War & Conflict Archive

Can Antonio Guterres save the United Nations from the tyranny of overinflated expectations? The U.N. secretary-general, who has been on the job for four months, seems clear about the limitations of his post. When the Security Council selected Guterres for the job last October, he declared that the Syrian war would be his top priority. But speaking in London last week, he implied he could not do much about it. Peace will only be possible, Guterres noted, “when all the parties in the conflict understand and believe they cannot win the war.” This is not exactly a revelation: U.N. officials […]

Earlier this week, Pentagon officials confirmed that Abdul Hasib Logari, the leader of the self-proclaimed Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, had been killed in a joint U.S.-Afghan operation in eastern Afghanistan on April 27. That operation, in which two U.S. Army Rangers were also killed, followed an airstrike by U.S. forces in Afghanistan that dropped a GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, or “MOAB,” on an Islamic State tunnel complex. The bomb is one of the largest conventional weapons in the U.S. arsenal and represented a dramatic escalation of American operations against the Islamic State affiliate, known as the Khorasan Province. […]

With the self-proclaimed Islamic State increasingly out of the headlines and on the back foot in Syria and Iraq, the damage wrought by the extremist group on cultural sites in both countries is no longer a consistent source of international outrage, like it was two years ago. Yet the destruction of heritage goes on. In January, for example, evidence emerged that Islamic State militants had wrecked more of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, demolishing the façade of the 2nd-century Roman theater, where the group had previously staged mass executions, and blowing up the Tetrapylon, whose monumental columns once anchored […]

As the Iraqi army comes closer to fully reconquering Mosul from the self-proclaimed Islamic State, questions are emerging about the future of relations between two of Iraq’s neighbors, Turkey and Iran. Will the quest for influence in Iraq’s Sunni heartland lead to greater turbulence between Ankara and Tehran? Are they, as some warn, on an unavoidable collision course in Iraq? Turkey is worried that gains made by Iraq’s Shiite-majority government, which is friendly with Iran, only serve to expand Tehran’s influence over Sunni areas in northern Iraq. More worrying for Turkish President Recep Tayipp Erdogan is the potential for a […]

U.S. President Donald Trump probably does not relish taking on a problem like the conflict in Afghanistan. It is a “wicked” problem, intricate and almost incomprehensibly complex, with a large and growing cast of participants playing a role or at least having a stake. Inside Afghanistan there is a mesh of actors with clashing, often incompatible goals. Outside the country a solution depends on Pakistan, which deeply fears India and has its own growing jihadi problem. Russia and the self-styled Islamic State, while late to the conflict, are now involved and muddling things even further. But despite all this, Trump […]

U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest comments on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un suggest a new tactic: Rather than asserting primacy and disparaging other countries’ policies, Trump has tried to convey empathy for Kim’s predicament. Perhaps Trump is following Chinese President Xi Jinping’s advice on how to keep Kim from stepping over the brink into conflict. But it could say more about Trump’s evolving understanding of the burdens of leadership. In recent days, as tensions with North Korea have risen, Trump has used some unexpected language to describe Kim. He’s called the 33-year-old Kim “a pretty smart cookie,” conveying some […]

In December 2016, the people of Gambia elected an opposition presidential candidate for the first time in the country’s history. The outcome caught virtually everyone by surprise, including the incumbent, Yahya Jammeh, who had brutally ruled the small West African nation as a veritable mafia state for more than two decades. Despite initially conceding defeat on national television, Jammeh reversed his position a few days later, declaring the election null and void after claiming he had personally discovered “voting irregularities” in the final results. Jammeh’s attempt to defy the will of the Gambian people sparked a two-month-long crisis, provoking an […]

Smart diplomats do not gloat about alienating their most assertive and dangerous foes. Nor do they boast about their influence over uncertain partners who are apt to switch loyalties at short notice. Last week, the Trump administration made both of these mistakes in one sentence. In an upbeat summary of the president’s first 100 days in office, the White House declared that Donald Trump has “further isolated Syria and Russia at the United Nations through successful diplomacy with President Xi Jinping of China.” This claim is not entirely untrue, but Trump should not imagine that he has changed the rules […]