War & Conflict Archive

YALA, Thailand — After more than five years, Thailand’s Muslim insurgency shows no signs of abating. But neither is there any sign of it expanding or joining the ranks of international terrorism. Instead it remains localized, which is where the Thai government hopes it will remain. Some security analysts had been concerned about the possibility of connections to al-Qaida-linked extremist groups, especially the Indonesian-based Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). JI was responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people on the resort island, and is dedicated to establishing an Islamic state encompassing Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, the southern Philippines and […]

One thing I’ve discovered from writing columns over the years is that they’re a great way to elicit invitations to sit down and talk with various players in the national security establishment. All you have to do is mention somebody’s office and you’re likely to get an e-mail from their public affairs officer eager to set your thinking straight. And so it was last week that I had the chance to converse with Ambassador John Herbst, three years in the job now as the State Department’s Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization. I earned the invitation by describing the CRS job […]

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has deliveredhis revised strategy for the war, saying the situation is “serious” but U.S. andNATO forces can succeed.

President Barack Obama came to power with a not-so-secret plan to reshape the Middle East. His team envisioned a fundamental realignment in the region, with an eye towards resolving a host of longstanding conflicts that made it a global focal point of political instability. A key element of that plan centered on one country: Syria. By reconstituting Washington’s relationship with Damascus, the reasoning went, Obama would manage to radiate improvements outward to a host of regional disputes. Seven months into the Obama administration, Washington’s efforts to pry Syria from its tight alliance with Iran and persuade it to start working […]

In August 2008, Russia and Georgia fought a brief, bloody war over Georgia’s pro-Russian region of South Ossetia. After hundreds of casualties, Georgia withdrew its forces, essentially ceding the breakaway province to Russia. Moscow’s overall aim was to ensure “that Russia’s power is respected both within and outside the post-Soviet space,” according to U.S. Army Lt. Col. Robert Hamilton, a fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. While the bulk of the fighting in South Ossetia pitted tanks against tanks and infantry against infantry, the conflict also featured sophisticated propaganda efforts, on both sides. Russian and Georgian […]

The U.S. Cyber-Consequences Unit has recently issued a report documenting how Russia supplemented its conventional war against Georgia last August with a massive, well-integrated and pre-planned information warfare campaign against Georgia’s Internet structure. The techniques were so successful that the unit has restricted distribution of the full report to U.S. government and certain other Internet security professionals. Only the executive summary (pdf) has been made available to the public. The U.S. Cyber-Consequences Unit is independent, non-profit research institute affiliated with the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. The report’s main author, John Bumgarner, directs research at the […]

When the global financial crisis struck roughly a year ago, the blogosphere was ablaze with all sorts of scary predictions of, and commentary regarding, ensuing conflict and wars — a rerun of the Great Depression leading to world war, as it were. Now, as global economic news brightens and recovery — surprisingly led by China and emerging markets — is the talk of the day, it’s interesting to look back over the past year and realize how globalization’s first truly worldwide recession has had virtually no impact whatsoever on the international security landscape. None of the more than three-dozen ongoing […]

Tension between Muslims and Buddhists in Thailand’sdeep south have escalated in the wake of a recent Mosque shooting. MarkOltmanns reports for World Politics Review.

Editor’s Note: The following is a letter to the World Politics Review editor from Simon Shercliff, first secretary for foreign security and policy at the British Embassy in Washington. To the Editor: It’s important that I set the record straight on David Axe’s World Politics Review column entitled “Afghanistan Could Portend British Pull-out” and his subsequent and related blog post on Wired’s Danger Room, both of which wrongly argued that the 200th British soldier killed last week in Afghanistan could potentially weaken the U.K.’s resolve and long-term commitment to Afghanistan. No one can doubt the U.K.’s commitment to this mission. […]

In one of the most quoted aphorisms in international relations, the Prussian political philosopher Carl von Clausewitz said that “war is merely a continuation of politics.” In other words, for every war that has been waged, we can point to political aims underpinning its waging. Take some recent examples. In large part, the 1991 Persian Gulf war was about exerting power: It sought to prevent an invasion of Saudi Arabia and oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait. However, in Vietnam, the end goal was political influence: The war was fought to keep the south from falling to the communists. The examples […]

The small piece of land on the eastern Mediterranean known as the Gaza strip has seen its share of violence over the decades, with a series of conflicts fought along its narrow alley ways and on its sandy beaches. The latest round of fighting, gun battles that left two dozen men dead last weekend in a mosque in southern Gaza , opened yet another chapter in Gaza ‘s troubled history. Unlike other recent clashes, the fighting this time did not pit Israelis against Palestinians. It did not involve loyalists of the rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas competing for power. […]

On Thursday morning, a bomb exploded in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan, injuring a British soldier. Two days later, the soldier died at a hospital in Great Britain. He was the 200th U.K. fatality in the eight-year-old Afghanistan war. British newspapers marked the milestone with a flurry of grim news reports. And in short order, fighting claimed four more British troops. Great Britain has around 9,000 troops in Afghanistan — the biggest national contingent, after the U.S. British forces are concentrated in the restive south, especially in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates […]

There is tremendous buzz about Afghanistan’s elections. Open up any op-ed page, and you can find countless articles about votes and democracy and Karzai not instantly winning, and whatever else. But what I don’t get is why anyone cares.Democratic elections usually rest on a few basic principles: a free and fair vote, an uncoerced selection of candidates, and an agreement by all parties to abide by the results. Afghanistan doesn’t quite qualify for any of these. *Take the idea of a free and fair vote. Pajhwok, an internationally-funded independent Afghan news service, has an entire news page set aside for […]

Will the White House approve even more troops for Afghanistan? As Gen. Stanley McChrystal reevaluates the war strategy, he has reportedly considered as many as 30,000 more, and he’s making a strong case. So much that an interview with the Wall Street Journal resulted in a front page headline declaring the, “Taliban Now Winning.” But the troop numbers don’t tell the whole story. Or, the story doesn’t tell all the troop numbers. Almost all counts circulated these days consist of “boots on the ground” assessments. Only, as a single measure, boots on the ground is only a part of the […]

JALREZ VALLEY, Afghanistan — It’s a chilly summer night in the Jalrez valley, lit well by a three-quarter moon. I’m on a mission with the men of the 4/25 Artillery Battalion, part of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division, based in the Wardak and Logar provinces. We are weaving through ancient irrigation canals and wading across the numerous small rivers that feed the fertile valley, making our way to a medium sized village nestled into a hillside. Our winding path has been carefully chosen to minimize the chance that we will step on an IED, but […]

MEXICO CITY — Francisco Morelos Borja, the Michoacan president of the governing National Action Party (PAN) shifted from side to side, nervously looking at his aides and then the door of the nondescript restaurant in the town of Quiroga. “If you don’t open the door to [the drug traffickers], no problem. The difficulty comes when you open the door and have relations with them,” he said during our interview back in November 2007. “I can only make sure [members of the PAN] don’t open the door. . . . Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.” Nearly two years on, and […]

The convergence last week of Secretary Clinton’s trip to East Africa and the arrest in Australia of four men with links to the Somali al-Shabab movement on terrorism charges serves to highlight al-Shabab’s emergence as an extremist threat. While Secretary Clinton’s support of the Somali Transitional Government may delay al-Shabab’s rise, 18 years of failed statehood suggest that it is time for the United States and its allies to fundamentally reassess their policy towards Somalia. Instead of focusing exclusively on the powerless transitional government, Western nations should recognize and support existing institutions in Somalia to halt the advance of al-Shabab […]