Defense & Security Archive

Add Hamas to the list of regimes teetering precariously in the Middle East. The Palestinian Islamist organization that rules Gaza and remains officially committed to the destruction of Israel is losing friends, running out of cash and struggling to come up with effective military tactics. Even more crucially, it is losing popular support as its foes are preparing to take it on. A group of Gazans opposed to Hamas rule has called for mass demonstrations on Nov. 11, the anniversary of Yasser Arafat’s death, openly aiming to remove Hamas from power. The organization calls itself Tamarod, “rebellion” in Arabic and […]

After weekend election violence in Kosovo forced polling places to close early and left ballot boxes destroyed, leaders of Serbia and Kosovo are meeting in Brussels today to discuss next steps. At the same time, officials have announced that the elections will be repeated in Mitrovica, the northern Serb-dominated municipality in majority-Albanian Kosovo where the attacks took place. Prime Minister Ivica Dacic of Serbia and Prime Minister Hashim Thaci of Kosovo are meeting to determine how to move forward on a pact that aims to integrate ethnic Serbs with the rest Kosovo. Under the terms of a European Union-mediated agreement […]

Under new President Hasan Rouhani, Iran has moved swiftly to repair communication channels with the U.S. and speed up negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. So far, much attention has been paid to how Washington will react to Rouhani’s diplomatic outreach. But success in these negotiations will also necessitate an improved Iranian relationship with the European Union. While there is skepticism about how flexible the Islamic Republic can be and whether Presidents Hasan Rouhani and Barack Obama can deliver on whatever deal might come out of the negotiation process, an equally important question is what the EU can offer to get […]

Last week, a U.S. drone strike killed Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of Pakistan’s sociopathically violent Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) movement. The organization has murdered thousands, often relying on indiscriminant suicide bombs; has trained terrorists to attack the United States; and has remained closely aligned with al-Qaida. No one among the civilized will lament Mehsud’s passing. But because the United States did it, Pakistan has responded with outrage. Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan called the U.S. action “a conspiracy to sabotage the peace talks” with the TTP—even though almost no one thinks those talks had much chance of success. Islamabad lodged a […]

The eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) took a turn toward peace today as M23 rebels reportedly gave up their 20-month insurgency. The Congolese army, re-engineered after a humiliating defeat by the rebels last year, pushed the M23 out of its remaining strongholds with help from a precedent-setting U.N. intervention brigade and an intensive new focus on the conflict by the U.S. and other international actors. But as Anthony Gambino wrote in a WPR briefing in July, ending the M23’s fight is only one step in a much larger process: The key question now is whether the international community has […]

Turkey’s decision to buy a Chinese-made air-and-missile defense system has aroused undue anxiety about Ankara’s ties with Beijing. While the purchase of the untested Chinese system is unhelpful from the perspective of NATO interoperability as well as Turkey’s protection, Ankara and Beijing see the deal primarily as a business transaction rather than as a precursor to closer security ties. The Chinese firm simply offered better co-production, technology transfer and pricing terms than did the competitors. Turkey’s acquisition program aims to establish a national air-and-missile defense system that can intercept incoming ballistic missiles inside the atmosphere. On Sept. 26, after years […]

The term “shadow wars” aptly describes the U.S. approach to the war on terror. Policymakers perceive they are fighting an enemy composed of shadow and dust, one hidden in and facilitated by the dark underworld of global politics. But to prosecute this campaign, the U.S. has itself, to borrow a term from the writer J.R.R. Tolkien, “fallen into shadow”: Its moral high ground and once-principled politics have been replaced by a recourse to policies such as arbitrary detention, torture and extrajudicial killings that have tarnished its reputation and bolstered its enemies. The blowback from these policies demonstrates that a just […]

Introduction: A Climate of Fear Every democracy must wrestle with the dilemma of ensuring security for its citizens, while at the same time protecting their liberty and privacy. Since 1975, when the U.S. Senate’s Church Committee, led by Sen. Frank Church, investigated media revelations about domestic spying by the CIA, the United States, more than any other nation in history, has been attempting to find an effective response to this dilemma: a workable equilibrium between the activities of secret agencies, on one hand, and the proper measures of accountability necessary to prevent them from overstepping the boundaries of law and […]

On Jan. 21, 2009, President Barack Obama pledged to close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The announcement’s timing and setting highlighted its importance. On just his second day in office, and flanked by former generals and admirals, the president had made it a top priority to shut the U.S. prison that had become synonymous with human rights abuses and lawlessness. That same day, Obama issued an order banning torture and closing secret CIA “black sites” in an effort to align America’s fight against al-Qaida and other terrorist groups with due process and the rule of law. Obama […]

Can United Nations peacekeepers ever transform themselves into effective war-fighters? This question has dogged the organization since its failures in the Balkans, Somalia and Rwanda. But it has gained additional urgency over the past year as the U.N. has searched for new strategies to stabilize Mali and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Security Council has wagered that blue helmeted troops can neuter determined rebel forces in both cases, if under very different strategic circumstances. Some U.N. officials fret that the council has placed too much faith in these military efforts. Yet there has been some good news […]

Despite suffering huge losses, the Syrian army has managed to survive longer than almost anyone thought possible at the beginning of Syria’s civil war. According to a recent estimate by the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR), a U.K.-based monitoring group, 28,800 Syrian soldiers have been killed since the beginning of the conflict 2 1/2 years ago. This represents a massive hemorrhage of manpower for an army that was estimated to have a strength of 220,000 at the beginning of the war. The army has also suffered desertions and from the beginning could rely only on a handful of crack […]

The abrupt about-face on Syria, the global humiliation resulting from the U.S. government shutdown, the continuing fallout from revelations about National Security Agency activities, strong statements emanating from Riyadh that Saudi Arabia is re-evaluating its relationship with the United States—all of these have fed into a narrative that the United States is losing the ability to set the global agenda. The perception that President Barack Obama has been weakened led Forbes magazine to drop him to the No. 2 spot on the list of the world’s most powerful people, with Russia’s Vladimir Putin leapfrogging him to take the top position […]

The World Health Organization confirmed this week that there has been an outbreak of polio in Syria, where war has devastated the health care system and there is little hope of doing much to stop the spread of infectious disease. Trend Lines spoke with three experts about the issues of restricted access, the targeting of health care workers and the inability to move people and supplies across borders. “This is clear evidence of the collapse of the health care system in Syria and the terrible humanitarian consequences,” said Elizabeth Ferris, co-director of the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement, explaining that […]