Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Greg Scoblete responded to my argument in support of a military intervention in Libya, which he aptly dubbed the “Because We Can” standard, by questioning just what it is we think we can do: It’s important to recognize that intervening in Libya and bombing Gaddafi’s supporters is not the same thing as finding a politically acceptable end-state to the country’s rebellion — a fact that is being resolutely overlooked by most of the campaign’s supporters. So, yes, there are very low barriers to entry in Libya, which makes it attractive where a campaign against Bahrain or Burma is much less […]

The opening acts of the 21st century have fundamentally challenged long-held notions of military power. The past decade has unveiled not only the disruptive power of terrorist groups with global reach, but also the ability of low-budget insurgent groups to directly confront the best military forces of the West — with surprising success. Moreover, recent revolutionary events across the Arab world have demonstrated the limits of military power when facing mass popular uprisings. Disorder, chaos and violent extremism seem on course to replace state-on-state violence as the most common forms of conflict in the new century. Given this new security […]

The diffusion of power in the 21st century from states to nonstate actors has left more and more things outside the control of even the most powerful states. To accomplish their goals, states must do better at leveraging their smart power, which combines the hard power of coercion and payment with the soft power of persuasion and attraction. Doing so will often require wielding power with others rather than over them. What will it mean to wield power in the global information age of the 21st century? What resources will produce power? In the 16th century, control of colonies and […]

For many years, the United States has been the world’s most powerful nation. It remains the undisputed global leader in military power and still possesses vast economic and cultural influence. And while Washington’s ability to combine both hard and soft power to influence world events — what Joseph Nye calls “smart power” — has diminished somewhat, it is still in a far superior position relative to any other country. U.S. primacy, however, comes with opportunity costs. An alternate path might have delivered a comparable level of security at far less expense and risk. Even many who unabashedly celebrate our 20-year […]

One of the most revealing features of today’s international system is that only two nations, America and China, possess sufficient power to truly disrupt it — either directly, through the application of military force, or indirectly, by unleashing an uncontainable economic crisis. In fact, to truly derail globalization in its current trajectory, the two would need to act in concert, either by fighting each other directly or experiencing simultaneous economic collapses. Short of those two scenarios, modern globalization remains highly resilient to shocks of all sorts. That resilience is the only power that really matters in this world. It defines […]

The extent to which events in Libya have overshadowed President Barack Obama’s Latin America tour can’t be overstated. With the U.S. president in El Salvador today after previous stops in Brazil and Chile, there’s a good deal of speculation about why he decided to press forward with the trip rather than reschedule. Many believe the tour is a “move to counteract the rising influence of China, which is in the midst of an unprecendented energy grab in the oil- and mineral-rich region,” according to a report in the Christian Science Monitor, which asserted that “the Chinese yuan is contesting U.S. […]

There is no popular or expert consensus about which actors possess economic power in the 21st century. Public uncertainty is reflected in the April 2010 Pew Global Attitudes survey, which reveals interesting cross-country discontinuities in the perception of power. When asked to identify “the world’s leading economic power,” a majority of respondents in a diverse array of developing countries — including Brazil and India — name the United States. On the other hand, in the developed world, the results look dramatically different, with strong pluralities in five of the original G-7 economies — including the United States, Japan and Germany […]

Senior military figures, diplomats and officials in Yemen are abandoning theirpresident of the last 32 years. Ali Abdullah Saleh’s government has been beseiged for weeks by protests in the capital Sanaa. On Friday, more than 50 were killed in a crackdown on the streets. BySunday, president Saleh had sacked all ofhis ministers.

Four separate assaults by rebel forces in Colombia have left at least 11 dead. Authorities say the FARC and ELN guerrilla groups are responsible. Three civilians were killed in a rebel attack on a town in the Colombian region of Norte de Santander on Friday. The human death toll in rebel attacks over the last 24 hours now stands at eleven.

Belgium recently surpassed Iraq to become the country that has gone longest without forming a government, after elections in June 2010 handed a plurality to a Flemish separatist party. In an email interview, Dave Sinardet, professor of political science at the Free University of Brussels and the University of Antwerp, discussed Belgium’s long-running political crisis. WPR: Why have tensions between Wallonia and Flanders become so pronounced in recent years? Dave Sinardet: Three key elements can help to explain the complex political crisis in Belgium. First, there is a structural element: the absence of national political parties. All parties are either […]

For decades now, strategic experts have predicted that our world was on the verge of a break-out in nuclear proliferation that would see us grappling with two- or three-dozen nuclear powers. Indeed, the inexorable spread of nuclear weapons is the closest thing to an unassailable canon in the field of international relations, as one cannot possibly employ the term “nuclear proliferation” without preceding it with the modifier “increasing.” This unshakeable belief, wholly unsupported by any actual evidence, drives many Cold War-era “wise men” to argue that mutually assured destruction (MAD) and strategic deterrence in general are obsolete and therefore immoral […]

There are plenty of compelling arguments against the intervention in Libya. The fact that it takes place as President Barack Obama embarks on his first tour of Latin America highlights the way in which our disproportionate and outdated engagement in the Middle East distracts us strategically from what I consider to be more important priorities in our own hemisphere. The delay in taking action allowed for a broad if fragile multilateral mandate, but also probably reduced the likelihood that the intervention will be immediately decisive and thereby raised the risk of a drawn-out stalemate. I, for one, think we could […]

Thursday’s U.N.-sanctioned no-fly zone over Libya and the military strikes against Moammar Gadhafi’s ground forces that followed over the weekend may have come too late for Libya’s freedom-seeking people. Even a ceasefire or internationally imposed standoff between Gadhafi’s forces and the anti-government fighters in Benghazi and elsewhere would merely maintain the status quo, with Gadhafi remaining in control of most of the country. If so, Gadhafi will have demonstrated to autocrats everywhere that terror is an effective means of maintaining power at home and instilling uncertainty and fear abroad. This should come as no surprise, as Gadhafi is not new […]

In addition to spreading across the region, the Arab uprisings are inspiring peaceful demonstrations away from the Middle East — perhaps most notably, albeit with little international news coverage, in the former Soviet bloc country of Armenia. More than 10,000 anti-government protesters rallied last week in the capital, Yerevan, where according to the Associated Press, opposition leader and former President Levon Ter-Petrosian claimed the demonstration was inspired by the revolts in the Arab world. Outcry has mounted since Serzh Sargsyan, a former prime minister, became the nation’s third president in a disputed 2008 election, the immediate aftermath of which was […]

Thousands of demonstrators in the Armenian capital Yerevan have called on the government to resign, in the former Soviet republic’s largest protest for for three years. The opposition are predicting a bloodless “velvet revolution” inspired by the Arab uprisings.

Pulling back for a second from the debate over whether the U.S. should intervene in Libya, the process by which the actual international response unfolded is cause for optimism. Among the big-puzzle pieces that shifted, I see the following: – The U.S. as “law-abiding” global actor. President Barack Obama has already taken hits for indecisiveness and worse, but the fact that the administration held firm on multilateral mandates highlights its commitment to a multipartner world. – France and Britain as European security guarantors in the Mediterranean and Northern Africa. It remains to be seen how involved NATO will become in […]

Writing in his World Politics Review column this week, Thomas P.M. Barnett warned that the United States’ response to the Libyan uprising risks turning Ian Bremmer’s and David Gordon’s prediction of a “G-zero” world into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Specifically, Barnett argued that by failing to take the lead in organizing an intervention to tip the scales in the Libyan civil war on behalf of the opposition to Moammar Gadhafi, the Obama administration was “purposefully abdicat[ing] its global leadership role.” Another reading is that the administration’s reaction to the Libyan uprising reflects the degree to which it allowed itself to be […]