Defense & Security Archive

ABECHE, Chad — Three weeks after Chadian rebels mounted their third major challenge this year to President Idriss Déby’s troubled regime, the fighting has dwindled to a few isolated gunfights on the barren eastern border with Sudan. Instead of the regime-toppling attack that the Sudan-based rebels promised in their press releases — something akin to their February offensive that reached downtown N’Djamena on the country’s western border — the spring attacks apparently never reached more than 50 miles inside Chad. In mid-June, rebels briefly occupied a number of towns, only to depart hours later regardless of whether the Chadian army […]

PARIS — “Nicolas Sarkozy: A Demanding Friend of Israel” Thus ran the headline on Tuesday’s edition of the French daily Le Figaro, a day after Nicolas Sarkozy became the first French president to address the Israeli Knesset since François Mitterrand in 1982. In his speech (French link), Sarkozy himself insisted that he was a friend of Israel — even a “dear and steadfast” friend — and the tone was indeed friendly. “France will always be at Israel’s side when its security and its existence are threatened,” he said, “. . . I have always felt this from the bottom of […]

ABECHE, Chad — As the world marked U.N. World Refugee Day June 20, a new humanitarian emergency was quietly brewing next door to a far more widely known crisis. In southern Chad, just a few hundred miles from camps housing a quarter-million Darfuri refugees, some 60,000 displaced persons from Central African Republic, having fled a growing civil conflict in their own country, have been moved to a cluster of new U.N. camps. The Central Africans’ plight is widely overlooked as a result of the intense focus on the five-year-old civil war in Sudan’s Darfur region and the hundreds of thousands […]

In 1973, it would have been hard to imagine anyone would ever wax nostalgic about the Cold War. How times have changed. There is nothing like almost three years of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to help burnish the memory of former Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev. The Cold War was an expensive and deadly conflict, sapping trillions of dollars over four decades and resulting in tens of millions of lives lost. Energies that could have been devoted to human betterment were directed instead toward human destruction. The Cold War had its successes, from spurring scientific advancement to putting a man on […]

In late May and early June, Israeli forces carried out massive military exercises over the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The operation, reportedly codenamed “Glorious Spartan 08” unfurled a show of force worthy of Hollywood’s epic movie producers. The maneuvers, everyone quickly surmised, looked very much like the kind of military operation Iran would see over its own skies if Israel (or the United States, or NATO) decided that diplomacy has reached a dead end in its efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear program. On the surface, the exercise offered Israeli forces the opportunity to practice. But it was much more than that. […]

TOKYO — A flurry of activity over the past two weeks suggests the six-party talks aimed at ridding North Korea of its nuclear program might finally be back on track. Under an agreement reached last February, North Korea was supposed to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for aid and a host of diplomatic benefits such as being dropped from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. As part of this agreement, North Korea was meant to offer a full declaration of its nuclear activities by the end of last year, but failed to do so. However, the U.S. […]

One of the major objectives of President Bush’s trip to Europe last week was to secure additional international support for the war in Afghanistan. Although European governments generally reaffirmed — and in several cases announced slight increases in — their military and economic commitments to the beleaguered Afghan government of Hamid Karzai, which remains entangled in a protracted insurgency with the Taliban, their declared level of support appears to fall short of that needed to allow the Afghan government to consolidate its control of the country. The members of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) continue to reaffirm their commitment […]

SOFIA, Bulgaria — Still today, whenever there are elections in the small Balkan country of Macedonia, the alarm bells start going off in the EU. Nowadays, however, the principal conflict in Macedonia is not between ethnic Macedonians and the ethnic Albanians who constitute some 25 percent of the population of the country. The violence that broke out on election day earlier this month was the result of a worsening power struggle within the local Albanian community itself. Despite heavy security and the deployment of some 13,000 police, the parliamentary elections on June 1 were yet again marred by irregularities. Armed […]

As the sun rose over the eastern horizon, casting its light across Israel into the Mediterranean sea, the still-smoking guns fell silent in the Gaza Strip and the surrounding areas in southern Israel. After months of arduous diplomatic efforts by Egyptian officials, and years of rocket attacks, armed incursions and escalating threats, an agreement has been reached between the Islamist rulers of Gaza, Hamas, and the Israeli government. Officially, the “period of calm” is supposed to last six months. If the quiet lasts that long, most people in the region will be very surprised. There are many reasons to predict […]

After the battles of Basra and Mosul, Iraq’s territorial integrity now faces another severe challenge on the constitutional front. With the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq having initiated rounds of talks to save the north from a potential cross-border war, the struggle over the future status of the northern city of Kirkuk has entered its decisive phase. Failure could lead to the ultimate disintegration of Iraq. The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) currently enjoys constitutionally recognized authority over the three northern provinces of Erbil, Dohuk, and Sulaymaniyah. Yet it also enjoys de facto control over significant parts of Diyala, Kirkuk, and […]

A delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will visit Syria next week to assess recent American claims that the installation attacked by Israeli warplanes last year was indeed a nuclear reactor in the final stages of construction. Two months ago, Michael Hayden, the director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, and other senior American intelligence analysts broke months of official silence about the September 2007 Israeli air strikes against a target located near the Syrian town of Al Kibar. Their intensive briefings for members of Congress, congressional staff, and, on background, the media, confirmed earlier suspicions that the […]

Last week, the Supreme Court once again waded into the murky legal waters of the War on Terror. In Boumediene v. Bush, a deeply divided court struck down a provision of the Detainee Treatment Act that limited the access to judicial review by detainees in Guantanamo seeking to challenge their classification as “enemy combatants.” The legal rationale for this decision, although controversial, was not complicated: aliens held by the United States in areas where the U.S. exercises sovereignty are protected by the Constitution; Guantanamo is within the de facto sovereignty of the United States; the Congress had not suspended the […]

CHITWAN and KATMANDU, Nepal — Four years ago, Hardik dropped out of his university-level science studies in the Nepali capital, Katmandu, to join Maoist insurgents in the bush. Admittedly scared sick at first, he said the rigors of guerilla warfare hardened his resolve to oust a ruling monarchy hopelessly out of touch with Nepal’s poverty. Today Hardik is one of more than 23,000 members of the People’s Liberation Army idling in U.N.-monitored ceasefire camps, where weapons are locked away and his free time is spent doing English grammar exercises or playing the flute. “There is no such thing as perpetual […]

With a whimper went President Bush’s last, best chance for a positive legacy in international affairs. Last week administration officials conceded to the Financial Times that India would not approve a nuclear cooperation pact with Washington during Bush’s tenure. In March 2006, President Bush signed a nuclear agreement in New Delhi designed to pull the world’s largest democracy closer to the world’s last superpower and dramatically alter Asia’s balance of power. With Asia’s economic rise, it is widely assumed that the continent’s political emergence will follow in the coming decades. By agreeing to cooperate with India on nuclear issues — […]

FRANCE PLUGS THE GAP — Why are four French Mirage 2000 fighter planes currently deployed at the former U.S. air base at Keflavik, Iceland? Answer: The French are plugging a gap in NATO’s North Atlantic defenses left by the U.S. withdrawal from Iceland in 2006. The Keflavik base controlled the so-called Iceland Air Policing Area designed to turn back Soviet long-range strategic bombers headed for U.S. airspace. Two years ago, the Pentagon closed the huge facility after almost 50 years because, in Washington’s view, it had become a relic of the Cold War. Moscow was quick to spot the hole, […]

Part I: Series Introduction Part II: NATO Reintegration and European Defense Part III: A Widening FocusPart IV: The Temptation of a Forward Defense Hubert Védrine was a diplomatic advisor and chief of staff to French President François Mitterand, and went on to serve as France’s foreign minister in the government of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin (1997-2002). He is the author of numerous books and articles on foreign policy and globalization, and leads a seminar on international relations at the Paris Institute of Political Science (Sciences Po). Over the course of a generous and wide-ranging interview, he offered World Politics Review […]

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — As the oldest guerrilla insurgency in Latin America, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), celebrates its 44th anniversary, the group is at a critical juncture following the death of its leader and the desertion of thousands of its fighters. The death last month of Manuel Marulanda, FARC’s founder and iconic leader, together with rising defections from rebel ranks have raised questions about whether the group is in an irreversible decline. Desertion has become a real concern for the guerrilla group. In the last six years, nearly 10,000 rebels have handed in their weapons, shrinking FARC ranks […]