The Pentagon has announced that as many as 8,500 troops have been put on standby to be deployed in Europe as a counter to the threat of the Russian military buildup on Ukraine’s eastern border.
Russian soldiers take part in military drills in the Rostov region of Russia, near Ukraine’s border, on Dec. 10, 2021.
Associated Press
Russia appears inching closer to invading Ukraine, despite warnings from the US and other Western powers. Here are a few key ideas to help better understand what led to this looming crisis.
U.S. Army soldiers walk to their C-17 cargo plane for departure on May 11, 2013, at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.
Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images
If the United States expects to sustain its global influence, it will have to navigate increasing international and domestic pressure against its foreign military presence.
French officer Alfred Dreyfus spent five years as a prisoner on Devil’s Island, off the coast of South America.
Roger Viollet Collection via Getty Images
Samhain will be particularly poignant this year for Wiccans who are members or veterans of the US military as they process the end of the 20-year war in Afghanistan.
A scholar of African American studies explores how the former secretary of state, who died at 84, dealt with what WEB DuBois described as the ‘double-consciousness’ of being Black and American.
A Taliban fighter, wearing U.S. clothing and carrying U.S. weapons, looks through a captured night-vision device.
Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Following the completion of the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, Neta Crawford, the co-director of the Costs of War Project, reflects on 7,268 days of American involvement in the conflict.
The U.S. military is handing the keys over to Afghan forces.
Joe Marek/U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
For much of the country’s history, Americans won their wars decisively, with the complete surrender of enemy forces and the home front’s perception of total victory.
Part of a portable nuclear power plant arrives at Camp Century in 1960.
Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
Nearly 60 years after a radiation-leaking reactor was removed from a US Army base on the Greenland ice sheet, the military is exploring portable nuclear reactors again.
Haitian police patrol outside the presidential residence in Port-au-Prince on July 7, 2021, after President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated.
Valerie Baeriswyl/AFP via Getty Images
Expert background on Haiti, where President Jovenel Moïse’s July 7 killing is the latest in the Caribbean nation’s long list of struggles.
Militiamen join Afghan security forces during a gathering in Kabul last month. Together, they are trying to stem the tide of the latest Taliban gains.
Rahmat Gul/AP
In Afghanistan, it does not pay to be on the losing side. There is a danger that a spreading perception the Taliban are poised to take over could trigger a wave of government and army defections.
Draftees are sworn into the U.S. Army in 1940.
AP Photo
Questions include whether women should be compelled to register, as men are, and whether the draft and draft registration should exist at all.
When local law enforcement agencies get military surplus equipment, like armored vehicles, local sheriffs are more likely to get reelected.
AP Photo/David Goldman
As President Joe Biden said on announcing the US troop withdrawal by September, ‘our reasons for remaining in Afghanistan have become increasingly unclear’.
Long time there: U.S. troops maneuver around the central part of the Baghran river valley as they search for remnants of Taliban and al-Qaida forces on Feb. 24, 2003.
Aaron Favila/Pool/AP Photo
The Afghanistan War now has an end date: 9/11/21. Experts explain the history of US involvement in Afghanistan, the peace process to end that conflict and how the country’s women are uniquely at risk.
Mexican-American deported veterans at a Memorial Day ceremony held annually on the bridge that connects Texas to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, May 28, 2018.
Herika Martinz/ AFP via Getty Images
At least 92 US military veterans were deported between 2013 and 2018. These deportees are not currently included in Biden’s effort to reunite families as part of his new immigration reform plan.