War & Conflict Archive

On the surface, the NATO summit meeting in Lisbon, the North Korean artillery barrage against Yeonpyeong island, and the unmasking of the “fake” Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour in Afghanistan would appear to be separate and unconnected events. But there is a common theme that ties these three news stories together. In his WPR column column on Monday, Thomas P.M. Barnett summed up the problem: The United States cannot “close the gaps” in the global security system. The end of the Cold War and the rise of new power centers around the world have not led to any appreciable shift in […]

What happens when a country without an army discovers that soldiers from a neighboring state have marched into its territory and raised their own flag? That’s exactly what the government of Costa Rica, which has no military forces, charges Nicaragua has done, accusing its neighbor of invading its land and destroying its forests. Nicaragua, not surprisingly, sees things differently. If the events unfolding today in Central America had taken place a quarter of a century ago, there is a good chance that the sound of gunfire would now be ringing out amid the angry charges and countercharges. After all, during […]

South Korean news footage of North Korean artillery fire hitting South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island.

A few days after the discovery of an al-Qaida plot to ship bombs disguised as printer cartridges from Yemen to the United States, a powerful explosion shook the ground in Gaza City. The blast ripped apart a brand new car, just imported into Gaza, as it drove near police headquarters in the coastal strip’s largest city. After some initial confusion about what had happened, Israeli officials took responsibility for the blast, saying its security forces had killed a top terrorist on the verge of carrying out a massive operation. Most of the Israeli and international media accepted that version of […]

To trace the deterioration of Côte d’Ivoire from 2002, when a civil war pitted north against south, through Oct. 31, 2010, when ballots were cast in a presidential election five years overdue, one only needs to look at the dance trends that came and went during that time in the nightclubs, living rooms and village squares around the nation. First there was 2002’s “Coupé-Décalé,” which roughly translates to “Cut and Run.” Then in 2004, the theme was “Abidjan Est Gâté” (“Abidjan Is Ruined”), a lament about the fate of the economic capital, Abidjan. In 2006, people flapped and squawked their […]

Although opinion polls show that foreign policy will have little impact on today’s congressional elections, the war in Afghanistan will certainly be an important subject of concern for the new Congress. And last week’s unprecedented joint Russian-U.S. drug raid against several narcotics laboratories in Afghanistan is a hopeful sign. The raid suggests that Russian-American differences over the war are narrowing, and raises the possibility that Moscow will provide additional support to the coalition’s war efforts in Afghanistan in coming weeks. In a commando operation that took place in the early morning hours of Oct. 28, Russian counternarcotics officers for the […]

With elections underway or imminent in Ivory Coast, Niger, Tanzania and Guinea, Africa seems to be entering a season of democracy. But it follows a year that saw democratic governments and processes take a hit across the continent. Meanwhile, U.N. peacekeepers have struggled to contain violence in eastern Congo, tensions are rising in Sudan in anticipation of January’s referendum on Southern Sudan’s independence, and power-sharing agreements are being tested in Kenya and Zimbabwe. Hovering in the background, the continent’s regional power, South Africa, struggles to realize the promise of its post-apartheid potential. World Politics Review offers a closer look at […]