The content below comes from the newsletter This Week in War Powers News, provided by the Committee for Responsible Foreign Policy.

US Drove Over $1.9 Trillion in Global Military Spending in 2019

A new analysis on Monday showing that the world’s military spending surpassed $1.9 trillion last year, once again led by the United States under President Donald Trump, provoked demands that governments across the globe prioritize peace and the health of people as the coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage the planet. READ NOW.
 

Afghanistan: War in the Time of Coronavirus

“It is a warzone, so coronavirus does not come here,” an Afghan solider, who serves in Ghazni, joked. “When it comes, we will hit it by cannon.”
You cannot shoot the coronavirus, target it with explosives, or dispatch a suicide bomber to hit it. Yet even while the invisible enemy, COVID-19, is spreading fast in Afghanistan, so is the war. READ MORE.
 

What is the US Navy doing in the Persian Gulf?

American alliances and security commitments tend to live on long after the world has changed. Many of our far flung military bases are legacies of a Cold War that ended decades ago. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Nato alliance became all but obsolete, so it eagerly embraced conflicts in the Balkans, Libya, Syria and other locations far from the Central European theater it was originally designed to protect. However, none of these holdover security commitments seem as absurd as US military operations in the Persian Gulf during a COVID-19 oil market. READ MORE.