Defense & Security Archive

Over the past 20 months, the world has watched the conflict in Syria with concern, even horror, but without taking meaningful action to intervene in the continuing carnage. Now, however, as the Syrian civil war draws exchanges of fire across the borders with Israel, Turkey and other neighboring countries, the conflict is approaching a crucial line. This tipping point, once reached, is likely to spur a much more urgent and determined international effort to push the crisis toward a resolution that brings an end to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Western nations have condemned the bloodshed, provided humanitarian […]

In one of the largest single-day movements of refugees since the Syrian crisis began, 11,000 Syrians fled into neighboring countries Friday, with 9,000 of them entering Turkey, according to the United Nations. The number of registered refugees who have fled from Syria to Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq now totals 408,000, as reported by the New York Times, and many of them remain within the border areas, where links and tensions among Sunnis, Shiites and other groups are driving security concerns. Jeffrey White, a defense fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Trend Lines that the influx […]

Beginning in the 1970s, the United States dramatically improved what was already the top military in the world. Today the U.S. military remains among the best in history, perhaps the very best. But sustaining this quality is becoming increasingly difficult. Big problems are looming due to a wicked combination of economic and demographic trends. The most obvious and pressing problem is the military’s mounting personnel costs. The Pentagon’s personnel tab, which includes not only pay, but also health care and retirement benefits, has doubled over the past decade and now consumes about a third of the base defense budget. There […]

Nigeria is a diplomatic force within West Africa, a major participant in continental African politics and an important international actor. As the world’s seventh-most-populous country, its 14th-largest oil producer and home to Africa’s fifth-largest military, Nigeria possesses tremendous resources. Yet Nigeria’s internal security challenges and political dysfunction constrain its role on the regional, continental and world stages. Cyclical violence undermines the rule of law and entrenches intercommunal enmities. Pervasive corruption drains funding from services and infrastructure and saps public confidence in government. Policy implementation often proceeds haphazardly and generates backlash. Finally, “do-or-die” electoral politics, as former President Olusegun Obasanjo characterized […]

The main reason behind Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision last week to remove Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov has become clearer in recent days with the subsequent firing of Chief of Staff Gen. Nikolai Makarov and other senior defense officials and military officers in Russia’s Ministry of Defense. Taken together, the dismissals suggest that the shakeup was not due primarily to sex scandals, corrupt practices or alienation of the officer corps, as has been claimed by various observers. Rather, the purge was the result of a power struggle over who should control the distribution of the $700 billion that Putin pledged […]

Having won re-election, President Barack Obama now faces the daunting task of reinvigorating American foreign policy. There are reasons to be optimistic. As he turns his sights to his second term, the president has the benefit of four years of executive experience and is buoyed by the political capital that comes of even the most modest electoral victories. Both could translate into a more determined hand at the helm of the ship of state, even if domestic challenges will necessarily receive the lion’s share of the president’s attention. But for the Obama administration to solidify what has to date been […]

Over the next several weeks, the parameters of President Barack Obama’s second-term national security and foreign policy team will begin to take shape. Both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta are expected to tender their resignations and retire from the administration. The new occupants of these posts, in turn, will change the composition of both departments through their appointments to senior policy positions. There has also been talk about a shake-up in the White House staff, as the president gears up to meet the challenges that were deferred or ignored due to the exigencies of […]

In the aftermath of the U.S. elections, a central question regarding the West’s standoff with Iran remains crucial: How serious are U.S. and Israeli leaders who assert their determination to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon? The looming question, hovering for years over the diplomatic impasse, is whether the U.S. and Israel have been bluffing when they suggest they might attack Iran if it does not desist from its nuclear ambitions. Is the mantra “all options are on the table” coming from Washington an effort to exert psychological pressure on the Iranian regime, or is it a statement of […]

On Tuesday, a Chinese court sentenced four members of a Myanmar drug gang to death for hijacking two Chinese cargo boats and kidnapping and killing 13 Chinese crewmembers on the Mekong River last year. The defendants, including two other gang members who received lesser sentences, were charged with “intentional homicide, drug trafficking, kidnapping and ship hijacking,” as reported by the Associated Press. Richard P. Cronin, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Stimson Center, said the court decision raises more questions than it answers, especially about the nine Thai soldiers who were also accused of involvement in the attack […]

Sergei Shoigu officially took over as Russia’s new defense minister yesterday, but the reasons for the sudden dismissal of his predecessor, Anatoliy Serdyukov, remain uncertain. Russian President Vladimir Putin insists that he dismissed Serdyukov to allow authorities to investigate allegations of widespread corruption in the Defense Ministry. Serdyukov, who has cracked down on corruption within the armed forces, is accused of allowing his key subordinates and family members to enrich themselves in more sophisticated ways, such as by selling off valuable Defense Ministry properties at below market prices to friendly buyers in return for kickbacks. But Russian and Western media […]

Last week, Gen. Raymond Odierno, the U.S. Army chief of staff, announced that the Army, in conjunction with the Marine Corps and the U.S. Special Operations Command, was creating something called the Office of Strategic Landpower. As word spread through the defense media, including blogs and social media, much of the initial reaction treated the development as simple Defense Department politics and interservice wrangling. The land forces, according to this line of thought, were attempting to rebut ideas about future conflict promoted by the Air Force and Navy. Since those services had already created an AirSea Battle Office, the land […]

Editor’s note: This briefing and the CSIS report on which it is based was co-authored by Priscilla Hermann and Sneha Raghavan. The U.S. strategic “pivot” toward Asia announced by President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in January 2012 has reinvigorated research efforts on defense policies in the region. However, a detailed analysis of defense spending by key Asian countries, crucial to understanding their military priorities and capabilities, has been lacking. In an attempt to fill this gap, the Center for Strategic and International Studies recently completed a study on the five largest Asian defense spenders: China, India, […]

The White House has reportedly ordered the Pentagon to reposition drones for possible retaliatory strikes in Libya — the latest evidence that drones are dislodging manned aircraft from the central role they have played in U.S. warfighting since World War II. After a decade of wars that have cost billions of dollars and claimed thousands of American lives, the American people overwhelmingly support this transition to an unmanned air force. After all, unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) deliver a lethal punch at low economic cost, with zero risk to American personnel. That explains why 83 percent of the country approves […]

Though it will be at least another 12 hours before we know whether President Barack Obama or Republican nominee Mitt Romney will be in the White House come January 2013, we do already know the most important challenge the next U.S presidential administration will face: how to deal with China. Yet, the general bipartisan consensus on the appropriate U.S policy toward China makes major changes unlikely regardless of the election outcome. Democrats and Republicans typically agree on the goal of achieving a peaceful China in a prosperous Asian region that reflects U.S-supported values of human rights. They also generally reject […]

South Sudan has embarked on a program to transform the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), the country’s preindependence guerrilla army, into a professional, conventional force by 2017. However, the success of this transformation strategy, referred to as Objective Force 2017, is contingent on a number of factors, including the absence of major conflict with Sudan, South Sudan’s ability to recover from the impact of this year’s austerity budget and the military’s ability to undertake a significant reduction in force. The precise size of the SPLA is not known, but is estimated to be as high as 210,000 soldiers. As Objective […]

Sudan’s role in the Iran-Israel conflict made headlines over the past week after a suspected Israeli airstrike on a munitions factory in Khartoum, Sudan was closely followed by a visit from two Iranian warships to Port Sudan. Katherine Zimmerman, the Gulf of Aden team leader for the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project, told Trend Lines that Sudan plays a key role in Iran’s regional strategy, and the relationship is mutually beneficial. “Sudan has served as Iran’s toehold on the African continent and has provided sanctuary to Iranian proxy groups, as well as al-Qaida operatives, and serves as a key […]