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Within 10 years, "virtually every country on Earth will be able to build or acquire drones capable of firing missiles," Defense One reports. "Armed aerial drones will be used for targeted killings, terrorism and the government suppression of civil unrest." 

The best chance for future success would require us to put constraints on American behavior before other countries match our technology. That would create a short-term disadvantage, but it could pay huge long-term dividends.

Instead, the United States seems intent on developing weaponized drones that also operate autonomously. By the time an article can be written about how every country will have that technology available to them, it will be too late to stop it. 

Syria conflict: Russia launches fresh strikes

Russia said it had hit 12 IS positions in the past 24 hours, although this cannot be independently verified.

Hassan Haj Ali, of the Liwa Suqour al-Jabal group, told Reuters news agency that about 20 missiles had hit their training camp in Idlib province.

As the United States grapples with some of the most intractable problems in the Middle East, it has run into a buzz saw of criticism, not from traditional enemies but from two of its strongest allies.

And during a stop in Rome, Mr. Kerry sought to reassure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that the Obama administration would not drop its guard in the newly invigorated nuclear talks with Iran.

But the criticism by Saudi officials has been the most vehement, as they have waged a campaign against the United States’ policy in the Middle East in private comments to diplomats and reporters, as well as in public remarks by a former intelligence official.

“As a general proposition, when we’re in these offices, we have to be more sensitive and stay as far away from the line as possible when it comes to how we handle information, how we handle our own personal data,” Mr. Obama said. “And, you know, she made a mistake. She has acknowledged it.”

On Syria, Mr. Obama acknowledged the failure of his $500 million mission to “train and equip” as many as 5,000 fighters in the battle against the Islamic State. The president said he had long been skeptical that the program could create an effective “proxy army,” but tried it anyway in an effort to confront what he called a “difficult problem for the entire world community.”

Mr. Kroft repeatedly challenged the president on his policy in Syria and at one point complained that Mr. Obama was “filibustering” with long answers. Mr. Obama at times appeared exasperated by Mr. Kroft’s questions, once responding: “If you ask me big, open-ended questions, expect big, open-ended answers.”

The Russian investigative committee says an aviation armaments mechanic “voluntarily crossed the state border of the Russian Federation and expressed a desire to cooperate with the Russian investigation.”

“As now there is new evidence of the reliability of the words of the witness, as well as various reports concerning the doubts of certain media outlets about the real existence of this witness, we decided to disclose [the name of the witness],” Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said.

In his statement, Agapov reveals a Ukrainian Sukhoi Su-25 aircraft left the Ukrainian air base and “set out for a military task”.The aircraft returned without its ammunition on the day of the crash, on July 17, 2014.

Israeli warplanes struck three training facilities in the Gaza Strip early Thursday after rockets were fired into Israel from the coastal enclave, witnesses and security officials said

Security officials said several missiles were fired at a training facility that belongs to Hamas' armed wing, the Izzidin al-Qassam Brigade, and to Islamic Jihad, another militant group.

The airstrikes on Gaza last week and Thursday were the most intense since the end of a 50-day Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip last summer.

E-mail addthis_pub = 'nybooks'; addthis_logo = 'http://www.nybooks.com/images/logo-150.gif'; addthis_logo_background = 'ffffff'; addthis_logo_color = '666666'; addthis_brand = 'NYRB'; addthis_options = 'favorites, facebook, twitter, tumblr, reddit, digg, stumbleupon, delicious, google, more'; Share Print Comments (function() { var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0], rdb = document.createElement('script'); rdb.type = 'text/javascript'; rdb.async = true; rdb.src = document.location.protocol + '//www.readability.com/embed.js'; s.parentNode.insertBefore(rdb, s); })(); Young Israelis: A Turn to the Right? Eyal Press Uriel Sinai/Getty Images Children at the local school in the village of Ghajar, on Israeli-Lebanese border, which was recaptured during the 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, November 10, 2010 Shortly after the democratic uprising began in Egypt, a group of young Israelis led by freelance journalist Dimi Reider launched Kav Hutz (“Outside Line”), a Hebrew-language blog devoted to covering the events across the border. Unable to enter Egypt on short notice with his Israeli passport—a predicament all Israeli correspondents faced—Reider chronicled the insurrection by posting minute-by-minute updates culled from an array of online sources on the ground: Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Egyptian bloggers. The tone of Reider’s blog was reportorial, but hardly detached. “Good luck,” he wrote on the eve of the huge “Day of Departure” rally in Tahrir Square—a sentiment rarely voiced in Israel’s mainstream media, which stressed the danger of a takeover by the Muslim Brotherhood if the protesters prevailed. By the time Egyptians had succeeded in overthrowing Hosni Mubarak, Kav Hutz was getting up to 12,000 visitors a day and had been singled out in Haaretz for leaving the rest of the Israeli press “in the dust.” As the story suggests, Egypt’s uprising managed to inspire not only countless young Arabs but also some young Israelis. A contributor to +972, an Israel-based online magazine that features commentary and reporting by mostly young progressives—it is named after the area code shared by Israel and the Palestinian territories—Reider was deeply moved by the courage of the protesters in Cairo and dismayed by the patronizing reaction of many Israelis. “The line the establishment took was that it’s all very nice but they’re going to end up like Iran,” he recalls. “I didn’t take that line because I bothered to read stuff by Egyptians and it quickly became apparent that the Muslim Brotherhood was just one player. It also felt distasteful to me to judge the extraordinary risks Egyptians were taking solely by our profit—by how it would affect Israeli security and the policy of a government I don’t support anyway.” For observers troubled by Israel’s alarming recent shift to the right, the emergence of Internet-savvy liberal voices like Reider’s may seem heartening. But while such bloggers appear more capable of reaching a younger demographic than Haaretz—the venerable leftist newspaper whose aging readership seems likely to shrink in the years to come—it’s not clear how many of their contemporaries are listening to them. One reason is apathy. Increasingly cynical about politics and the prospects of peace, not a few young Israelis I’ve met in recent years have told me they’ve stopped following the news. When they go online, it’s to chat with friends, not to check out sites like +972. There are also growing numbers of young Israelis who simply don’t share Reider’s views. Against the 12,000 readers of Kav Hutz were countless others who didn’t question the alarmist tone of their country’s mass-circulation tabloids when the revolt in Egypt began, as NPR discovered when it aired a segment on what Israeli youth thought of the uprising. “For us it is better to have Mubarak,” one young Israeli said. “I kind of feel sad for President Mubarak,” said another. “For the last two or three years, we’ve been seeing a very consistent trend of younger Israelis becoming increasingly right-wing,” Dahlia Scheindlin, a public opinion analyst who also contributes to +972, told me. Last year, Scheindlin carried out a survey on behalf of the Kulanana Shared Citizenship Initiative that showed eroding support for democratic values among Israeli youth, at least insofar as the rights of non-Jews go. One question in the survey asked whether there should be “Equal access to state resources, equal opportunities [for] all citizens.” Among Jewish respondents between the ages of 16-29, a mere 43 percent agreed.

In October, a poll conducted by New Wave Research asked, “If Palestinians and Israelis reach an agreement… and the Israeli government brings the agreement to a referendum, would you vote for or against?” Among voters over 55, 61 percent—nearly two out of three—said they would support a deal. Among those younger than 35, it was the opposite: only one in three (37 percent) would vote in favor of an agreement.

One reason tolerance may be less widespread among young Israelis is that they rarely interact with Palestinians or Arab-Israelis. “You don’t see Palestinians on the streets of Israel,”

Secret official documents about the searching of three trucks belonging to Turkey's national intelligence service (MIT) have been leaked online, once again corroborating suspicions that Ankara has not been playing a clean game in Syria.

According to the authenticated documents, the trucks were found to be transporting missiles, mortars and anti-aircraft ammunition.

When President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was prime minister, he had said, “You cannot stop the MIT truck. You cannot search it. You don’t have the authority. These trucks were taking humanitarian assistance to Turkmens.”

The International Criminal Court has begun considering whether to investigate alleged war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Israel and the US have strongly criticised the Palestinians' move.

Israel has accused the Palestinians themselves of committing war crimes, including by firing missiles into civilian areas during the 50-day conflict between Israel and militants in Gaza last year.

Goldberg: A few years ago, we thought that J Street, the Jewish left, was going to drive the agenda. But now people to the right of AIPAC (the mainstream pro-Israel lobby)  are doing much of the driving. How did that happen? Oren: There’s a very simple answer to that. J Street’s power derived from the fact that it is an extension of the Obama Administration. The Obama Administration invited J street into the room with other Jewish organizations and sent high-level officials to speak at their conventions. But the reservoir of support for J Street is not particularly large. The American Jewish community is five million people. What percentage of that number is actually involved in Jewish affairs? What percentage of those are involved with Israel, and what percentage of people involved with Israel wake up in the morning saying, ‘I care about Israel but I’m pained by Israel’s policies.’ That’s a very low percentage. The right is growing much more rapidly, even as a percentage within the Jewish community. There’s a greater percentage that is more religious, more conservative. That disparity is going to grow in favor of the right in coming years.

Goldberg: But on policy, what do you do? Oren: We have to understand that people who aren’t anti-Israel have criticisms of specific Israeli policies. We have to show greater flexibility on the peace issue. Israel is willing to go a serious distance on peace. We always have to show that we’re ready to sit at the table if the Palestinians are willing to act accordingly. That’s something we can do, we can make that case. Our problem has been building outside the settlement blocs and the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem. Those areas were recognized by the Bush-Sharon letter of 2004 as remaining within Israel’s boundaries in the event of a final-status negotiation. We should keep to that in a final-status-compatible way.  If the Palestinians don’t want to do this, then here’s what we’re going to do on our own, to make the situation better and lay the groundwork for a future peace. That’s what we have to do, and I think that this logic would be compelling to most American decision-makers.

Oren: Foreign affairs is viewed as the poorer, younger brother of security affairs in Israel. We don’t have long-term strategic thinking about foreign affairs. We should take it more seriously here. Israel has to undergo a fundamental change – we have to realize we are not alone in the world Our relationships, not just with the United States, but with the Far East, with Europe, with Africa, are vital for us. We haven’t looked in strategic ways about how to defend ourselves against BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions.) I understand why this happens – there is the old Zionist notion that it is not important what the non-Jews think, that it's only important what the Jews do. But we can’t function in the world with this attitude.

The United States has moved to ease jitters among conservative South Koreans by agreeing to delay the return of wartime control of the South Korean military to Seoul until its forces are better prepared to deter North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats or fight it in a war.

The American military had been scheduled to vacate 653 acres of prime real estate in Yongsan by 2016, relocating most of its personnel there to a new base being built south of Seoul. If the main command post stays on, it will significantly reduce the size of land to be vacated, complicating the city’s plan to build a badly needed municipal park in Yongsan.

Rather than setting a new target date for the transfer, the allies will now “focus on South Korea achieving critical defensive capabilities against an intensifying North Korean threat,” according to statements from both sides. The allies will negotiate details of the new transfer plan by next fall, they said.

“Since World War II, very little that could be called genuinely humanitarian has resulted from American military intervention—not in Korea, certainly not in Vietnam, and not in Panama, Afghanistan, or the two Iraq wars and Libya.”

Since World War II, very little that could be called genuinely humanitarian has resulted from American military intervention—not in Korea, certainly not in Vietnam, and not in Panama, Afghanistan, or the two Iraq wars and Libya. The only wars of rescue that might have been conceived on moral grounds—Grenada and Kosovo—were so badly tainted by U.S. deception that the liberal interventionists don’t even talk about them anymore. The American medical students in Grenada were in no real danger after the communist coup, and the Serbs weren’t committing “genocide” against the Albanians in Kosovo.

’ve been consistent in my criticism of the president since even before he was first elected. But I don’t think that he’s ignorant, or even a fantasist like Reagan. Mr. Obama surely knows that America cannot defeat a religious ideology with missiles or soldiers, any more than we could defeat the Vietcong and Ho Chi Minh’s North Vietnamese troops with massive aerial bombing and more than 500,000 ground troops.

South China Sea: Beijing 'not frightened to fight a war' after US move

Twenty-four hours after Washington challenged Beijing’s territorial claims in the region by deploying a warship to waters around the disputed Spratly archipelago, the notoriously nationalistic Global Times accused the Pentagon of provoking China.

The People’s Liberation Army Daily, China’s leading military newspaper, used a front-page editorial to accuse the US of sowing chaos in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

North Korea 'expands plutonium production', says US

North Korea could soon have enough plutonium for nuclear weapons after restarting one of its reactors, US intelligence chief James Clapper says.

It comes days after the North launched a long-range rocket, which critics say is a test of banned missile technology.

American aircraft on Saturday struck a training camp in Somalia belonging to the Islamist militant group the Shabab, the Pentagon said, killing about 150 fighters who were assembled for what American officials believe was a graduation ceremony and prelude to an imminent attack against American troops and their allies in East Africa.

Defense officials said the strike was carried out by drones and American aircraft, which dropped a number of precision-guided bombs and missiles on the field where the fighters were gathered.

Pentagon officials said they did not believe there were any civilian casualties, but there was no independent way to verify the claim. They said they delayed announcing the strike until they could assess the outcome

For a second day, North Korea appeared to be flexing its military muscles in the wake of a United Nations vote meant to cripple the nation's nuclear program.

"nuclear warheads need to be ready for use at any time," the North Korean state news agency KCNA reported Friday.

The news agency also confirmed the test-fire of a new multiple launch rocket system

Vladimir Putin’s New York Times op-ed, annotated and fact-checked

It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.

Putin here is implicitly defending Russia's right to use its veto to block the United Nations from any action on Syria, including simple press releases condemning the use of chemical weapons.