Defense & Security Archive

The ongoing Shiite-Sunni cold war that is manifesting itself throughout the Middle East may be beginning to spill over into India. Home to a large Muslim minority consisting of both major sects of Islam, India has recently found itself forced to deal with increasing fallout from the intra-Islamic struggle. At one of the end of the spectrum was the attack against an Israeli diplomat possibly orchestrated by Iranian proxies; at the other were the recent violent protests by a Saudi-funded seminary in the heart of Mumbai. Given India’s dependence on energy exports from the wider Islamic world and the nation’s […]

The U.S. is still the undisputed space superpower, but China is fast gaining military and technological ground on its rival. Video News by NewsLook

This October, U.S. President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney will debate defense policy. That debate has the potential to be path-breaking: The national security strategy crafted immediately after Sept. 11, which led the United States into Iraq and Afghanistan, has now run its course, creating the opportunity to re-examine the very foundation of American strategy, including the reasons why the United States uses military power as well as the ways that it does so. More likely, though, the presidential debate will avoid big questions and gravitate toward immediate problems like Iran, Syria, North Korea and the size of […]

In Kenya, clashes between rival tribal groups in the Tana River area continued this week, as tensions over access to land and water triggered revenge attacks between the seminomadic Orma pastoralist community and the Pokomo farming community.* On Monday and Tuesday, more houses were set on fire, forcing many to flee and driving the death toll higher. Meanwhile, with the government so far unable to restore order to the region, deadly riots also raged on in the port city of Mombasa, following the killing of a radical Muslim preacher. “What is going on between the Pokomo and the Orma is […]

At last week’s Moscow Nonproliferation Conference, organized by the Center for Energy and Security Studies, some 200 people, including a number of prominent Russian and Western experts, gathered to discuss a wide range of nonproliferation issues. Given the statements of the Russian speakers at the conference, Moscow is laying down some tough, albeit often understandable, conditions for making further progress in nuclear arms control. Sergey Ryabkov, the Russian deputy foreign minister who keynoted the conference, stressed the importance of strengthening the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Ryabkov insisted that what he called the treaty’s three core principles — nuclear nonproliferation, disarmament […]

U.S. troops are still in Afghanistan, nearly 11 years after they invaded. Why? The answer boils down to one word: al-Qaida. The goal is to damage the terrorist group enough to prevent a repeat of the 9/11 attacks. Video News by NewsLook

In August 1944, representatives from China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States gathered at the Dumbarton Oaks mansion in Washington to lay the foundations of the postwar global governance architecture. Coinciding with the liberation of Paris by Allied forces, the meeting set the stage for many of the international and regional political, security and economic structures on which the global order has been based since 1945: the United Nations and subsequent multilateral organizations, as well as international agreements on trade, tariffs and currencies. Under the auspices of these arrangements, states were willing to cede some sovereignty […]

Deadly bombings rip through mainly Shi’ite districts of Baghdad on Sunday, on one of the bloodiest days of the year with more than 100 killed across the country. Video News by NewsLook

Syrian warplanes have bombed a residential area of Aleppo after rebels overran an army barracks in the area. Video News by NewsLook

Colombia and the leftist rebel group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) announced Tuesday that they had signed an agreement to launch peace negotiations. Chile and Venezuela will be observers at the talks, which will begin in Oslo, Norway, and continue in Havana, Cuba. As the Washington Post reported, the talks represent a “new attempt to end the Western Hemisphere’s longest-running conflict” and the first such effort since three years of negotiations “ended disastrously in 2002.” Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, offered several reasons why the talks could possibly succeed this time around. “The Colombian security forces […]

The Colombian rumor mill has been spinning for years with stories about secret negotiations between the government and Marxist guerrillas. With the buzz of speculation recently growing even louder, President Juan Manuel Santos confirmed in a speech to the nation on Aug. 27 that exploratory talks had, in fact, taken place. On Tuesday, Santos again went on national television to announce that peace talks between the Colombian government and the country’s main armed rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), will begin next month in Oslo, Norway, before moving later to Havana, Cuba. “It’s time to turn the […]

Talk of a U.S. attack on Iran is like a late-summer thunderstorm that rumbles ominously in the distance without ever drifting further away. Few American observers advocate an immediate attack, but a growing number hint that the question is when, not if, a strike takes place. The distance from saber-rattling to war is narrowing. As is often the case in the prelude to war, the discussion has so far been informed more by passion than by analysis, stoked by popular distrust of the Iranian regime. As the United States found when contemplating the invasion of Iraq in 2002, such an […]

After talks in New Delhi, India, on Tuesday, Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie and Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony announced an agreement to resume joint military exercises, a move that signaled “a thaw in relations.” The two countries had suspended joint military exercises two years ago. But while this latest agreement seems to signal a renewed effort to improve ties, serious strains remain in the relationship between the two emerging Asian powers. For Jagannath P. Panda, a research fellow at the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, the major points of contention in the defense and security realm between China […]

Qatar is reportedly in discussions with Germany to purchase 200 Leopard-2 tanks at a cost of roughly $2.5 billion. In an email interview, Christian Mölling, an associate in the international security division of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), discussed Germany’s arms industry. WPR: What is the current state of Germany’s arms industry? Christian Mölling: German defense companies produce world-class products in the areas of armored vehicles and tanks as well as submarines and to some extent surface ships and electronics. There is no purely German company left in the aerospace sector, since they have been integrated […]

When Mali announced the formation of its latest transitional civilian government on Aug. 20, the new cabinet pointedly excluded representatives of the Islamist coalition that controls much of the territory in the country’s north. The new government, which retains interim President Dioncounda Traore and interim Prime Minister Cheick Modibo Diarra, has made fighting the Islamist rebels — including the Tuareg-led Ansar al Din movement, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and al-Qaida offshoot the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA) — a top priority. However, the government and external actors face barriers to success on the battlefield, […]

Last month, the Center for Strategic and International Studies released the report of a bipartisan study group co-chaired by Richard Armitage and Joseph Nye on improving the U.S.-Japan relationship. The report, titled “U.S.-Japan Alliance: Anchoring Stability in Asia,” received little media attention, and some of its suggestions seem impractical, at least for now. However, its findings deserve consideration by policy analysts interested in strengthening the most enduring U.S. alliance in Asia at a time when Washington is seeking to reinforce its interests in that region. Although the report finds flaws with various U.S. policies, most of its concern is directed […]