Briefing Archive

With most of Congress in an uproar over new White House plan for the war in Iraq, one could be forgiven for thinking that the new strategy is diametrically opposed to last month’s report of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. To be sure, the harsh tone towards Iran and Syria was not something that James Baker and Lee Hamilton recommended, but in several respects the ISG and the White House are actually singing in tune. First, sending reinforcements to Baghdad was not opposed by the Iraq Study Group. The ISG report clearly states that it could “support a short-term redeployment […]

NO RED CARPET FOR PRODI — Ten months after Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s election, he still has not been invited to the White House, and political commentators in Rome have concluded that the center-left coalition leader is being given the Bush cold shoulder. It’s unusual for the new prime minister of a key NATO country not to have visited Washington sooner, but the word from Italy is that this is the Bush administration’s way of expressing its displeasure with the way the bilateral relationship is going. The left wing of Prodi’s government, which includes the Communists, is pressing for […]

“Look, these people, they have no jobs, no food, no education, no future. I just figure that we have two things we can do. Help, or we can sit back and watch a country destroy itself on CNN.” –Sgt. Matt Eversmann in “Blackhawk Down.” Pity the poor Somalis, or the millions of them that have not yet found sanctuary in Europe, Canada or the United States. Recent events seem to have sucked them back into the cycle of violence and destruction that ruined the country in the 1990s, and made Somalia the poster-child for the concept of the failed state […]

PUERTO ASIS, Colombia — About a year ago, Carolina saw the fumigation planes flying low over her family’s farm near the Ecuadorian border here. They were trailed by clouds of herbicide, which killed the family’s crops of coffee, yucca, peanuts and bananas. The United States-financed spraying is supposed to kill illegal coca bushes, the base ingredient for making cocaine. But Carolina said her family had no coca, although many of their neighbors did. “They fumigated the whole land, corn, rice, bananas, pineapples and forage,” she said. “The three animals we had, cows and calves, died three weeks later.” While she […]

On Dec. 29, China published its latest white paper on national defense. In the past, the government’s security-related publications have been rich in generalities about China’s good intentions but sparse in specifics about its actual capabilities. “China’s National Defense in 2006” continues in this tradition. The United States and other countries have repeatedly called on the Chinese government to make its military budget and programs more transparent in order to minimize misunderstandings about China’s intentions. They caution that China’s excessive military secrecy may alarm its neighbors and impede China’s integration into regional security institutions. The new paper attempts to address […]

On a cool evening in March, 2006, I toured a makeshift prison on an Iraqi army base in northwestern Baghdad, not far from the dim chamber where Saddam Hussein would later be executed. The jail was crude, a few rooms guarded by men in track suits who casually balanced rifles over their shoulders like golf clubs. The cells were unbarred, unclean, and unlocked; nothing more than rooms in a large building that might once have been a school. The prison was run by the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior, a shambling bureaucracy that had by then already been accused of […]

Palestinian leaders preparing for a joint meeting with their Israeli counterparts and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in a bid to move the stalled peace process forward, are having trouble keeping their own internal struggles in check as the situation in the territories spins rapidly out of control. If the Palestinians cannot present a united front ahead of the meeting set to take place within the next several weeks, they risk further delays in the of the hoped-for establishment of a Palestinian state and continued ills for their troubled population. Dozens of people have been killed and more than […]

TEHRAN, Iran — It wasn’t the news of the raid by the U.S. Army against the Iranian interests section in the northern Iraqi town of Arbil that set off the alarm bells. Nor the announcement by Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that “twice in the past two or three weeks . . . we’ve captured Iranians,” followed by former Assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk threatening “serious consequences” as a result of Bush’s new strategy of escalation against Iran. The announcement that a second aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. John C. Stennis, would be moving […]

MOSCOW — On Dec. 20, Russian President Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting of the Security Council in Moscow dedicated to addressing the social and economic problems of the Russian Far East. In Putin’s assessment, the situation in the region, which borders China, had become so grave as to constitute a threat to the country’s national security. According to a transcript on the Kremlin website, Putin declared in his opening remarks that past government action had failed to overcome the Far East’s grave problems. These include the district’s declining Russian population and its imbalanced economic activities. Putin also warned that the […]

So far, U.S. forces in the East Africa have limited air strikes in Somalia — the alleged home of several high-ranking al-Qaida suspects — to one aerial assault earlier this month that killed dozens, none of which were high-profile targets, a Pentagon spokesman told World Politics Review. “That was the only air strike conducted there,” said the spokesman, refuting reports that U.S. forces have conducted follow-up attacks since the Jan. 8 strafing that left dozens dead. The U.S. military has said all those killed were Islamist fighters, though Somali witnesses on the ground reported some civilians killed. The Pentagon spokesman […]

FOREIGN REACTION TO BUSH SPEECH GLOOMY — If domestic reaction to President Bush’s new Iraq strategy has been largely negative, foreign comments have been no better. From Paris to Riyadh, media comment has been critical of the administration’s approach and skeptical of its success. An editorial in the leading French newspaper Le Monde began: “Anyone who expected the American president to learn a lesson from the Democratic victory in Congress and from the current chaos in Iraq and overhaul his strategy is disappointed.” But the paper said Bush has at least “abandoned his triumphalist tones.” In addition, “gone are the […]

BANGKOK, Thailand — While a jittery Thai capital has been warned to brace for more bomb attacks from unidentified terrorists, the country’s military-installed government is sowing fear among Thailand’s foreign business community. New laws promulgated by the unelected interim regime following the September army takeover seem to have less to do with the coup’s professed aim of putting the country back on the road to national unity than with blatant nationalism. Foreign companies in Thailand are seething in the wake of a law that tightens restrictions on foreign business ownership. This follows a clumsy diktat in late December on foreign […]

Last week’s London Sunday Times exposé “Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran” has set the media buzzing. Given the probable source for the thrust of the article — the senior Israeli military — this is not surprising. But what underlies the furor is the disconcerting reality and approaching menace of the first “in anger” nuclear strike since 1945. The Sunday Times article itself was almost a re-run of the paper’s March 13, 2005, “Revealed: Israel Plans Strike on Iranian Nuclear Plant.” (URL for link) Both were written by the same journalist, but with one notable difference: the latter suggested […]

WASHINGTON — As “civil war” rages in Iraq, so does the increasingly furious fight between Democrats and the Bush administration over what to do now that the holidays — and with them the season of election-year posturing — are finally over. The rhetorical salvos could not have been more piercing across Washington yesterday as the new Democratic leadership of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee convened the first in a series of hearings on how to change the current course of action in Iraq — just hours before President George W. Bush appeared on national television in an apparent attempt to […]

In both his public speech to the nation Wednesday evening and his private meeting the day before with House Democrats, President Bush warned that a U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq would encourage international terrorism and gravely damage America’s standing in the Middle East. On this basis, he has called for increasing the commitment of U.S. troops and other resources to the region. Although the crisis in Iraq is important, the administration needs to pay more attention to other regions of equal if not greater long-term significance. In particular, the conflict has already generated major trends in East Asia gravely harmful […]

In advance of President Bush’s speech Wednesday evening, the sound and shape of his new strategy for Iraq unfolded in Baghdad’s Haifa Street district Tuesday, when over 1,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops supported by helicopter gunships and F-15 fighter jets engaged Sunni Muslim insurgents in one of their strongholds. The Iraqi authorities said about 50 militants were killed in one of the biggest operations in the capital since the 2003 invasion. The offensive effectively launched of the Battle for Baghdad, one of the key elements of the new U.S. strategy to pull Iraq back from the brink of chaos. Iraqi […]

For such a small country, Israel manages to offer one of the most unpredictable, lively and entertaining political scenes around. Observers of Israeli political theater have not had a dull moment in years. It was barely 13 months ago that the iconic Prime Minister Ariel Sharon rocked the political scene when he bolted Likud, the party he created, to launch the new Kadima party. Before long, Sharon had fallen into a coma; Ehud Olmert had taken over, formed a Kadima-Labor coalition government and built a most peculiar cabinet. The post of defense minister, a crucial job in Israel, went to […]