will set up two new divisions in its Western Military District and one division in its Southern Military District to counteract NATO buildup near its borders, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Wednesday. [...]

Given what has happened to the Arab World with US attention, the rest of Asia must shudder at the prospect of what could happen to it with President Obama’s new doctrine: "Pivot to Asia." A recent Obama interview, conducted by noted American-Israeli journalist Jeffrey Goldberg entitled, "The Obama Doctrine: The US President Talks Through His Hardest Decisions About America’s Role in the Wo [...]

"Unacceptable." That's the reaction from 27-year old Hamdullah to the Pentagon's announcement Friday that the U.S. military's deadly airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan did not amount to a war crime. His uncle was among the 42 people killed in the October 3, 2015 strike. "This was a deliberate bombardment by the American forces, and we are not satisfied that t [...]

Despite NATO's plans to expand, the very existence of the alliance is in doubt because even its members are up in arms against it, a US-based defense expert said in an article which was published by The Week magazine. Despite NATO repeatedly speaking of plans for enlargement, the very existence of the alliance seems irrelevant given that its members are unwilling to support it, [...]

Up to 44 percent of our federal income tax dollars go to current or past military spending. Covert drone wars in Yemen and Somalia. Violent displacement from Afghanistan. Fresh troop deployments to Iraq. These might not be the first things that come to mind [...]

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has accused the West of breaking promises made after the fall of the Iron Curtain, saying that NATO's expansion into Eastern Europe violated commitments made during the negotiations over German reunification. Newly discovered documents from Western archives [...]

The Catholic Church, which over the centuries has blessed many dreadful wars, is shifting to an anti-war position favored by Pope Francis and more in line with Jesus’s teachings, writes ex-CIA official Graham E. Fuller. Pope Francis is on a roll. He has already roiled the waters of Western thinking on economics and society by touching on the dangers of Western capitalism drifting into sociall [...]

The Obama administration protects its “credibility” by refusing to budge on its claims about the 2013 Syria-sarin case or the 2014 plane shoot-down in eastern Ukraine even as the evidence shifts, writes Robert Parry. What surprised me most about the Iraq War wasn’t how wrong the expectation of happy Iraqis showering American troops with flowers was or even how badly the war would turn out [...]

The United States has found itself bogged down in the Middle Eastern conflicts; two questions then arise: why Washington can't win and since it has not won, why it can't get out of the Mideast quagmire, American historian Andrew J. Bacevich asks.   [...]

The former chief judge that presided over Saddam Hussein’s trial told RT in an exclusive interview how the tribunal, which was dependent on the US, lacking in legitimacy, and overshadowed by the killing of lawyers, sentenced the Iraqi strongman to death. In November of 2006, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging three years after a US-led “coalition of the willing” invaded Iraq [...]

Let’s face it: in times of war, the Constitution tends to take a beating. With the safety or survival of the nation said to be at risk, the basic law of the land -- otherwise considered sacrosanct -- becomes nonbinding, subject to being waived at the whim of government authorities who are impatient, scared, panicky, or just plain pissed off. [...]

NATO and Russia will meet for the first time since the military bloc suspended all cooperation with Moscow in 2014. Ukraine, Afghanistan, and military relations will be among the topics discussed at the meeting set to be held within the next two weeks. “Following consultations with Russia, we have agreed to hold a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council at Ambassadorial level,” the bloc said in [...]