Defense & Security Archive

Last week, President Barack Obama announced his intention to slow the final stages of the drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Combined with new rules of engagement that allow U.S. forces to engage more easily with the Taliban, the move ensures that the longest war in American history will continue after his presidency comes to an end in 6 months. Obama’s announcement that the U.S. would leave 8,400 troops stationed in Afghanistan through the end of his presidency, rather than the previously planned 5,500, was hardly unexpected. The military has been pushing to extend the mission for several months now, […]

In the summer of 2014, the Obama administration found itself between a rock and a hard place. The Islamic State had just swept through northern Iraq, decimating the American-trained Iraqi army left to keep the peace after the U.S. withdrawal. Islamic State foot soldiers executed Iraqi troops and commandeered their American weapons, growing stronger and better equipped as they passed through each town. The U.S. had few options to counter the Islamic State’s rise. Having just vacated Iraq in 2010, any thoughts of a massive military deployment returning to the Middle East to win back Sunni “hearts and minds” would […]

In late June, Israel and Turkey struck a long-awaited deal to normalize diplomatic ties, ending the six-year chill sparked by Israel’s raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla that killed eight Turks and an American citizen of Turkish origin. Under the deal, Israel will allocate $20 million for compensation of the victims’ families. As ties are restored, each country will return its ambassador, and the two sides could even enter talks on a natural gas pipeline. Turkey, for its part, will halt all criminal or civil claims against Israeli military personnel involved in the raid. Shortly after the deal was signed, a […]

The tenor of NATO’s summit in Warsaw late last week focused overwhelmingly on deterring Russia’s military adventurism. While it was a positive turn for members of the alliance’s eastern flank, such as Poland and the Baltic states, longstanding NATO aspirants like Georgia are unlikely to see any genuine relief from their extended membership limbo. This is largely a consequence of NATO’s increasingly fraught internal politics, but Tbilisi itself cannot escape some blame. NATO’s shift from retrenchment and reassurance to deterrence in response to Russian aggression in Eastern Europe was evident in its plans, announced in Warsaw, to deploy four multinational […]

The result of the United Kingdom’s referendum on its membership in the European Union was a shock, even to leaders of the “leave” campaign, exposing a lack of planning for the new British relationship with Europe. Amid the turbulence of Brexit, less attention has been paid to its geopolitical effects. But on the key issues of Russia, Syria, China and trade, Brexit will have direct and significant impacts. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s purported desire for Britain to leave the EU was a debating point during the referendum campaign. While Putin’s public statements on the outcome suggest mild approval, private sources […]

Can anyone save South Sudan? The country, which collapsed into civil war in 2013, is stumbling into a new cycle of violence. Clashes in the capital, Juba, have claimed hundreds of lives in recent days. The United Nations Security Council has called for calm, and the U.S., which played a leading role in ushering in South Sudan’s independence five years ago, has condemned the violence. Yet the outbreak of fighting poses an especially serious dilemma for another power with significant economic and political interests at stake: China. Beijing is playing an increasing military and diplomatic role across Africa, as I […]

With Brexit taking up most of the oxygen in Brussels these days, it was easy to miss the release last week of the Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy. Federica Mogherini—the EU’s foreign policy chief and a vice president of the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch—was tasked with developing the new strategy last June. It was drafted after extensive consultations with the commission, the European Parliament, EU member states and think tanks. Officially titled “Shared Vision, Common Action: A Stronger Europe,” the strategy outlines the foreign policy objectives of the EU and asserts the bloc’s […]

Last month, officials from Indonesia and Australia met in Sydney, where they agreed to increase counterterrorism cooperation and information-sharing in response to the growing threat from the so-called Islamic State. In an email interview, Greta Nabbs-Keller, the manager of Indonesia programs at the University of Queensland’s international development unit, discusses the current state of Australia-Indonesia relations. WPR: How have ties with Indonesia evolved under the administration of Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and to what extent have the two sides been able to move past recent tensions over Australia’s asylum policy and Indonesia’s execution of Australian drug smugglers? Greta Nabbs-Keller: […]

When facing an adversary, the U.S. military always searches for what Carl von Clausewitz, the great 19th-century Prussian theorist of war, called the “center of gravity.” Clausewitz used the term to refer to the primary source of a combatant’s power and strength, which can take many forms, including control over a strategically valuable territory or key command-and-control center, like a capital city; or something more amorphous, like public support for the government or alliance cohesion. Today’s military strategists believe that the most effective way to defeat any enemy is to identify its center of gravity, and then destroy or control […]

NATO leaders meet for their summit in Warsaw today buffeted by crises and conflicts on all sides. Many of them could have been averted. From the global refugee crisis to conflicts across the world, much of the current instability stems from world leaders’ failure to adequately respond to human rights violations, especially if other political or economic interests are at stake. Instead, when a crisis breaks out, when the bodies start piling up, and when refugees flee by the thousands, leaders say they didn’t see it coming, and start yet another discussion about the necessity of new, more advanced early […]

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps and Kurdish rebels from the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran clashed late last month along Iran’s mountainous border with Iraq. In an email interview, Denise Natali, a distinguished research fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, discusses the relationship between the Iranian government and Iran’s Kurdish minority. WPR: How large is Iran’s Kurdish population, and how integrated are they into Iranian society? Denise Natali: Kurds are estimated to represent about 8 to 10 percent of the Iranian population, or about 6 million to 8 million people. They are not a monolithic community; […]

World powers and Middle East regional players continue to strain without success to find a formula for winding down the war in Syria and contain its expanding terrorist spillover. But political leaders in one corner of the country are moving ahead with state-building plans of their own, undeterred by the skepticism and resistance of their critics. Syria’s Kurds are sharply focused and achieving measurable success on a two-track campaign. On one track, their military forces, working in conjunction with the U.S. and other local minorities, are pushing hard against the self-declared Islamic State, making territorial gains and now pressuring the […]

There has been a resurgence of violence in the chronically unstable and impoverished Central African Republic (CAR), as regional and international efforts to push back against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) continue to fall short, and ongoing tensions between Muslim and Christian militia groups rage. CAR has experienced episodic violence for decades, but instability deepened in March 2013, when a predominantly Muslim rebel coalition known as the Seleka seized power, overthrowing former President Francois Bozize. That precipitated a bloody war between Seleka fighters and the mainly Christian “anti-balaka” militias, fought along religious and intercommunal lines. Since then, approximately 6,000 people […]

June 20 marked the one-year anniversary of the landmark peace deal struck in Algiers between the government of Mali and separatist Tuareg rebel fighters. In 2012, the fighters, joined by Islamist militias allied with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), led an uprising against the central government, claiming an independent northern state called Azawad. The Algerian-brokered deal was a bid to put an end to the cycle of rebellions that have tormented northern Mali since the 1960s. The agreement also sought to bring sustainable peace more generally to Mali, a former beacon of democracy. This, according to the agreement, known […]

On June 12, an uneasy peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea that had lasted 16 years came to a dramatic end, as border clashes claimed 200 Ethiopian lives and an unknown number of Eritrean casualties. While both countries blamed each other for escalating hostilities, the causes of current tensions differ markedly from those underpinning past wars between them, with implications for efforts by international partners seeking to mediate between the two sides. Historically, conflicts between Ethiopia and Eritrea have been triggered by territorial disputes and national security concerns. The 30-year war that lasted from 1961 to 1991 was a struggle for […]

The Obama administration recently released government information about civilian casualties from U.S. drone strikes targeting terrorists and violent extremists. The data was long-promised and long-awaited, but its release nevertheless received a tepid response from advocates for greater transparency. While the administration deserves some credit for finally acting on its own pledge, it’s clear that total transparency on this and other security issues is not an easy bar to clear. What’s more, it may not resolve disputes over policy and in some cases is not even desirable. Upon taking office, U.S. President Barack Obama set as an early goal “an unprecedented […]

Perhaps more than they have with regard to any other region of the world, pundits, political scientists and foreign ministries have latched on with an astounding vigor to the notion that the Arctic is an entirely peaceful region, ruled by laws and largely immune to geopolitical shocks. The United States’ 2013 Arctic Strategy is prefaced with the assertion that “the Arctic region is peaceful, stable, and free of conflict.” Indeed, the very possibility of conflict there is so beyond the pale that the Arctic Council—the primary organ of governance in the region—is precluded by its mandate from addressing military security. […]