Behind the Death Star

This is how the BBC did the death star news.

Being a Star Wars fan I of course had a good laugh at the witty response of the White House to the Death Star petition. BTW, Death Star is a bit vulgar, as true fans know. The actual name is DS-1 Orbital Battle Station...

To talk about something more serious but still Star Wars-sounding, I´d like to bring up A2/AD. Yes, it does sound like an uncle of a certain droid (R2-D2) but it is something very real that is driving military strategy, not least the strategy of the United States. What A2/AD means is anti-access/area denial weapons (capabilities) and I just read a great piece about their impact, in Foreign Affairs: "Strategy in a Time of Austerity". In the same issue (Nov/Dec 2012) there is an extremely topical article about US China strategy: "The Problem With the Pivot". The latter is a most interesting background to yesterday´s bad news from the East China Sea.