Defense & Security Archive

NAIROBI, Kenya — Throughout his time in Kenya, U.S. Ambassador Michael Ranneberger has been known for his expansive and delighted presence at any number of cultural events and festivals, especially those that featured dancing, and his fondness for vanilla lattes from the local Starbucks equivalent, Java House, just a stone’s throw from his office. However, he has also been known for his blunt assessment of the country’s government and political elites, particularly in the aftermath of the country’s 2007 post-election violence. Ranneberger’s departure from Nairobi has been expected for months. Now, the very Kenyan politicians Ranneberger has long targeted are […]

Dating the commencement of the U.S. War in Afghanistan from the first entry of American troops into the country on Oct. 7, 2001, the war has now lasted longer than the failed Soviet effort of the 1980s. And at last weekend’s NATO summit, the U.S. government committed to continue fighting in Afghanistan at least through 2014, with one senior American official calling even that possible withdrawal date “aspirational.” Opponents of continuing the large-scale, American-led counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan cite the failure of the Soviet military to suppress the Afghan insurgency in the 1980s as evidence that the United States will […]

History tells us that, when a rising great power approaches the standing of the dominant system-shaping great power, conflict is inevitable, either directly or in such regions where their two spheres of influence intersect. The great counterexample is the acceptance by a “rising” America of the late-19th century of Great Britain’s implicit offer of a “special relationship,” which allowed the latter to punch above its weight throughout the 20th century. That alliance was subsequently forged in opposition to common enemies: first the Kaiser and then Nazi Germany, followed by the Soviet Union. China and the United States have no such […]

On the surface, the NATO summit meeting in Lisbon, the North Korean artillery barrage against Yeonpyeong island, and the unmasking of the “fake” Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour in Afghanistan would appear to be separate and unconnected events. But there is a common theme that ties these three news stories together. In his WPR column column on Monday, Thomas P.M. Barnett summed up the problem: The United States cannot “close the gaps” in the global security system. The end of the Cold War and the rise of new power centers around the world have not led to any appreciable shift in […]

What happens when a country without an army discovers that soldiers from a neighboring state have marched into its territory and raised their own flag? That’s exactly what the government of Costa Rica, which has no military forces, charges Nicaragua has done, accusing its neighbor of invading its land and destroying its forests. Nicaragua, not surprisingly, sees things differently. If the events unfolding today in Central America had taken place a quarter of a century ago, there is a good chance that the sound of gunfire would now be ringing out amid the angry charges and countercharges. After all, during […]

On Oct. 17, Iranian border guards clashed with drug traffickers on the wild Iran-Afghan frontier and subsequently seized 331 lbs of narcotics contraband. The incident would be just one of many such skirmishes that take place every week, were it not for one difference: The seized drugs were not the usual suspects of Afghan opium and hashish, but rather synthetic drugs, highlighting alarming changes to the Southwest Asian narcotics industry. Synthetic drugs, such as potent crystal meth (called “shisheh,” or “glass” in Farsi), LSD and various forms of refined heroin (including a smokable, condensed-rock form referred to locally as “crack”) […]

South Korean news footage of North Korean artillery fire hitting South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island.

At the NATO heads-of-state summit held in Lisbon this weekend, the leaders of NATO member states resolved some important issues regarding the alliance’s future, but they deferred many key decisions for further deliberation. As a result, much of the summit’s outcome will not be definitively clear for some time. The topic that drew the most media attention this past weekend was how long NATO would continue its military effort in Afghanistan, and whether the alliance could actually win the war within whatever withdrawal timeline its members articulated. NATO leaders confirmed 2014 as the new target date for drawing down their […]

NATO approved a new Strategic Concept in Lisbon on Nov. 19, the first reworking of the alliance’s mission statement since 1999. Although the document offers plenty of promises, the alliance seems to have overlooked a number of problems it faces in making good on them. First, the promises. The new Strategic Concept: – calls on the allies to develop their capacity to “prevent, detect, defend against and recover from cyber-attacks,” to protect “critical energy infrastructure” and to “maintain robust, mobile and deployable conventional forces to carry out . . . Article 5 responsibilities and the alliance’s expeditionary operations.”– reaffirms the […]

The global financial crisis was a true system perturbation, revealing the gap between widely perceived risk and actual underlying risk in the world’s increasingly integrated financial system. As with any such vertical shock, the resulting horizontal waves continue to be felt long after the initial blow. When gaps in capabilities and rule-sets were subsequently discovered, the world’s major economies effected changes, like shifting economic oversight from the G-7 to the expanded G-20 and updating the Basel banking accord. In a world without true global government, these surges of great-power cooperation constitute a critical reassurance function, letting us know that an […]

Since coming to office, the Obama administration has paid a great deal of attention to the Middle East. Somehow, however, the frequently turbulent country of Lebanon slid precipitously down the list of Washington’s most-urgent regional priorities. Among the other strategic projects on its regional to-do list, Washington was working to engage with Syria, bring Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table, improve relations with Muslims, impose sanctions on Iran, and end the war in Iraq. Lebanon, perhaps unsurprisingly, got short shrift, even though it has always played an outsized role in the region, serving as the stage where powerful players […]

President Barack Obama won fans in New Delhi last week with his call for India to take a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. But while the president explicitly endorsed India as an “emerged” power, his declaration contained an implicit challenge as well. Obama said that he wanted the U.S. to work with India on an “efficient, effective, credible and legitimate” U.N. Though phrased as diplomatic rhetoric, these words raised important questions that India’s leaders must answer. Can India capture a permanent seat on the Security Council simply because of its growing economic leverage and military clout? Or should […]

Egyptians like to say that their country is Umm al Dunya, or “the Mother of the World,” and that, as the crucible of a great civilization dating back 7,000 years, its natural place is among both regional and global powers. In many ways, the boast is entirely accurate. By dint of its history, geography, and demography, Egypt has played a central role in Middle East politics and security policy since World War I. Successive global powers such as Great Britain, the Soviet Union and, most recently, the United States have come to regard Egypt as an indispensable asset for achieving […]

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) was sent to the Senate for consideration in May 2010, but its outlook is far from clear. To be ratified, the treaty mustachievetwo-thirds majorityapproval. But some treaty provisions, viewed by certain senators as restricting U.S. missile defense objectives, were already an obstacle to ratification six months ago. Even in its current configuration, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee has demanded elimination of the treaty provisions related to missile defense and certain non-nuclear systems. Given Republican gains in the Senate following the midterm elections, these provisions will face even greater opposition come January. Removing […]

A few days after the discovery of an al-Qaida plot to ship bombs disguised as printer cartridges from Yemen to the United States, a powerful explosion shook the ground in Gaza City. The blast ripped apart a brand new car, just imported into Gaza, as it drove near police headquarters in the coastal strip’s largest city. After some initial confusion about what had happened, Israeli officials took responsibility for the blast, saying its security forces had killed a top terrorist on the verge of carrying out a massive operation. Most of the Israeli and international media accepted that version of […]

In the run-up to NATO’s heads of state summit later this month in Lisbon, much of the discussion has focused on questions of the alliance’s relevance and identity, with particular attention paid to the alliance’s new Strategic Concept to be rolled out in Lisbon. But a more practical issue that will be discussed at the summit is whether to make comprehensive ballistic missile defense (BMD) an alliance-wide mission. Despite a lack of enthusiasm in Turkey and continuing discontent in Russia and perhaps some other non-NATO countries, NATO governments generally support the Obama administration’s phased adaptive approach to European missile defense. […]

Before President Barack Obama embarked on his 10-day Asian trip, his longest overseas visit since taking office, he highlighted the tour’s economic objectives. But given that government leaders generally exert more control over political-military decisions than over economic trends, the strategic goals of Obama’s trip are perhaps more important and certainly worth examining. Obama has already completed the first and longest leg of his trip in India. Some Indian leaders who place great stock on status and symbolism grumble that despite enthusiastic rhetoric, the Obama White House has effectively downgraded the U.S.-Indian partnership compared to his predecessor. Unlike the Bush […]