PRESS ROOM

The share of Pentagon spending hidden from public view is rising, as are defense contractors’ revenues from it. The U.S. Defense Department’s overall budget request increased nearly 5 percent from 2019 to 2020, but classified spending rose 6 percent, according to the consulting firm Avascent. It accounts for about $76 billion, or almost 11%, of the $718 billion requested for the current fiscal year. Military officials say they can’t talk about classified aircraft, space, and missile projects, lest they cede advantage to America’s enemies. (Critics, including House Armed Services Committee Chair Adam Smith, D-Wash., say excessive hidden spending hinders oversight, leads to waste, and undermines public trust.)

When President Trump announced his decision to withdraw the U.S. troops from Syria who had been acting as a buffer between America's bitterly opposed Kurdish and Turkish allies, he didn't cite any change in the security landscape, any new strategic calculations, or any grand diplomatic bargain to ease tensions on this volatile fault line. Instead, he simply noted that he was fulfilling a longtime campaign promise to end the perennial deployment of U.S. troops to far-flung parts of the world.

So it turns out the biggest item on Washington’s tasking list isn’t rewarding arrogant education apparatchiks or enriching dastardly “defense” contractors. It’s serving the army of the entitled — via wildly popular programs.

A new report by a Washington-based non-profit organisation outlines what it describes as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) "vast and immensely influential" lobbying and public relations campaign in the United States.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in did something very unusual in early October for a leader who once deemed the Korean peace process among the highest priorities of his administration: He promoted the very fighter jets that North Korea says undermine diplomacy.

It’s too late to undo the considerable damage already inflicted by President Trump’s abrupt removal of US troops from northeastern Syria and the subsequent Turkish invasion, but if the US has any hope of preventing further bloodshed the best option is to cut off the US arms supplies and spare parts that sustain the Turkish military.

CGTN's Frances Kuo sits down with Temi Ibirogba, a program and research associate for the Africa Program at the Center for International Policy, to discuss the African migrant crisis.

The indictment of Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman, David Correia and Andrey Kukushkin for allegedly breaking campaign finance laws — including running a scheme to funnel foreign money into American elections — was extraordinary, given the accused’s ties to the president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and to President Trump himself. But in another sense, their actions weren’t at all novel: They were merely the latest exploitation of a political system that has always been susceptible to foreign interference.

More than 90 of U.S. President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans in the House were poised Wednesday to introduce sanctions against Turkey aimed at ending its assault against Kurdish fighters and civilians in Syria — an assault Turkey began after Trump announced he was withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria.

Earlier, US National Security Advisor John Bolton accused Moscow and Beijing of “deliberately and aggressively” attempting to extend their “predatory” influence over the African continent, and said that all US efforts were aimed at “further[ing] US priorities in the region.”

A little over a year ago, a grip of Democratic senators penned a letter to the Department of Justice with a simple request: review whether or not Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal Nosferatu-cum-lawyer, was in compliance with the DOJ’s Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The eighty-year-old statute, long dormant and nearly forgotten until Trump barreled into the presidency, had by this time tripped up Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chair, as well as Mike Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser. Giuliani, per the letter, looked like he was trying to make it a hat-trick of foreign subterfuge, juggling a number of foreign clients and interests, lining his pockets and upending American interests as he went.

The US Congress will press ahead with a broad package of sanctions on Turkey, including cutting military support, after measures announced by the Trump administration were dismissed as ineffective, Senate officials have confirmed.