Steven Pinker, a psychology professor at Harvard, and Joshua S. Goldstein, professor emeritus of international relations at American University, argue that war is in long-term decline around the world, both in frequency and in deadliness (“War Really Is Going Out of Style,” New York Times, 17 December 2011): “War” is a fuzzy category, shading from […]
Tag Archives: Defence policy
War and peace in the Middle East
The United States has declared its involvement in the war in Iraq over (Thom Shanker & Michael S. Schmidt, “U.S. War in Iraq Declared Officially Over,” New York Times, 15 December 2011): The United States military officially declared an end to its mission in Iraq on Thursday even as violence continues to plague the country […]
Senior DND officials hid costs
The renovation of the former Nortel campus for the Department of National Defence has become the subject of controversy following the discovery that senior officials hid the price of the project from not only the public, but also the media and parliamentarians (David Pugliese, “Defence officials hid cost of Nortel campus renos,” Ottawa Citizen, 28 […]
Study says military spending not effective for job creation
Dollar-for-dollar, money spent on domestic spending priorities such as healthcare, clean energy, and education creates a greater number of jobs than defence spending, according to a study done by the University of Massachusetts’ Political Economy Research Institute. Researchers Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier arrived at this conclusion by projecting the number of direct, indirect, and […]
Pentagon's F-35 director says production should be slowed
The U.S. Department of Defense’s top officer on the F-35, Adm. David Zenlet, has recommended that deliveries of the aircraft be delayed because of the discovery of cracks and “hot spots” during fatigue testing and analysis (Gloria Galloway, “Tories face fresh hurdle with U.S. call to slow F-35 jet production,” Globe and Mail, 2 December […]
Aviation Week: Are there alternatives to F-35?
Further to this post, doubts about the future of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter have now grown to the point where even aviation industry insiders like Aviation Week are asking whether there are alternatives to the troubled aircraft (David A. Fulghum & Bill Sweetman, Are There Alternatives To The F-35 Program? Aviation Week, 29 November […]