Defense

United States Tightens Sanctions Against Russian Financial, Defense, and Energy Sectors

Temperatures Plunge In Moscow

On September 12, 2014, the United States issued another round of targeted sanctions against the Russian financial, defense, and energy sectors. Today’s measures were a combination of new measures and modifications of prior measures issued pursuant to Executive Order 13662 (EO 13662), including:

– Financial Services Sector – Directive 1 has been modified to further restrict prohibited “new debt” with a maturity exceeding 30 days.

– Defense Sector – New Directive 3 prohibits “new debt” with a maturity exceeding 30 days issued by listed defense companies.

Congress Meets As Government Shutdown Looms

With a little less than a year to go until the 2014 mid-term elections, Congress has a number of big decisions looming. Here is a quick look into where we are today, and what we see in front of us over the next year. Post-Shutdown Status On October 16th, the Federal government shutdown came to… Keep reading →

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New Navy vessel has a 78 megawatt power plant – more power than any existing US non-nuclear ship. WASHINGTON: To boldly go in a revolutionary ship where no one has commanded before. Why the clumsy Star Trek reference? Because the Navy’s newest, stealthy, most radical ship, the USS Zumwalt, will be commanded by the fabulously named… Keep reading →

USS Fletcher Helps Maintain U.N. Blockade on Iraq

Once again, the US Navy is moving more warships to the Persian Gulf. This time, though, we’re not sending an extra aircraft carrier or another task force. This is arguably a de-escalation of possible tensions with Iran. In a nutshell, the Navy is replacing big ships with small ones. The three new ships – Tempest,… Keep reading →


Energy security is a key element of national security. The missing piece of America’s energy security policy, in turn, is the glaring absence of a strategy to coordinate and secure the enormous energy resources of the Western hemisphere. Today, America is over-dependent on the increasingly volatile Middle East, China is increasingly aggressive in its quest for energy sources worldwide, and Russia is exploiting its energy reserves not just economically but as an instrument of global power. Clearly it’s important to reduce demand through various domestic means and to increase supply from alternative sources. But for now and even the mid-term future, it is more realistic to generating energy now and in the mid-term via an effective national energy policy which relies on the Western Hemisphere.