War & Conflict Archive

Last weekend’s Munich Security Conference vividly illustrated the conflict in both vision and values between Russia and the West. The Russian delegation, headed by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, pushed a narrative of Western triumphalism, Russian victimization and the likelihood of further confrontation unless the West satisfied Russian grievances. The American and European leaders at Munich, despite their differences in emphasis and tone as well as over the question of supplying arms to Ukraine, were united in challenging this narrative, portraying a Russia that is clearly violating international norms. Lavrov denied the accusation made by many Western speakers at the conference […]

Washington is contending with the blowback from its latest diplomatic gambit in the struggle with Russia. Last week, U.S. officials began to float the possibility of offering Ukraine defensive weapons to counter the latest advances by Russian-backed separatists in the east of the country. If this was a trial balloon meant to reassure Kiev, it had the unfortunate side effect of throwing some major European powers into overt panic. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande publicly declared their opposition to the plan and hurried to Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. There are plans for […]

The talk of Washington this week was a new policy paper co-authored by a team of experts who argue forcefully that the United States “should provide Ukraine $1 billion in military assistance as soon as possible.” The report’s authors include Strobe Talbott and Steven Pifer, both former U.S. diplomats now at the Brooking Institution (Talbott is its president), who also made the case in a Washington Post op-ed last week, as well as Ivo Daalder, Michele Flournoy and other former top-ranking American officials. U.S. President Barack Obama and his national security team are reported to be considering the proposal. The […]

From the moment the United States took on the so-called Islamic State (IS), whether or not to use ground forces has been one of the most contentious issues. Deeply aware of the lingering national hangover from Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. President Barack Obama stated that American ground forces “will not have a combat mission,” and will only assist the local forces fighting the extremists. While this makes political sense, it may not be effective strategy. Airstrikes by the U.S. and other nations have put a damper on the mobility of IS, but cannot defeat it outright. In fact, the organization […]

“The media refused to see the Syrian revolt as anything other than the continuation of revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, at a time of enthusiasm over the Arab Spring. Journalists didn’t understand the sectarian subtleties in Syria, or perhaps they didn’t want to understand.” That was Fabrice Balanche, a leading French scholar of Syria who specializes in political geography, in an eye-opening interview with the Carnegie Endowment’s Aron Lund last Friday. Balanche’s research mapping Syria’s uprising-turned-civil-war is mostly in French, as Lund noted, and so has only recently entered into English-language Syria analysis, which should be all the better for […]

Almost exactly three years ago, a coalition of rebel groups dominated by Tuareg fighters started a military campaign for the independence of Mali’s northern regions. The separatist campaign led to a coup by disgruntled soldiers that shattered Mali’s image as a beacon of democracy in West Africa. But the world was really shocked into taking notice when Islamist groups associated with al-Qaida took advantage of the power vacuum in the north to establish a quasi-state, raising the specter of what some called an “Afghanistan on Europe’s doorstep.” Today, after a major French military intervention and the deployment of a large […]

Infighting over control of the levers of power rumbles on in Yemen, where last month Houthi rebels forced the resignation of the government at gunpoint. Although it has attracted less attention, the country’s economy is also in increasingly dire shape. If, as is likely, nothing is done to shore up government finances in the coming months, a long-predicted economic collapse is more or less certain. President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi announced his plans to step down on Jan. 22, shortly after his prime minister, Khaled Bahah, and the Cabinet he assembled last November said they were resigning en masse due to […]

When Greece first came close to a sovereign default in 2010, the eurozone and even the entire European Union seemed to be at risk of fragmentation. Rather than break up, the currency bloc forged new mechanisms to handle the crisis—and the balance of power on fiscal policy within the EU tilted decisively toward Germany as its economic guarantor. This pattern could now be repeated with regard to European foreign policy. Officials in Brussels insist that the victory of the hard-left Syriza party in last week’s Greek elections does not threaten the eurozone. But they worry that it could contribute to […]