Three ways Middle East fighting threatens US national security

Pentagon analysts are grappling with what this growing unrest in the Middle East means for US national security. Here are the top three ways the advance of the insurgent group the Islamic State in Iraq and violence in Gaza could endanger US national security.

3. The US could take its eye off the ball in other parts of the world

Ahn Young-joon/AP/File
A man watches a TV news program showing a file picture of a missile launch conducted by North Korea at Seoul Railway Station in Seoul on July 13.

As a result of the wars in Iraq and Syria, Iran “is finding itself as a new regional influencer because of all of the things that are going on,” Flynn said, which has, in turn, empowered a country adversarial to the US and committed to pursuing a nuclear program.

In the midst of the Middle East crisis, North Korea, too, continues to pursue nuclear weapons. The dictatorship launched another missile test on Wednesday. “North Korea has been in the process of firing off these missiles,” Flynn said, “and they are essentially desensitizing us because they want to know, or want us to know, that they have this capability.”

This leads to other dangerous problems, Adm. Samuel Locklear, head of US Pacific Command, told Pentagon reporters on Tuesday. “I think the long-term concern with North Korea is that every time they do something that the international community has told them not to do – particularly as it relates to missile technology or nuclear technology – you have to assume that it’s a step forward in technology, otherwise, they probably wouldn’t be doing it.”

“We have to continue to demand that they denuclearize and that they stop their missile program in the fashion they have it today,” he added. “Will they or not? I don’t know.”

3 of 4

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.