Defense & Security Archive

The deadly terrorist attacks in Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivoire in January and March, respectively, show the deep reach of militants affiliated with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and their ability to bounce back from the military drubbing they received as a result of France’s intervention in the Sahel, which began in 2013. The spectacular attacks are part of a long pattern illustrating the enduring resilience of AQIM and its ability to regenerate itself by adjusting strategy and tactics to mounting pressure from both counterterrorism operations and rising jihadi competition in the Sahel and West African region. As alliances […]

Despite Donald Trump’s tough talk about the Iran nuclear deal during the presidential campaign, there have been some signals since the election that his administration may walk back his threat to cancel the accord. But hostility to Iran seems rampant among Trump’s advisers, meaning the spirit, if not the letter, of the agreement will likely be violated. The costs of reverting to a confrontational approach to Iran would include more regional instability, and doing so would raise serious questions about Trump’s commitment to some international norms and practices. What to do about Iran is one of the prominent foreign policy […]

The surprise election of Donald Trump as America’s 45th president has upset long-standing assumptions about America’s role in the world. It also calls into question the country’s future trajectory as the guarantor and administrator of the international order, a position that has been so carefully built and nurtured by Washington since the end of World War II. America’s European friends and allies are among those most worried about the future U.S. role in Europe, at a time when the continent is surrounded by instability and faces an increasingly aggressive Russia to its east. This unease is understandable if one considers […]

Earlier this month, on Nov. 5, militants from the self-proclaimed Islamic State killed 26 civilians with a roadside bomb as they fled Hawija, a predominantly Sunni Arab town about 40 miles southwest of Kirkuk. With international attention focused on the battle for Mosul, the attack was just the latest sign of the ongoing humanitarian and security crisis on a forgotten battlefield in another part of northern Iraq. Hawija’s approximately 200,000 civilians have lived under Islamic State control since June 2014. The town represents a strategically significant objective in the fight to secure northern Iraq and reintegrate liberated communities into the […]

In September, a number of media outlets in Japan published stories about the Japanese politician Renho Murata, who was running for the leadership of the opposition Democratic Party. The attention centered on whether Renho, as she is known, who was born in Japan to a Taiwanese father and Japanese mother, had fully renounced her Taiwanese nationality as required by the Japanese Nationality Law. In an interview with the Huffington Post at the time, Renho decried all the fuss. “I was born and brought up in Japan,” she commented. “What can I say except that I’m Japanese? Quite honestly, I think […]

Movements like the self-proclaimed Islamic State must innovate or die. An insurgency is always weaker than the government or governments it faces, so it must make the most of its limited resources and whatever advantages it does enjoy. Often what it has in its favor is a lack of restraint and a willingness to carefully orchestrate violence to maximize its effects. That is why groups like the Islamic State rely on terrorism, using it to generate fear disproportionate to the resources it takes to execute an attack. In strategic terms, terrorism is cheap but potentially effective, particularly if the victim […]

Russia might be doing all it can to secure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s grip on power in Syria, but that hasn’t dissuaded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from pursuing robust ties with Moscow. Last week, he and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev met in Jerusalem to mark the 25th anniversary of Russia-Israel ties. They capped off the occasion by signing a series of bilateral agreements on agriculture, technology and construction. Medvedev’s visit comes after a good year for Israel-Russia ties, described by The Washington Post as a “budding bromance.” Since September 2015, Netanyahu has met with Russian President Vladimir Putin […]

When U.S. voters chose Donald Trump to be their president, they entrusted him among other things to handle what two months ago I characterized as the top three threats that currently require international cooperation: climate change, nuclear proliferation and terrorism. Expect the new president to sound a lot different on these issues than President Barack Obama. On terrorism and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, the changes may be more rhetorical than real. On climate change, if the U.S. walks away from its leadership role, the consequences will be grave. As a candidate, Trump expressed strong views on each of […]

Standing at about 6 feet tall, Chinese President Xi Jinping cuts an imposing figure, especially compared to the famously diminutive Deng Xiaoping, the transformative leader who, after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, guided China through monumental reforms from 1978 until his formal retirement in 1989. Xi’s baritone and precise Mandarin, surprisingly uncommon for former top Chinese leaders, projects added self-assuredness and gravitas. This aura of confidence seems only appropriate for someone of Xi’s political stock: a princeling descended from communist revolutionaries who were present at the creation of modern China under Mao. Perhaps that is why many commentators have deigned […]

In a sharp rebuke to the United Nations, Kenya has started the process of pulling its troops from the U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan. To make matters worse, Kenya is simultaneously disengaging from peace efforts in South Sudan, where a 15-month-old agreement to bring together warring parties was already on the verge of collapse. The moves by Kenya, which has been a key regional force in pushing for South Sudanese stability, could cement its failure. Kenya’s moves come in response to the firing of Lt. Gen. Johnson Mogoa Kimani Ondieki, the Kenyan commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force in […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and senior editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss the global implications of Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the United States presidential election. For the Report, Andrew Green joins Peter Dörrie to talk about the forgotten conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region. Listen:Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant Articles on WPR: What Does Trump’s Election Victory Mean? Learning to Live With Uncertainty What Does the Presidential Election Mean for U.S. Foreign Policy? As Renzi’s Referendum Gamble Approaches, Italy Could Be the EU’s Next Headache Delays Are the Least of Somalia’s Election Troubles Darfur’s Conflict […]

Over the past month, the situation in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, which has been extremely volatile since an eruption of violence in the early 2010s, has deteriorated once again. Following an attack on police outposts near the border with Bangladesh in early October, which killed at least nine policemen, Rakhine has been on edge. Some human rights groups have reported that the security forces and police, as well as individuals, are striking back at the state’s ethnic Rohingya, since militant Rohingya Muslims were believed to be behind the killings of the police. Although the security forces, which are dominated by […]

In the most shocking political upset in American history, Donald Trump has won the presidency. Now there are major questions about whether someone who has never held elected office or exercised leadership in a system based on consensus-building and a division of power can learn to do so on the job, at a time when so much is at stake. Trump’s learning curve will be particularly crucial in the realm of national security strategy, where the president faces fewer checks and balances, and where mistakes can have a cost in blood and even precipitate outright disaster. It is hard to […]

Historians and politicians will mine the astonishing 2016 U.S. election for years to come, drawing countless lessons about voter dissatisfaction, political acrimony and resistance to social change, among many other mostly domestic problems brought to the surface by the tumultuous campaign. But one of the unexpected mileposts marked by America’s electoral exercise this year lies in the use of a new weapon in global power politics: weaponized social media as an aggressive tool of foreign policy. If war is politics by other means, as the 19th-century military strategist Carl Von Clausewitz famously said, the U.S. election demonstrated that in the […]

Jacob Berry is searching for any sign he can return to the home in Darfur he fled 13 years ago. In 2003, near the outset of the ongoing conflict in Darfur, a Khartoum-backed militia attacked Berry’s village. In their efforts to root out a rebel movement, government troops and state-supported fighters have committed countless targeted atrocities against civilians, and Berry’s village was not spared. Houses were set alight, residents scattered, and an unknown number of people killed, including his father and brother. Berry, then 15, fled all the way to Libya’s Mediterranean coast, before boarding a boat for Alexandria, Egypt. […]

Voting has finally begun for the upper and lower houses of Somalia’s Federal Parliament after several delays. While both houses are due to elect a new president on Nov. 30, security and logistical challenges mean the presidential election is also likely to be postponed. In an email interview, Kenneth Menkhaus, a professor at Davidson College, discusses Somalia’s elections. WPR: How are Somalia’s elections structured, in terms of eligible voters, candidates, political parties and affiliation, and what are the major blocs or factions contesting the election? Kenneth Menkhaus: Somalia’s current elections are most accurately described as a form of indirect consociational […]

When Dwight Eisenhower took office as president in January 1953, he was deeply concerned about the trajectory of America’s security strategy. Much had changed in the years leading up to his election the previous November, as hopes that the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France and China—would collaboratively manage global security were dashed by the emergence of the Cold War. By the time Eisenhower moved into the White House, no one doubted that containing the Soviet Union was America’s most pressing strategic task. What worried him was how to […]