Since March, Russia and the West have had close to 40 close military encounters, three of which were extremely serious, a new report from the European Leadership Network (ELN) reveals. 

The three high-risk incidents could easily have led to casualties or a military confrontation between the West and Russia. These incidents include the kidnapping of an Estonian intelligence officer along the Russian border, the hunt for a purported Russian submarine in Swedish territorial waters, and the near collision of a passenger jet and a Russian reconnaissance plane — which wasn't transmitting its location — over Denmark.  

The ELN classifies an additional 11 of the 40 close military encounters since March as "serious incidents with escalation risk." These incidents go beyond the now-routine cases of military confrontation and include unusually aggressive or provocative maneuvers.

Examples of this class of incidents include an unarmed Russian fighter jet making 12 close passes at an American warship in the Black Sea and an armed Russian aircraft carrying out a simulated assault on a heavily populated Danish island. 

The remaining 25 military encounters fall into a classification of "near-routine incidents." These incidents follow a previously established pattern of fighter aircraft shadowing the other side's reconnaissance flights, the scrambling of jets for interception, and brief violations of national air spaces. 

These incidents do not differ too wildly from previous established patterns of military encounters between Russia and European or NATO states and are unlikely to lead to major armed escalation. But the sheer volume of incidents has still led to a sharp increase in tensions. 

The following map, created by the ELN, shows the near-global scope of the confrontations between Russia, its neighbors, and the NATO countries. Although the majority of the incidents have taken place around northern Europe, incidents have occurred in places as disparate as Guam, the Black Sea, and northern Canada. 

A red pin denotes a high risk encounter, a yellow pin is a serious incident, a blue pin is a routine incident, and green is miscellaneous. 

You can read the full ELN report here»

SEE ALSO: A Russian military plane nearly collided with a Swedish passenger jet last March

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Jake Wood had been out of the Marine Corps for only three months when one of the worst natural disasters in history convinced him that the skills he had honed in the military were still badly needed, even if he was no longer in uniform.

"I saw the Haiti earthquake and sprung to action," the Iowa-born ex-scout sniper, who deployed to Iraq in 2007 and Afghanistan in 2008, told Business Insider.

Within four days of the Jan. 12, 2010, disaster, Wood, who held an undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin and was thinking about entering graduate school, had arrived in Port-au-Prince with a small group of first responders organized through social media and connections from the military and college. A team of ex-Marine and Special Forces medics quickly ballooned into scores of former military personnel, eager to lend their abilities to the relief effort.

"People were drawn by seeing others take action," Wood recalled. After three weeks, his team had more than 60 volunteers from the US.

And nearly five years later, Team Rubicon — the organization that has grown out of those initial, somewhat impulsive efforts in Haiti — has 28 full-time employees on top of more than 20,000 volunteers through 10 geographic regions. Wood is the group's CEO. Team Rubicon had added more than 300 volunteers in the week before Business Insider spoke with him.

The volunteers are all US military veterans, eager to dedicate their skills toward responding to humanitarian crises around the world.

Wood says veterans exit the military with much of the training and experience needed to be effective emergency responders. "People who were communications technicians have the ability to set up computer networks in tough environments," Wood says. "People that were combat engineers know how to build heavy equipment. Down the road, every function of the military has something that can be translated to a post-disaster scenario."

Team Rubicon has been sent to respond to crises that become major news stories. Wood says the group's efforts organizing nearly 3,000 volunteers after Hurricane Sandy, the superstorm that devastated the coastal neighborhoods of New York City, was his group's largest mobilization and earned plaudits from the National Guard, FEMA, and even former President Bill Clinton.

But it has also sent volunteers into situations that are far off the front pages: floods in Iowa, mudslides in California, or tornadoes in the Midwest. Team Rubicon is now large enough that it can send volunteers nearly anywhere in the US, and even beyond.

That is partly because Team Rubicon has an innate appeal to ex-military personnel. It allows them to continue to use their military skillset while filling the emotional and psychic space that can sometimes feel empty or unsatisfied once a military career ends.  

"A purpose-filled life is the foundation for a healthy transition," Wood says. "We provide an option that is exciting and tangible to the returning veteran." A humanitarian crisis is "something that they can relate to" after the unique pressures of Iraq or Afghanistan. The aftermath of a flood or a hurricane presents a situation in which veterans are clearly needed and where their impact can be immediately seen.

"It’s like standing back up on the wall," Wood says. "You have this veritable wall that the military soldier stands upon to guard and protect. It's getting back up on it, in a sense."

Returning veterans who need a "wall" to stand on can find it in disaster response. By tapping into that need, Team Rubicon is now large enough to be able to respond to everything from typhoons in southeast Asia to hurricanes in the US.

"You see a need, and you want to help meet it if you feel like you are able," Wood says. "That’s really how it started, and it's how it's continued to grow."

NOW WATCH: This Radical Plan Could End All Traffic Fatalities In New York

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Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's Kim Jong-un assassination comedy "The Interview" has been the subject of a lot of controversy. The film was originally scheduled to be released in October, but after North Korea declared the film an "act of war" and threatened a "resolute and merciless" response if the US government failed to stop the film's release, it was delayed until Christmas Day. 

While changing an American film based on the demands of a dictator may seem ridiculous, Sony agreed to make minor digital alterations, including covering up "thousands of buttons worn by characters in the film" since they "depict the actual hardware worn by the North Korean military to honor the country's leader."

After viewing the relentlessly crass and silly finished product, I find it hard to take North Korea's assertions seriously. The film is clearly a comedy far more than it is a statement on foreign policy. While Rogen weaves in plenty of details that don't portray North Korea in very positive light, the movie never feels like an attack on the hermit kingdom.

The opening scene depicting a young Korean girl serenading a gathering of fellow Koreans with sing-songy insults to America sets the bar right away, and the film never takes itself too seriously.

James Franco plays Dave Skylark, the host of "Skylark Tonight," a tabloid news program that falls more in line with TMZ than CNN. Aaron Rapaport (Rogen) is the show's producer, and after 1,000 episodes of asinine celebrity coverage, he wishes to be taken seriously. When Skylark finds out Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader of North Korea, is a fan of his program, he sets up an exclusive interview with the dictator in North Korea. When the CIA gets wind of this, they bring Skylark and Rapaport in and ask them to assassinate him.

As all good comedies should, 'The Interview" has heart, and the on-screen chemistry between Franco and Rogen keeps everything afloat. The script features plenty of Rogen's trademark witty, crass humor and, just like in "Pineapple Express," the off-the-cuff banter between the two leads never gets old. Lizzy Caplan is also great (but underused) as the CIA agent who "honeypots" the duo into the assassination. 

"The Interview" is full of pop culture references, Hollywood in-jokes, and hysterically funny cameos. Besides the barrage of unexpected celebrities, one of the film's biggest laughs comes from Franco's rendition of a pop song that rivals his Britney Spears piano number from "Spring Breakers." While it's not as inherently self-referential as "This Is The End" since Rogen and Franco aren't playing themselves, there is similar humor at times, as Rogen shows that he isn't afraid to make fun of anyone.

The film is poised to be another surefire hit for Rogen, whose last two starring vehicles ("Neighbors,""This Is The End") were modestly budgeted at $18 million and $32 million respectively and each managed to gross over $100 million domestically. The reported budget for "The Interview" is around $30 million, so factoring in Rogen's track record, the film should have no trouble raking in some serious cash when it opens this Christmas. 

Watch the trailer below.  

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In October 1983, the US invaded Grenada to end the four year reign of military dictator Hudson Austin. The invasion was criticized by UN member states, including the United Kingdom, which had controlled the island prior to the Communist coup. The day after the invasion, President Reagan called Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to apologize for leaving her in the dark regarding the military offensive.

Produced by Alex Kuzoian. Video courtesy of Associated Press.

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In honor of Veteran's Day, we're taking a look back at some of the most famous people who have served in the military.

Some stars, such as Chuck Norris or Elvis Presley, have well documented their time in the armed forces — while others, like Drew Carey, may come as more of a surprise.

Check out 19 icons who served in the armed forces, including a baseball great, two famous reclusive novelists, and one "Golden Girl."

This report was also written by Jennifer Michalski.

Comedian Drew Carey started performing stand-up comedy during his six years in the Marines.

In 1981, Drew Carey entered the United States Marine Corps Reserve, a stint that lasted six years.

It was during his service that he first started performing stand-up comedy.

"While in the Marine Reserves, I was looking for a way to make some more money, and it was suggested that I try using my jokes,"he later said.

Carey, who teamed up with the United Services Organization, has since visited military bases in Iraq to perform comedy for troops stationed there.

Thomas Pynchon served in the Navy.

Considering his monumental importance to American letters and literature in general, little is actually known about Pynchon, who refuses to be photographed and doesn't grant interviews.

One of the only confirmed photos of the author of such celebrated postmodern doorstops as Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon is from his two-year stint in the US Navy, which came in the middle of his four years at Cornell University in the late 1950s.

Pynchon's time in the Navy is evident in many of his major works: V. follows the misadventures of a recently-discharged Navy sailor in early-60s New York. Gravity's Rainbow, which takes place in World War II's European theater and revolves around Nazi Germany's V-2 missile program, is particularly rife with military-related themes and characters.

Hugh Hefner got his start in publishing while in the US Army.

Before Playboy existed, Hefner had a successful career in the military.

In 1944, after graduating high school, Hefner enlisted in the Army as an infantry clerk.

He frequently contributed cartoons for various military newspapers before he was discharged in 1946. 

With the world distracted by Russian President Vladimir Putin's "flirtatious" moves on China's first lady, Russia has been slowly but surely escalating the crisis in Ukraine and stretching the limits of a proverbial ceasefire — to the point where the crisis could, in the words of one pro-Kremlin political analyst, "explode."

The US and others have charged Russia over the past few days with violating certain elements of a ceasefire agreement reached in September.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told US Vice President Joe Biden on Monday that Russia had transferred additional heavy weapons to pro-Russian separatists in the country's eastern region, while there has been increased shelling of Ukrainian government positions over the past few days.

Yuriy Sergeyev, Ukraine's ambassador to the United Nations, said Tuesday that Russia has "doubled" the supplies of weaponry to pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine's eastern region and has amassed a "big number" of troops close to the border.

"I think UN should be informed ASAP that Russia is planning full-scaled invasion into Ukraine," he said. "Latest facts prove it and leave no doubts."

Meanwhile, the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe said another large, unmarked convoy moved into eastern Ukraine. The convoy, the OSCE said, was made up of 43 green military trucks, including five with the artillery pieces known as howitzers and five with multiple rocket-launch systems.

With DNR & jounalists on the road from Donetsk to #MH17 we observe appr. 25 army vehicles with artillery, GRAD launchers heading west.

— Jeroen Akkermans (@JeroenAkkermans) November 11, 2014

Fighting in the country's eastern regions has intensified in recent days. Reuters reports heavy shelling near the rebel-held city of Donetsk on Tuesday, while pro-Ukrainian news reports also indicated Ukrainian forces came under fire near Zamozhne, which is close to the strategic city of Mariupol. Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council says there was also heavy activity near Donetsk, Debaltseve, Luhansk, and Berezove. 

The escalation takes place amid the backdrop of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Beijing, where Putin is meeting with other top world leaders, including President Barack Obama. The two leaders met three times informally over the past day, and the White House said they spoke about Ukraine, along with the crisis in Syria and the Iran nuclear negotiations.

Relations between the two countries has deteriorated as the ceasefire has frayed, amid further accusations from the US that Russia is supplying the pro-Russian separatists with arms and the country's backing of separatist-fueled "elections" that the US called a "sham."

Biden, in a phone conversation with Poroshenko on Monday, said the US was prepared to escalate "costs" on Russia if it continues to escalate the situation. The White House also warned Russia on Monday of the consequences of further escalation.

"We are very concerned by intensified fighting in eastern Ukraine, as well as numerous reports, including from the Special Monitoring Mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), that Russian backed and supplied separatists are moving large convoys of heavy weapons and tanks to the front lines of the conflict," said Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the White House's National Security Council.

"We continue to call on all sides to strictly adhere to the cease-fire. Any attempt by separatist forces to seize additional territory in eastern Ukraine would be a blatant violation of the Minsk agreements."

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Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) has a simple response to those who accuse him of always advocating for war: Tell me when I've been wrong.

During a WNYC radio interview promoting his new book, "Thirteen Soldiers," on Tuesday, McCain was pressed by a caller on his hawkish foreign policy views.

"It seems to me whenever our country is faced with a situation of going into war [or] not going into war, you seem to be one of the first and loudest voices for for taking  a position of going into war," the caller said.

The caller further said McCain's own history as a decorated veteran should have made him less eager to use US military force abroad.

"And it seems ironic to me that a man that has been through so much, seen so closely the horrors, ... that you would take that position," added the caller.

McCain responded by saying he and another foreign policy hawk, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), had been "right every step of the way."

"I will defend my record of what I advocated that the United States needed to do," McCain said. "You tell me where I've been wrong sir and then I will admit that maybe I have felt that we need to use American power too often."

McCain went on to list a series of international crises he said were the result of President Barack Obama's unwillingness to project strength overseas.

"We are now facing a direct threat to the United States of America. It didn't have to happen. It's not like hurricanes or earthquakes. It was not an act of God. It was a failed, feckless foreign policy. We are watching Ukraine being dismembered by Vladimir Putin. We are seeing the aggressive China in the Far East. We are seeing the least United States influence than anytime in my lifetime and lots of bad people are taking advantage of it," he said.

McCain is well-known in political circles for his advocacy of aggressive foreign policy to combat threats across the globe. Mother Jones once ran a story illustrating this with a map that was titled "All the Countries John McCain Has Wanted to Attack."

However, McCain said his foreign policy views were at least partially vindicated by his staunch support for the 2007 surge of US forces in Iraq. He claimed this proved his views on the situation there were prescient.

"The surge succeeded sir. People can say it didn't, they can argue about it. But I was there and on the ground and we had the situation stabilized. And I said we had to leave a force behind to stabilize Iraq — and we didn't. And I predicted when we didn't what was going to happen," he said. "And I'm predicting to you right now, if we don't leave a stabilizing force behind in Afghanistan, we will see the same movie again."

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Patrick Ryan was a sophomore at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York sitting in his dorm room between classes as the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 unfolded.

"Someone yelled 'turn on CNN,'" Ryan said. He flipped on his TV and saw what was happening just 45 miles down the Hudson River from where he was sitting.  

As a high school senior in Kingston, New York, Ryan's mom had insisted he apply for a few other colleges. But as a kid, family visits to West Point for college football games just an hour's drive away had convinced him that the Academy was the only fit for him — even though he didn't come from a family with a deep military background.

At a memorial the night of the attacks, Ryan was struggling to put the day's events together in his mind just as everyone else in the country was. It dawned on him that his West Point education would have immediate real-world relevance. "I remember thinking: Yeah, we're gonna go to war here," Ryan said after a pause.

Today Ryan is 32 and lives in Manhattan with his fiancée; they got engaged last month, and are considering buying an apartment somewhere uptown.

Transitioning into civilian life, Ryan is making a career promoting startups that develop the powerful and specialized software he wishes he'd had as an intelligence officer in Iraq — programs that can map and visualize useful information like casualties from IEDs, the market price of flour at a local bazaar, or the tribal affiliations of local townspeople. He spends half his time in Washington, DC for his current venture, Second Front Systems, which sells cybersecurity software to mostly federal clients.

After 9/11, West Point's curriculum and course offerings changed to suit and shape the challenges of the fight against terrorism. West Point's Combating Terrorism Center was founded in 2003 to teach and study everything from extremist groups' root motivations and grievances to their operation, recruitment, and financing.

"I took a whole bunch of classes that they created basically on the fly to help us understand what was happening," said Ryan.

As Ryan continued his studies, some of those in the cohorts ahead of him were already deploying. "If any of them were hurt or killed we would hear about it, so it became pretty real, pretty fast," Ryan said.

He also described "an intimidating moment" as a newly-minted officer at Fort Carson in Colorado, where he met and worked with some of the Iraq War's very first veterans. "You're supposedly in charge as an officer, but you're in charge of a bunch of folks who have already done what you haven't."

That would soon change. Ryan has spent 27 months over two tours in Iraq. He oversaw 20 analysts charged with intelligence efforts in the eastern half of Mosul — Iraq's second-largest city, now under ISIS control — during his second tour in 2008, one of the conflict's bloodiest years.

His job was to understand "who are the key political leaders, what are the tribal dynamics, who are the bad guys, how effective are the police, how effective are the army."

Often that meant identifying potential allies among Iraqis, a mission which rested on learning more about the backgrounds of the people in the conflict's environment. They had potentially checkered pasts "which we never knew," said Ryan. "We often didn't have a lot of context."

The US military only gained a better understanding of Iraq as the war trudged on, nuance that would have helped at the fight's outset. "Most people that were in their 40s and 50s fought in [the Iran-Iraq War in the '80s] and really hated Iran and were very concerned that Iran was now going to take over Iraq, basically."

Ryan's take on recent events in the country lead him to believe the average Iraqi's fears were justified, at least in part.

"I was mostly in a Sunni area, so they were concerned that the Shia would come take power, become a proxy for Iran, and persecute the Sunnis," he says, "which is basically what has happened since we left. Their concerns were accurate. And when we invaded I really don't think many people thought about that."

Ryan was never convinced the US invasion of Iraq was justified, he said. His means to help the US make the best out of a problematic situation in the country were limited. He was using Excel, PowerPoint, and Google Earth to help map his team's sense of interpersonal and tribal relations, learn where local favor could be won, and try to predict where and when the next deadly attack might unfold.

But several companies were then in the process of creating better battlefield software that was attuned to the challenges of the post-9/11 period. It was an an emerging corner of the tech industry, and one that Ryan has now found success working in.

One of its earliest big players was Palantir Technologies, founded in 2004. A profile of the organization in Bloomberg Businessweek explains how "The Digital Revolution dumped oceans of data on the law enforcement establishment but provided feeble ways to make sense of it." This was arguably part of the reason that the US law enforcement and intelligence community had missed so many warning signs of the coming 9/11 attacks. 

In late 2010, after his military career had concluded, Ryan traveled back to a conflict zone to help Palantir implement its new platforms. This time it was in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and he was working as an unarmed contractor rather than a member of the military.

Ryan said his past experience on the ground colored his work for Palantir. "When I was in the Army I would've been a user of these technology tools, so I deeply understood what the arc of the possible was, and I understood which data sets we needed to have pulled into the tool to make it effective."

As an entrepreneur, he now hopes to cut through the bureaucratic morass that prevents his and other talent-filled startups from competing for government work against entrenched clients like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

Ryan said the work is often tough, "but then we have some wins which kind of makes it worth it. Level the playing field, let the best technology win."

SEE ALSO: This Marine found the perfect way for people with his skills to help the world

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In this excerpt from Clinton, Inc: The Audacious Rebuilding Of A Political Machine, Daniel Halper, a political writer and online editor at The Weekly Standard, compiles candid interviews with former Clinton administration aides, friends, and enemies to reveal how this dynamic political power couple positioned themselves for even greater success.

In 1988, when Bill first considered a run for the presidency, he and Hillary had also considered the idea that she replace him as governor of Arkansas. By the time of his first inaugural four years later, the White House clearly was in her sights. This was part of the understanding she always had with Bill Clinton. 

He'd get his turn. She'd put up with his crap. And then she'd get her chance. And he'd do what he could to help her. 

Clinton aides told me they were astonished after Bill's taking office, at a time when Mrs. Clinton was viewed by a significant segment of the country as a shrill, polarizing radical, that this idea was such an active notion in the administration. 

"Hillaryland was always, always, always a force," a senior Clinton aide recalls in a wide-ranging interview for this book. He worked within steps of the Oval Office during the administration and, like pretty much everyone else who hopes to have a career in Democratic politics, will speak only without attribution. 

"If you fucked up and were found out by [Bill] Clinton, you got a promotion. If you fucked up and were found out by Hillary, your throat was slit and you were left on the tarmac with no ticket home. It was brutal."

In those early days, Clinton critics were demanding the release of Hillary Clinton's records from her days as a partner at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock as part of the investigation of a now largely forgotten early scandal known as Whitewater.

Mrs. Clinton was reluctant to release documents or to comply with the requests of the special prosecutor in the case. 

One aide approached the First Lady's press secretary, Lisa Caputo, then in her midtwenties. "Why doesn't she just come fucking forward and release them? The president had no business in the matter. It won't hurt him."

"We can't," Caputo replied. "Hillary's got her own ambitions." 

"What do you mean?" he asked. "It doesn't get better than First Lady."

"Well, there's '04. Or '08."

It's always been known that Mrs. Clinton had political ambitions, but never before had an aide confirmed with such assurance that she was envisioning the presidency for herself, even as her husband was just settling in.

Hillary Clinton wanted the keys to the White House herself and, as a former aide put it in an exclusive interview for this book, conjuring images of the popular movie The Shawshank Redemption, "She was willing to slog through all of [his] shit" to get there.

Hillary has been "the one to always play a long game, and she started playing that long game at the end of the second term, and I think she thought the Senate would lead directly to her own presidency in 2008," another close observer of the Clintons tells me, again insisting on anonymity. 

As her husband's second term came to a close, the question was: Where to start? She was born in Illinois, went to college in Massachusetts, law school in Connecticut, had brief stints in California and Washington D.C., and had moved to Arkansas to be with her future husband, Bill Clinton. 

Now she was back in Washington, D.C.—the nation's capital, living in the White House. Along the way Hillary had picked up friends and networks across the country and even a pronounced southern accent that she mysteriously lost shortly after she arrived in Washington in 1993. 

In other words, she had no strong roots anywhere—which, she believed, gave her license to represent people as an elected official from ... just about anywhere. 

Excerpted from Clinton, Inc: The Audacious Rebuilding Of A Political Machine, by Daniel Halper, (HarperCollins Publishers, 2014). Excerpted with permission by Daniel Halper and HarperCollins Publishers.

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Over 700 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Greenland sits one of the US's most isolated military installations — a place that could potentially become one of the most important American air bases on earth.

Situated close to the halfway point between Moscow and New York City, Thule Air Base is a remnant of the US's drive to create global staging areas for operations against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. At its height, Thule had close to 10,000 personnel from the US and Denmark. Today, that number is below 1,000. 

At the height of the base's Cold War-era importance, Thule was a refueling point for long-range US bombers that might be tasked with flying over the North Pole to engage Russia. Simultaneously, the base also functioned as a defensive point from which US fighters could intercept Russian bombers en route to North America.

Either way, it would be a front-line base if the Cold War ever turned into a hot conflict between the US and the Soviet Union.

Despite its pared-down present-day operations, Thule still plays a crucial role in the US's defense posture. The base is the home of the 21st Space Wing's global network of ballistic missile early-warning systems and space surveillance. Thule also hosts space control for the North American Aerospace Defence Command and Air Force Space Command.

Thule's location and embedded satellite and missile detection hardware means the base is a critical element of US missile defense architecture. The base provides the US, and by extension NATO, with a top-of-the-world view of any missile threat crossing over the polar ice cap.

This vantage point high in the Arctic will soon be of urgent importance for the US and its strategic partners.

The US military — along with the militaries of China, Russia, Canada, Norway, and Denmark — has accepted that the Arctic ice is melting. A race is already underway between these countries to secure plentiful resources and trade lanes that will open in the coming years as the ice continues to melt.

By virtue of its position deep in the Arctic Circle, Thule allows the US to constantly monitor the situation in the region. This location will help the US track the movements of rival militaries in the Arctic while also providing the necessary infrastructure for the US to capitalize on any changes in the state of play. And the base could host upwards of 10,000 personnel if filled to capacity.

Thule has also been put to use by NASA for research into the melting of the Arctic. Since 2009, NASA has launched annual research operations, named Operation IceBridge. Based in Thule, they include flights that monitor the Arctic ice sheets and sea ice.

The Council on Foreign Relations noted in a presentation that the competition for resources in the Arctic could lead to a new Cold War between Russia and the NATO states. Russia has reinvigorated the construction of its naval infrastructure along the country's vast northern coast. Likewise, the US Navy has accelerated its plan of bolstering Arctic readiness.

Given the already-tense geopolitical climate between Russia and NATO, a resource competition within the Arctic would likely only lead to further confrontation — and more of the aerial near-misses and suspicious Russian deployments which are already occurring at an alarming pace as a result of the Ukraine conflict. An air base such as Thule would provide the US with additional resources in the Arctic should tensions with Russia continue to build.

Thule Air Base is ideally positioned in a rapidly evolving competition for resources and strategic advantage in the Arctic.

The most isolated post in the entire US military could be a lot more crowded in a few years.

SEE ALSO: An amazing look inside the US Air Force's headquarters in Europe

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Nearly a decade into the war in Afghanistan, photographer Benjamin Rasmussen was tired of the usual media narrative of suicide bombings, corruption, and insurgency.

In 2010, Rasmussen's sister was working in the aid and development community in Afghanistan. But the only headlines he ever saw about the country focused on the ongoing war.

He felt like the American media was failing to educate the US public about how complex Afghanistan actually was, from its multitudes of tribes and ethnicities to its deep history and varied landscapes.

When he heard about the Wakhan Corridor, a narrow strip of land in the far northeast of Afghanistan bordering Tajikistan, Pakistan, and Western China, Rasmussen knew he had to document it. 

In a harsh, beautiful landscape bounded by the Hindu Kush mountains in the south, around 12,000 Afghanis live off the land, unaffected by the Taliban, the US, or Hamid Karzai. The region's geographical isolation, harsh climate, and lack of strategic value has kept all troops — Afghani as well as foreign — out of the area for decades.

Rasmussen visited in the summer of 2010 to document the strange and beautiful world. He shared some photos with us here, but you can check out more at his website. 

The Wakhan Corridor is notoriously hard to reach. To get there, you have to drive, ride on donkeys, and hike the 250-mile journey from Kabul or fly into Tajikistan and cross the border from the North. Both ways are difficult, but traveling by land requires going through Taliban-held lands.

The atmosphere in Afghanistan is tense and dangerous, until you reach the Wakhan Corridor. Here, the atmosphere becomes more relaxed. Because there are no roads into Wakhan and the terrain is so harsh, no US, Afghan, or Taliban soldiers enter the region.

Many in the community have no idea that the Taliban was ever in power or that the US army invaded. The last troops to enter Wakhan were the Soviets, who built the only road leading to the area. They left in the 1980s.

Richard Allen Smith says he joined the military in 2002 for lack of any other obvious course at that point in his life. 

A recruiter called his house in the Florida panhandle at 10:30 a.m. on a weekday in the midst of a senior year in high school in which he would fail a class and realize he didn't have the transcript needed to get into a four-year college. He was home when the call came in, instead of at school, where he should have been — a common occurrence for him, he adds. He picked up the phone. "It sort of went from there" he says, "I couldn't really think of a reason why not."

Although, he later adds: "I got much more profound reasons for being in the Army once I was there."

The military put Smith, who eventually became a sergeant, on a service-oriented path that's continued well after his time in uniform. He's worked in the communications office of the Department of Veterans Affairs, helping to formulate the public messaging of a sometimes troubled and often misunderstood wing of the federal government.

He wants to forge a career in the nonprofit sector after wrapping up a Masters Degree in nonfiction writing at Johns Hopkins University. He currently a communications consultant in the nonprofit, and is now with In The Public Interest, a group dedicated to highlighting the hazards of the privatization of public services. He also contributes to publications like Time, Talking Points Memo, and the Huffington Post, and blogged for the Daily Kos when he was on deployment in Afghanistan in 2007.

Smith got a lot out of his experience in the Army, serving at a time when some of the military's missions clashed with his own personal beliefs and politics. He said he was "driving around with a big 'Stop the Iraq War' sign on my car window" in the months before basic training began in 2003. And while never let his views get in the way of his military duties, a combat deployment to Afghanistan in 2007 crystallized his idea of what his service really meant and demanded of him.

"Regardless of how stupid the wars were, there were guys on my left and on right who depended on me and I depended on them to keep one another alive," he explains. "Deployments are terrible but you build the most amazing sense of camaraderie. You're there for 14 months with a bunch of guys who are willing to die for you at any moment and vice versa."

"It's a duty thing," he explained. "I volunteered for this organization saying that I would go wherever they sent me regardless of my personal feeling."

Smith developed an awareness of the other half of that equation: the fact that the volunteer military rests upon bonds of civic trust between the military and the civilians who oversee it in an arrangement that's perhaps aimed more at balancing civil-military relations than at establishing good policy. "You put your trust in elected leaders that the places they send you are worth sending you to," Smith explains.

The experience of being in the military at a time in which it was engaged in operations that Smith didn't always agree with wasn't embittering. After he left the Army in 2008 and later finished his undergraduate studies at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, he worked as a web communications specialist at the VA, helping to formulate the department's messaging at a time when the medical backlog issue was first becoming widely known.

He says he's now two months away from finishing his second degree on the GI bill and that the VA is hamstrung by a "communication's traditionalism" that prevents it from being able to fully convey its many successes.

And he rejects the idea that the military is a bastion of conservatism or that its politics are all that especially right-leaning.

"The military as a whole reflects a cross-section of society," he says. "There are lots of people who were as liberal as I was in the military, and like in the rest of America most folks in the military are probably less ideological than talking heads would ike to think they are." He notes that Cumberland Country, home to the sprawling Fort Bragg Army base, consistently votes Democratic.

Today, Smith hopes to continue writing. "My philosophy is that ... you write because you have to write it's what you do," says Smith. "It's who you are." But he plans to one day teach college-level as well, and continue his work as a communications consultant for nonprofit organizations once he earns his degree.

Smith has build a successful career as a professional communicator — and realizes that some of the current gaps between American civilian and military life owe to how veterans discuss their experiences, and who they discuss them with.

"We do speak a different language in uniform and it's not always the quickest thing to transition back into the civilian world," he says.

He recommends that young veterans "find a group of peers you can communication with, because it's a challenge to get back no matter what your experience was oversees."

SEE ALSO: This Marine found the perfect way for people with his skills to help the world

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In his memoir Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace, former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta describes the stealth 2011 assault on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan.

Panetta had a unique vantage point on the raid, which he watched remotely from the CIA's headquarters in Langley, Virginia. 

One of the first hiccups was the accidental crash landing of one of two SEAL helicopters as they arrived at the compound at approximately 12:30 a.m. local time (3:30 p.m.  EST). The SEALS transitioned to a backup helicopter and, as we all know, they were able to carry out the rest of the mission. The disabled chopper, which lay in an animal pen, was later blown up after the successful capture of Bin Laden. 

According to Panetta, the following is what happened once the SEALs entered Bin Laden's home:

Between the second and third floors, a bearded young man whom the assaulters recognized as Khalid bin Laden, bin Laden's son, was shot and killed. As the SEALs moved to the third floor, a tall, bearded man poked his head out of a doorway. A member of our team, recognizing him instantly, shot at him and missed. The man disappeared back into the room, and an AK-47 was visible in the doorjamb. Team members moved towards the door.

As they moved inside the room, two young girls and an adult woman rushed the SEALs. Our operator grabbed the girls and shoved them to the side as they screamed in fear. One woman shouted at the man upstairs, calling him "sheikh." Our team members saw the bearded man and shot him twice, once above the left eye and once in the chest. A woman in the room, whom we later learned was bin Laden's third wife, was shot in the leg, but not seriously wounded.

All of this took about 15 minutes. The time in Pakistan was approximately 1 a.m. local time (3:51 p.m. EST) when Navy Admiral McRaven Commander of SEAL Team 6 relayed word to the remote security team that there was a preliminary call of "Geronimo," which was the code word for the successful killing or capture of Bin Laden.

"I was not clear in that moment whether that meant we had taken Bin Laden prisoner or killed him. I asked for confirmation. Geronimo, he repeated. E.K.I.A. Enemy Killed in Action. A few moments later, the SEALs reappeared on the screen, six of them dragging a body bag to the helicopter," Panetta wrote.

According to Panetta, the news the SEALs had taken out the world's most wanted man wasn't followed by "high-fiving" or "triumphant whoops."

"Our men were still deep in Pakistan, surrounded by danger, a long way from home and the situation on the ground was growing more tense and complicated by the minute. The explosions and gunfire from the compound had begun to draw the attention of our neighbors, and they came into the street, some venturing toward our forces," Panetta wrote. 

Once all the SEALs boarded the Chinook helicopter with Bin Laden's corpse, they began taking DNA samples to confirm his identity while en route to Jalalabad, Afghanistan. At this point, the mission was three hours in and the SEALs now faced the critical and grave task of making sure they did in fact kill Bin Laden. 

Panetta revealed everything didn't exactly go smoothly as they attempted to confirm they killed the Al Qaeda leader:

A team member took photographs of his face, immediately subjecting them to photo authentication. Others tried to measure the corpse, but no one had thought to bring along a tape measure—proof that no matter how much anyone plans, some thing is always forgotten. Instead a member of the team who was just over 6-feet tall lay down beside the body and determined that it was a few inches taller than he.

All that took less than half an hour, and at 6:20 p.m. McRaven declared that there was a "high probability" that it was Bin Laden. The DNA samples from the corpse later would establish beyond any doubt that we had in fact killed Osama bin Laden. 

Panetta subsequently packed up his team and drove to the White House to meet the rest of President Obama's security administration. He entered the Situation Room where the president said, "Great job. Everyone at the CIA who worked on this deserves the nation's thanks."

Obama then began discussing the logistics of announcing the mission to the world. Turning to Panetta, Obama reportedly said, "Today, anything you say I'm prone to agree with. But we have to get this right. I want us to have thought through everything."

Meanwhile, Bin Laden's body was was prepared according to Muslim tradition and was placed in a heavy black bag along with 300-pounds of iron chains to ensure the body would sink after it was dropped into the ocean.

Shortly after 11:30 p.m., President Obama addressed the nation and announced the death of Osama bin Laden. 

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In the late hours of May 1, 2011 news broke that US security forces killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Fox News reporter Peter Doocy, ran out of his apartment in Washington D.C.  

"I got down to the White House and just celebrated on Pennsylvania Avenue late on a Sunday night with thousands of people and it was a night that I will never forget. Everyone just shared this great feeling of, we got him," Doocy told Business Insider in an interview.

Almost three and a half years later, Doocy, 27, uncovered the identity of the man who said he fired the fatal shot, former Navy SEAL Robert O'Neill. Doocy managed to land the first televised interview with O'Neill, which is being broadcast on Fox News Tuesday and Wednesday night this week in an exclusive two-part documentary called "The Man Who Killed Osama Bin Laden." 

Doocy was introduced to O'Neill through a third party source a few months after the raid on Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The two first met at an Irish pub in Pentagon City in 2012. After Doocy gained O'Neill's trust, the ex-SEAL agreed to reveal his identity and speak on camera.

To ensure no one within Fox would learn of the huge scoop, Doocy's team created a code name for the project. 

"If we had to book travel or if we had to order a camera crew we gave it a code name and that code was Gatewood," Doocy said. 

The team chose this name to pay homage to the Army commander Charles Gatewood who helped capture Apache leader Geronimo in 1886. "Geronimo" was the code word the SEALs used on the night of the Bin Laden raid to confirm the country's most wanted man was dead.

When asked to describe O'Neill, Doocy used words like "patriot" and "warrior."

"He is one of the best this country has to offer. He is an all-American guy and I hope people will see that when they watch this two-night segment," Doocy said.

Two days after Fox News announced plans for the documentary, SOFREP, a military blog, revealed O'Neill's identity. 

However, Doocy told Business Insider he doesn't think the blog stole his thunder. 

"It really just confirms what we have known all along that there is a lot of interest in this story. In the Rob O'Neill story," Doocy said. "Obviously his name is out there and his picture is out there now and a lot of other stuff is too. Some of the stuff out there now is true, and some of it is not. We are the only ones that he sat down with on camera to explain his story and it's his own words and the way he tells it is so good."

A Defense Department spokeswoman, gave a statement to Business Insider,  in which she said former SEALs were bound by military non-disclosure agreements and could face criminal charges for revealing information about the stealth raid. The spokeswoman specifically said SEALs were prohibited from revealing the names of any participants, which remain classified. 

Fox News subsequently provided a statement to Business Insider indicating the government had not attempted to block the documentary.

"FOX News has not been contacted by the Department of Defense or any other government agency expressing concern about 'The Man Who Killed Osama Bin Laden' special and we have every intention of airing it as planned on November 11th and 12th," the Fox News spokesperson said. 

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Robert O'Neill, the former Navy SEAL who says he shot and killed Osama Bin Laden told Fox News in an interview broadcast Tuesday evening that he wrote letters to his loved ones before leaving on the 2011 raid on the Al Qaeda leader's compound. 

O'Neill explained he wrote the letters because he thought the "chances of dying" during the raid "were really high." In the event he didn't return, he said he wanted his family to know "why it had to happen" and that he was participating in "the most important mission since Washington crossed the Delaware."

"And it was worth it, you know, I'm sorry that you're upset, but I died with the people I should have died with," O'Neill said. "It was sad, you know, there was a few times when tears were hitting the pages."

O'Neill's letters also included advice for his young children.

SEE ALSO: How A 27-Year-Old Reporter Landed An Interview With The Alleged Bin Laden Shooter

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Back in 1939, Winston Churchill famously remarked that Russia was "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."

For most people, his words ring true to this day.

Although Russia is the largest country in the world and has the eighth-largest GDP, little is widely known about the nation and its culture.

Because Russia has increasingly made international headlines, it's a good idea to know a few things about the country.

To help you out, we've compiled a list of some of the craziest facts about the Russian language, culture, politics, and statistics.

Beer wasn't considered an alcoholic drink in Russia until 2011.

In 2011, then-President Dmitry Medvedev officially signed into law that beer was in fact an alcoholic beverage.

This law finally put limitations on where beer could be sold.

Source: Christian Science Monitor

One out of four Russian men die before their 55th birthday.

The life expectancy for men in Russia is 64 years old, a total among that of the 50 lowest countries in the world.

Only 10% of men in the US die before their 55th birthday, and 7% of men in the UK do.

And the risk of dying before 55 is exacerbated by those "who said they drank three or more half-liter bottles of vodka a week."

Source: The Guardian

There is no word for "fun" in Russian.

There is the word "веселье," which translates to "joy" or "merriment," and there's also the verb form "веселиться." One huge difference between the words "веселье" and "fun" is that you can have fun at work, but you can't "веселиться" at work.

NATO has observed columns of Russian military equipment including tanks, artillery, and combat troops entering eastern Ukraine in the past two days, the military alliance's supreme allied commander said Wednesday.

"Across the last two days we have seen the same thing that OSCE is reporting. We have seen columns of Russian equipment, primarily Russian tanks, Russian artillery, Russian air defense systems, and Russian combat troops entering into Ukraine," he added.

He noted that NATO did "not have a good picture at this time of how many. We agree that there are multiple columns that we have seen."

Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reported on Tuesday seeing a convoy of 43 unmarked military trucks — five towing Howitzer heavy artillery pieces and another five multilaunch rocket systems — traveling into the rebel stronghold of Donetsk.

It was the latest in a string of recent sightings of unmarked trucks and heavy weapons heading toward the frontline in rebel-controlled areas.

Heavy artillery fire rocked Donetsk on Wednesday. Ukraine's military said one soldier had been killed and two wounded, including one at the airport, as its positions came under repeated shelling around the region.

"What worries me the most is that we have a situation now that the former international border between Ukraine and Russia is completely porous, it is completely wide open," NATO Commander Philip Breedlove said.

"Forces, money, support, supplies, weapons are flowing back and forth across this border completely at will and that is not a good situation," he said.

"We need to get back to a situation where this international border is respected and that will help us to contain the problem of re-supply into eastern Ukraine."

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In an exclusive interview with Fox News, the Navy SEAL who says he shot Osama bin Laden described looking into the Al Qaeda leader's eyes before he killed him.

Former Navy SEAL Robert O'Neill, who has come forward publicly to speak about the May 2011 raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, said he was probably the last person bin Laden saw.

"He was standing there two feet in front of me, hand on his wife, the face I’ve seen thousands of times," O'Neill said. "I thought, 'We got him, we just ended the war.'"

O'Neill said bin Laden looked him in the eyes before O'Neill shot him dead. He says he was the first member of the SEAL team to enter bin Laden's bedroom the night of the raid.

Bin Laden reportedly tried to shield himself with his youngest wife before he was shot.

The raid ended a decade-long manhunt for the man who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

"I'm still trying to figure out if it's the best thing I ever did, or the worst thing I ever did," O'Neill said.

O'Neill's participation in the raid has led to some long-term consequences, which he detailed to Esquire (which didn't name him) last year. He is separated from his wife and is struggling to pay bills.

There has been some dispute over who really fired the shot that killed bin Laden. An anonymous source who claims to be close to another member of the SEAL team that carried out the raid said O'Neill did not fire the fatal shot.

SOFREP, a website that covers national security and US special operations forces, reported that two leaders of US Naval Special Warfare Command sent a letter to their team members on Oct. 31, two days after the Fox interview was announced, wherein they attacked any SEAL who would violate their "ethos" and talk about a mission in public.

Here's the video of O'Neill's interview with Fox:

SEE ALSO: The Navy SEAL Who Allegedly Shot Bin Laden Described The Letters He Wrote To His Children Before Leaving On The Raid

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The rigorous training Navy SEALs endure make them highly capable of handling a range of dangerous situations.

Some of them dedicate their post-military careers to passing their knowledge on to civilians.

Larry Yatch, cofounder of fitness and self-defense training facility Sealed Mindset in Minnesota, is a former Navy SEAL who now helps train clients in personal safety, defensive firearms, corporate leadership, and contingency planning.

Part of the training provided at Sealed Mindset includes learning how to escape potentially dangerous situations, like being followed or directly threatened.

"The most important thing is situational awareness to be able to identify bad people and avoid them," Yatch told Business Insider.

How can you tell if someone might cause trouble? "They're doing something that gives you a bad feeling," Yatch said. 

The next step is determining whether they might cause you harm. You have to look at:

1. Strength: "The hands are a really good indication of strength," Yatch said. Check for scarred or calloused hands and raised knuckles.

2. Intent: You can usually tell someone's intent through their eyes. If someone is looking at you and tracks your movement through a space, that could be a red flag. The same applies if they attempt to decrease the distance between you and mimic your movements. And if they shrink in the presence of an authority, like a police officer, that's another sign. "If a uniformed police officer walks in the room, everyone in the room will look at the police officer except other police officers and criminals," Yatch said. "It's a subconscious way of avoiding being detected."

If someone is presenting both of these warning signs, that's a threat, Yatch said.

Once you've determined that someone could pose a threat, there are four actions you should take:

1. Increase distance: Putting the distance between you and the threat gives you more time to react.

2. Introduce a barricade: The bigger the barricade between you and the threat, the better. It could be a chair, a car, a table, or a building.

3. Look for avenues of escape and help: Be aware of your environment. Scan for exits and people who might be able to help you if the threat makes a move.

4. Defend yourself: This is your last resort if you can't escape the threat. "If you get to having to use physical defense, you have no doubt in your mind that you have done everything you can to stop that person from causing you harm, so you can respond without mercy, without hesitation, and you fight for your life," Yatch said. "The mentality alone that you will never be victimized, that you will never quit, that you are never unarmed and have the ability to fight — that mentality alone will show up with confidence and in and of itself often times restrict attacks."

Yatch was medically retired from the military in 2008 after being injured, and he started the process of opening Sealed Mindset in 2009.

"My purpose in life is to protect this country … and I'm very passionate about it," Yatch said. "It's something that I still espouse and I try to encourage the rest of our staff to do the same thing. We want to be a resource for people in overcoming problems."

SEE ALSO: 18 Things Navy SEALs Won't Leave Home Without

NOW WATCH: Intense GoPro Footage Shows What It's Like To Get Hit By An MMA Fighter

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For the last six decades, homicide has been much more common in the US than in other developed countries.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recently published a book called "How Was Life?", in which researchers assembled historical statistics on a number of measures of economic and human development and quality of life going back as far as 1820. One of the areas the book includes is personal safety, and one of the metrics used to determine safety is homicide rates.

The book includes a chart showing homicide rates since 1950 in the US, the UK, Spain, the Netherlands, Canada, and Australia:

The US rate was vastly higher than the other Western countries throughout the last sixty years. The book's authors note that the period from the mid-1960s through the mid-1990s showed elevated homicide rates in a number of developed countries, but the chart illustrates that that jump was most severe in the US.

A table from the report showing homicide rates for a number of countries around the world shows that the US has consistently had higher homicide rates than most other developed countries:

SEE ALSO: The 18 Most Unequal Cities In America

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