President Obama’s political objectives for Afghanistan are limited and feasible, says military historian Gian Gentile, but the military’s counterinsurgency strategy and "maximalist approach of nation…

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s recent West Point speech promoted the need for better strategic thinking by the U.S. military to supplant a current emphasis on counterinsurgency tactics and natio…

Col. Michael J. Meese, a member of Gen. David Petraeus’ team assessing progress in Iraq in advance of the general’s report to Congress next week, says violence in Iraq is down due to cooperation betw…

A U.S. official involved in training Iraqi forces says the U.S. military will likely have to adjust the way it assists Iraqi units as coalition forces withdraw.

The pope’s encyclical on the environment carries a profoundly religious message about care for the earth, wedded to a new call for activism, say religious scholars Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim.