Defense & Security Archive

The African Union launched an invasion of a separatist-controlled island off the coast of Mozambique last week in part, to bolster the multilateral organization’s image abroad. Around 1,300 AU troops joined 400 Comorian government troops to oust Col. Mohamed Bacar from Anjouan, one of the three islands that make up the Union of the Comoros. In a one-day fight, the AU-Comorian troops gained full control of the island, and Bacar fled to French-controlled Mayotte, the other island on the Comorian archipelago. The only problem for the AU was that hardly anyone noticed the successful mission. In the United States, there […]

On CBS News’ 60 Minutes tonight, Scott Pelley interviewed German resident Murnat Kurnaz about his time held by the U.S. military as an unlawful enemy combatant, including several years at Guantanamo Bay. Pelley’s report leaves the impression that the Kurnaz case is, pure and simple, the story of a completely innocent man caught up in a corrupt and arbitrary system of U.S. military justice. Writing in World Politics Review in June 2007, John Rosenthal describes how Kurnaz’s case received similar treatment in the German media. Facts that cast doubt on Kurnaz’s credibility, and several aspects of his claims of innocence, […]

In a March 26 interview at the White House with foreign journalists, U.S. President George W. Bush said he had accepted an invitation from Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss bilateral issues at Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi on April 6. Remarking that “It’s important that we have good relations with Russia,” Bush characterized the summit as “a follow-up” to the March 17-18 meeting between senior U.S. and Russian national security officials in Moscow. That “2+2” meeting — which included Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the American side, and Foreign Minister Sergei […]

TEL AVIV, Israel — The annual Arab League summits have long inspired cynics to quip that the meetings should not be expected to produce much more than yet another declaration announcing that “the Arabs have agreed not to agree.” Among commentators, this year’s summit in Damascus has produced considerable agreement: the editor-in-chief of the London-based pan-Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat dismissed the meeting as early as February with the harsh verdict that all “the Arab summits, without exception, are unsuccessful, but it seems that the Damascus summit will be the biggest failure of them all.” In the days preceding the summit, […]

Imagine for a moment that the province of Quebec secedes from Canada, becomes an independent nation, and chooses to call itself “Vermont.” Or that the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon breaks from Mexico and becomes the independent nation of “Texas.” How would the United States respond to these developments? Would these names imply that the new countries have a claim on American territory? Does the name of the state of New Mexico create a claim on Mexico’s territory? These are exactly the types of questions facing Greece and Macedonia right now, as a long-simmering dispute comes to a head. NATO […]

Various explanations have been posited to make sense of the ongoing Iraqi Army operation codenamed Sawlat al-Fursan (Attack of the Knights), which has been directed against the Jaysh al-Mahdi (JAM) throughout the south of Iraq. Marc Lynch summarizes the various theories that have gained traction in explaining the motivations for launching the Basra offensive at this juncture, and most of the more persuasive arguments focus on the motivations and rationales of the Iraqi actors: [1] “Iran is liquidating its no longer useful proxies” theory (which would fit this general line of speculation about Iran’s doubts about Sadr and preference for […]

PARIS — U.N. refugee camps in Chad’s eastern province now provide shelter to more than 200,000 Darfur refugees and close to the same number of Chadians displaced by their country’s civil war. But in the absence of any governmental control over the area, both the refugees and relief workers have been increasingly targeted by border-crossing insurgents, militias, and organized bandits that use the region as safe harbor, exacerbating an already desperate humanitarian crisis. The European Union peacekeeping force currently deploying just inside Chad’s border with Darfur was mandated last September by the United Nations to fill the security vacuum that […]

One of the most complex issues related to the “Global War on Terror” that has confronted policy makers, military commanders, legal advisors, and even federal courts has been determining where the “battlefield” in this war starts and ends. This is not surprising. The characterization of the struggle against international terrorism as a “war” by the United States had the effect of forcing the proverbial square peg into the round hole. The law that had evolved up to Sept. 11, 2001 to regulate “war” had simply not addressed a military struggle between the armed forces of a nation-state and operatives of […]

WASHINGTON — Several recent U.S. court decisions are threatening an effort to dramatically reduce Russia’s stockpiles of weapons-grade uranium. The court decisions would eliminate high tariff barriers that have effectively blocked Russia’s exports of uranium to the United States, except for those covered by a 1993 U.S.-Russian agreement for downblending 500 metric tons of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from nuclear weapons into fuel for nuclear reactors by 2013. To date, the agreement has helped lead to the downblending of 325 metric tons of HEU, equivalent to 13,000 nuclear warheads. The downblended uranium currently supplies more than 40 percent of the […]

TORRÉON, Mexico — The Merida Initiative is a billion-dollar anti-drug aid package that only a kindergarten teacher could love: The results are not important, just the mere idea that the United States and Mexico are cooperating makes it worthwhile. The focus on the two countries overcoming their prickly past and learning to play nice ignores the fact that their interests in the war on drugs are not the same. What solves Mexican problems won’t necessarily work on American ones, and what works for Washington could make things a lot worse south of the Rio Grande. The increased commitment and cooperation […]

Sometimes a comedy can break your heart. “The Band’s Visit,” a highly acclaimed Israeli movie now showing around the world, tells the story of a charming group of Egyptian musicians, the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, who come to Israel to play at the opening of an Arab Cultural Center. A series of misunderstandings leaves the musicians — resplendent in their sky-blue uniforms — stranded in a tiny Israeli desert village. It is a sweet comedy of coexistence and shared humanity. The Israelis bring the Egyptians, dignified in their plight, into their homes. They get to know each other at the […]

SEOUL, South Korea — Reclusive North Korea this week announced its interest in continuing talks with the United States on its nuclear weapons program. Last week in Geneva, Washington’s envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye Gwan, met for eight hours of negotiations aimed at getting the stalled Six Party talks moving again. “The two sides decided to continue direct discussions on ways to resolve problems in implementing the Oct. 3 agreement,” the official Korean Central News Agency reported. The Oct. 3 agreement, reached during the last formal round of the Six Party […]

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — Although it has received scant coverage in the international press, the year-old rebellion in the northern half of Niger has exacted a tremendous cost in the West African nation in both human and economic terms. For starters, at least 50 government soldiers have been killed by the Niger Movement for Justice (MNJ), the Tuareg-led group spearheading the rebellion. The MNJ also has captured more than 50 soldiers and, in January, they grabbed a regional governor during a daring raid on a northern town. The rebels have also been blamed for laying land mines throughout the northern […]

Today (March 19), Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili will meet with U.S. President George W. Bush at the White House. The two heads of state will make an appropriately supportive mutual statement, particularly since the visit will mark Saakashvili’s first visit to the United States since his reelection in January. Nevertheless, the display of close presidential ties may not prove sufficient to restore Saakashvili’s luster as the leading democrat in the Caucasus, ensure Georgia’s territorial integrity, or enable Georgia to enter NATO — the most immediate mutual foreign policy objective of the two governments. In early January 2008, Mikhail Saakashvili won […]

The harsh words and hard feelings that chilled transatlantic relations in January, when U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made the mistake of stating the obvious about NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, will not be on the agenda during NATO’s Bucharest Summit the first week of April. But the source of Gates’ frustration that, in his words, most of the allies “are not trained in counterinsurgency” or doing enough in Afghanistan, should dominate the agenda — and so should the solution. In many ways, NATO’s necessary but nettlesome mission in Afghanistan is a microcosm of its post-Cold War shortcomings: Every member recognizes […]

The states parties to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention held two important meetings in 2007. First, national biological warfare experts met for several days in mid-August to exchange ideas about how best to counter this threat. Second, the states parties held their annual week-long gathering in December. Both of these sessions were remarkably non-confrontational as compared with previous years, suggesting that new political dynamics are now shaping the international politics of biological warfare and terrorism. The December 2006 Sixth Review Conference of the BTWC directed the member governments to focus on two main issues this year: (1) strengthening national […]

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force is in trouble. The rising cost of high-tech jets and the people to fly and maintain them threatens to put the service “out of business,” in the words of Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne. He said last fall that he was worried the military couldn’t buy enough planes, fast enough, to replace 30-year-old F-15s and 50-year-old tankers before they started falling out of the sky. Wynne’s statement proved eerily prescient: In November an Air Guard F-15 manufactured in 1980 disintegrated in mid-air, nearly killing the pilot and resulting in a prolonged grounding for most […]