Defense & Security Archive

Dialogue between the government of Mozambique and the Renamo opposition movement continued to advance this week, with the ruling Frelimo party naming its final negotiating team after three rounds of preparatory talks. Renamo had already announced its expanded team of negotiators last week for the talks, which are to take place under international mediation in an effort to bring an end to a surge in attacks by Renamo followers on road and rail cargo. The agreement to begin negotiations, and to allow international observers to mediate them, represented a major concession by the government and follows a significant increase in […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on a range of countries’ space priorities and programs. Last week, India successfully launched 20 satellites in a single mission, a major success for the Indian Space Research Organization that positions India as a key player in the international commercial space market. In an email interview, Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College who writes in a personal capacity, discusses the state of India’s space program. WPR: What are India’s space capabilities—in terms of launch vehicles, space exploration, satellites and space-industrial complex—and who […]

The leaders of Mexico, Canada and the U.S. are gathering today for the final so-called Three Amigos summit of Barack Obama’s presidency. While clean energy targets and other issues will be high on the agenda, so too will the longstanding challenge of reining in the violence associated with transnational drug trafficking, particularly in Mexico. Cooperation with the U.S. on this issue has been a source of tensions under the administration of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who distanced his country’s security forces from their American counterparts. That trend was partly reversed in the high-profile January 2016 arrest of Joaquin “El […]

The cycle of violence between the Turkish state and insurgents of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is reaching proportions not seen since the 1990s. The fighting has left approximately 11,000 homes destroyed, leading The Financial Times to declare Turkey “the most dangerous country in Europe” and others to begin speaking of the “Syrianization” of the country’s southeastern region, where the brunt of the conflict has taken place. The fighting in the provinces of Diyarbakir, Sirnak, Hakkari, Van and Bingol has taken a heavy toll on civilians. About 1.3 million people have been impacted, with tens of thousands forced to flee […]

Earlier this month the minister of state for foreign affairs of the United Arab Emirates, Anwar Gargash, announced that the tiny federation of Persian Gulf emirates had declared an end to combat operations in Yemen, where it is part of a Saudi-led military coalition. In a June 15 speech, Gargash was quoted as saying that the Yemen war “is over for our troops,” and that the UAE was now focused on monitoring the political situation and “empowering Yemenis in liberated areas.” The speech was valedictory in tone, reiterating the oft-made point that the Emirati military has exceeded expectations in the […]

Last week, authorities in Bahrain stripped Sheikh Isa Qassim, the country’s most prominent Shiite cleric, of his citizenship. His crime: “Serving foreign interests” and spreading sectarian discord. The move wasn’t in isolation. One week prior, a Bahraini court suspended the activities of al-Wefaq, Bahrain’s main Shiite opposition group, on charges of terrorism, extremism and violence. Days before, Bahraini police detained Najeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, during a raid on his home. Zainab al-Khawaja, a political dissident, also fled the country earlier this month after being released from prison. In May, an appeals court extended the […]

When there is a major crisis in the international system, it is often followed by a host of small crises that pop up in its wake and start escalating out of control. The 2008 financial crisis set the stage for the current rash of conflicts and confrontations in the Arab world, Ukraine and the Asia-Pacific. Britain’s vote to leave the European Union could have a similar effect. The 2008 recession emboldened China and Russia to challenge the U.S., contributed to economic fragility in the Arab world, and discouraged Western policymakers from investing heavily in international conflict management. Relatively light-footprint options, […]

A spate of high-profile diplomatic feuds and military actions related to the South China Sea has raised concern about the direction of U.S.-China relations. At the Shangri La Dialogue held in Singapore from June 3-5, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter charged that China risked “self isolation” through its behavior in the South China Sea. For their part, Chinese officials and media have dismissed such criticisms. President Xi Jinping has firmly defended Chinese actions in the South China Sea, warning that “China will not accept freedom of navigation as an excuse to undermine China’s sovereignty and national security interests.” One […]

To borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill, the United States may not be at the beginning of the end of its presidential campaign, but it is at the end of the beginning. After a long, tumultuous series of primaries and caucuses, the two major parties have settled on their presumptive nominees, to be confirmed at each party’s convention this summer. Now American voters must look “under the hood” of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, exploring both candidates’ policies and inclinations in detail, before making their choice in November. Thus far, foreign and security policy have received more attention than is […]

It wasn’t exactly Gen. Douglas MacArthur vowing, “I shall return.” But when former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon announced on May 20 that he was stepping down from the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and taking a temporary leave from politics after losing his post in the Cabinet, he added a caveat laced with more than a little bravado: “I have no intention of [permanently] leaving public life,” he declared. And in case his former boss, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, missed the thrust of the promise, Yaalon added, “I will return as a candidate for national leadership.” With that, the former chief […]

Last week, New York Times reporter Mark Landler compared the foreign policy statements of a candidate for president, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, with those of the actual U.S. president, Barack Obama, in regard to the Orlando terrorist attack. His conclusion, which unsurprisingly matches that of his most recent book on the allegedly contrasting foreign policy perspectives of Clinton and Obama, is that Clinton has shown herself to be the more hawkish of the two. Clinton, he argues, is more solicitous of military force and harsher in characterizing the terrorist threat facing America. It’s the kind of comparison that immediately […]

In his defiant speech to Syria’s parliament earlier this month, President Bashar al-Assad, as he always has, cast all of Syria’s rebels as terrorists. “Just like we liberated Palmyra and many other areas before it, we are going to liberate each and every inch of Syria from their hands,” he said. The speech struck a decidedly different chord from Assad’s last national address, in July 2015, when he admitted that his army was tired, running out of soldiers, and had given up territory. A little over a month after that speech, Russia intervened in Syria, propping up Assad through airstrikes […]

When Russian President Vladimir Putin travels to Beijing in late June, he can rightfully take some satisfaction in his rapport with his host and Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping. While Moscow’s relations with other strategically important countries are troubled, there has been a remarkable strengthening of Russian-Chinese security, economic and ideological ties since Putin took charge of the Kremlin in 1999. Since then, Russia and China have cooperated more to promote common regional interests; their bilateral defense relationship has evolved to become more institutionalized and better integrated; and China has become Russia’s leading national trade partner and gateway to other […]

One of the secondary effects of the terrible shooting in Orlando, Florida, has been to relaunch the debate on whether public officials have misidentified the terrorist threat at home by failing to call it “radical Islam” or “Islamic extremism.” At another point along the spectrum of Islamic political activism is Tunisia’s Ennahda party. Often described as a “moderate Islamist” party, its leaders recently decided to separate Ennahda’s political and religious activities, going so far as to ban party leaders from preaching in mosques or holding positions in religious associations. That raises the question of whether a party whose followers would […]

Chinese President Xi Jinping has a bone to pick with Taiwan’s new president, Tsai Ying-wen, who took office late last month. Xi and other top Chinese leaders believed they had pushed forward unification with Taiwan during the presidency of Tsai’s predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou of the long-time ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Although Ma failed to go nearly as far as they would’ve liked, at least in Beijing’s view, some tangible progress was made. Now, Xi doesn’t want to see those gains lost with a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) president in power. Chinese officials correctly perceive that a DPP administration will […]

China is becoming an important military player in Africa. It has sent combat troops to bolster the United Nations operation in South Sudan, is opening a naval station in Djibouti, and has promised to invest in African Union peace operations. Is this evidence of Beijing’s creeping bid for superpower status, as pessimistic Western observers fear, or a positive sign that it is can contribute more to global stability? As Mathieu Duchatel, Manuel Lafont Rapnouil and I argue in a new report from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), it would be odd if China did not take a greater […]

A series of gruesome attacks on bloggers in Bangladesh has shocked the country and the world. But they are only one element in a years-long cycle of mounting violence. Large-scale political repression has created a climate of injustice that extremist groups have easily exploited in their war against secularists and liberal thinkers. Unfortunately, political violence is nothing new in Bangladesh. Much of it is the result of the unrelenting, intense rivalry between the country’s two major parties, the governing Awami League of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and […]