Posts by: Samuel Perlo-Freeman

Just over a year ago, I wrote an article, ‘Who is arming the Yemen war? (And is anyone planning to stop)’, surveying arms supplies to the conflict parties. This article updates the information with the latest available data, including the most recent edition of the SIPRI Arms Transfers Database, released on Monday 11 March.

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Last week, about a year and a half after the original launch of World Peace Foundation’s Compendium of Arms Trade Corruption, we published a new, revamped version of the Compendium (same address). We have added more by way of images, a resources page, a handy reference table of cases (increasingly necessary as […]

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There are plenty of absurdities one can point to and laugh at, and more one can deride with horror, about the Trump-Kim summit on June 12th. The extraordinary spectacle of Trump going from threatening “fire and fury” and boasting about the size of his nuclear button, to praising “Little Rocket Man” as “very talented”, and […]

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For the seventh consecutive year, SIPRI’s data on military expenditure worldwide shows ‘not much change’ in the world total – but many of the signs point to a renewed surge in years to come. Their fact sheet reviews some of the key trends in the data.

The world total for 2017 is estimated to be $1,739 […]

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The ongoing war in Yemen is the source of one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in the world today, with millions of Yemenis facing an imminent threat of famine, in addition to the 10,000 (as of January 2017) who have been directly killed by the fighting. All sides have committed major abuses of international humanitarian law, including indiscriminate attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure. The war seems to be at a stalemate, and is becoming even more complex with recent fighting in Aden between UAE-backed southern separatists, and formerly-allied Saudi-backed forces loyal to the internationally-recognized ‘government’ (if Yemen can be said to possess such a thing) of exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

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In part I of this article, I discussed some of the key themes and tendencies of President Trump’s foreign and security policies, and some key global issues where he has made a significant policy impact. In part II, I consider a number of the regional conflicts where Trump’s influence has made itself known.

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