Briefing Archive

Since the start of the Middle East uprisings in early 2011, the region has slipped into a period of uncertainty, with a battle for political influence and legitimacy stretching across state borders. Two rich countries in the Persian Gulf region, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have operated with different and sometimes divergent strategies for trying to shape the political transitions in Egypt and impact violent struggles for power in places like Syria. Understanding this dramatically changed regional context is important in analyzing the approaches of Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Since 2011, the competition for power and influence in the Middle East […]

On June 26, Mongolians will go to the polls to elect their next president, with incumbent Tsakhia Elbegdorj predicted to return to office with a renewed mandate. His principal challenge comes from B. Bat-Erdene, who maintains a strong base of populist support in Mongolia’s rural areas. The third candidate, Natsag Udval, is a staunch supporter of former President Nambar Enkybayar, currently serving a two-and-a-half year jail term on corruption charges. According to Julian Dierkes, a Mongolia expert at the University of British Colombia, Udval is unlikely to gain more than 5 percent of the vote, but her candidacy is noteworthy […]

Prior to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s mid-May visit to Washington, the expectation among many observers was that the Turkish leader would be coming to the White House to press a reluctant President Barack Obama to commit to supporting more forceful—that is, military—action against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. However, Erdogan’s trip played out quite differently. Rather than Erdogan convincing Obama to change positions, it was the U.S. president who got the normally strong-willed Turkish prime minister to soften his tone and publicly support the Geneva II process, Washington’s effort to convene an international conference next month on […]

Bolivian President Evo Morales’ successful push to clear the way for a potential third term in office has reinforced the fears of many observers who, ever since he was first elected president in December 2005, have lumped Morales in with the wave of populist, anti-democratic leaders in Venezuela, Ecuador and Nicaragua. Morales joined ALBA, the alliance of leftist countries assembled and underwritten by former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez; he engaged in the time-honored tradition of leftist “yanqui” bashing; and he has whittled away institutional checks and balances on executive power. But in important economic and political ways, Bolivia was and […]

At the conclusion of his first year in office, French President Francois Hollande is facing criticism from all sides. Hollande was elected as an almost accidental president in May 2012 in the post-crisis wave of government changes across Europe. His promises to renegotiate German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s hard-fought European Union budgetary pact—and to counter austerity measures by increasing public sector expenditures and imposing sharp tax hikes on business—made a deterioration in the French-German partnership, clearly visible over the past year, all but inevitable. Despite his campaign rhetoric, however, Hollande’s first year in office has been marked by conflicting policy messages. […]

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is well-known for being firm toward Pyongyang and demonstrating solidarity with Washington. More than any other politician, he has made retrieving Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea his political mission. Moreover, during his summit with President Barack Obama in January he declared, “The trust and the bond in our alliance is back.” But something happened last week that seems unlike Abe. Isao Iijima, a special adviser to the prime minister, made a secret trip to Pyongyang for reasons unknown, although many are speculating he is trying to advance dialogue on resolving the abduction issue and […]

Since late-March, when the rebel coalition Seleka took power in the Central African Republic (CAR), security has broken down in the country. United Nations Representative Margaret Vogt recently stated that CAR has entered “a state of anarchy”; in April, rebel-appointed Prime Minister Nicolas Tiangaye called for French and African help in restoring order. With Seleka struggling to turn military triumph into durable rule, CAR’s neighbors will likely see an increase in the circulation of refugees, fighters and weapons. Through March, international actors sought to keep deposed President Francois Bozize in power and peacefully resolve the conflict, which had reignited in […]

Security has crumbled on Tunisia’s western border with Algeria in recent months. A small but destructive group of jihadi militants with links to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has infiltrated the region, with weighty security implications for both Tunisia and Algeria. To successfully rout the jihadists in the short term, the Tunisian military needs better equipment, which the government has promised to deliver. But it is not yet clear whether Tunis is ready to pursue the deeper military and economic reforms needed to quell the terrorist threat in the long term. Tunisian government forces have so far failed to […]

KABUL, Afghanistan—In a surprise move in mid-April, Germany announced it is ready to provide between 600 and 800 troops to the as yet undefined NATO training contingent that will replace the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Afghanistan after it comes to an end in 2014. It was the first such announcement by any country, including the United States. Washington is in the process of negotiating with Kabul the bilateral strategic agreement that should lay out the framework for a reduced but continued presence of American troops starting in 2015. Germany’s attempt to pull ahead of the pack is […]

The government’s decision to charge surviving Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev with the use of a weapon of mass destruction struck many Americans as peculiar. At first glance, the Tsarnaev brothers’ bombs do not seem to match the definition or popular perception of a WMD. For decades, that term has been interpreted as referring to nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, which uniquely possess the ability to kill people in numbers large enough to be considered massive. Two factors, among others, help explain the government’s decision: The charge is seen by prosecutors as relatively easy to level—and prove—compared to other possible […]

As the British armed forces rebuild after more than a decade of sustained military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the strategic components of the U.S.-U.K. “special relationship” have come under intense scrutiny. At the politico-strategic level, while London remains committed to working alongside the U.S., there is deep concern that Washington has become a less than reliable partner. Indeed, there is a widespread view among British policymakers that in spite of the casualties taken by the British in support of a failed U.S. policy, Washington now prefers Germany to Britain as its “special” European partner. Were it not for the […]

The full motivation for China’s recent incursion into Indian territory along their disputed border in eastern Kashmir is as yet unclear. But the incident brings to the fore the issue of unpredictability in Chinese foreign policy implementation and Beijing’s frequent recourse to low-level aggression, often deployed to shape the backdrop to formal diplomatic negotiations. With specific regard to India, despite a general trend toward deepening cooperation, the incident lowers hopes that China’s new leadership would move to clear up uncertainty in bilateral relations and create a firmer basis for cultural and economic exchange. On April 15, in the Depsang Valley […]

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Mohammed Morsi, a former Muslim Brotherhood leader and Egypt’s first post-Arab Spring president, even as Russia continued to back Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Damascus against an assorted opposition that includes the Syrian branch of the Brotherhood. This apparent contradiction illustrates the challenges Russia is facing in the post-Arab Spring Middle East. Like virtually everyone else, Moscow was surprised by the groundswell of change that began in the Arab world in early 2011. Experts advising the Russian government call this a tectonic shift and compare its impact to that of the two defining periods […]

A recent series of violent incidents between opposition protesters and security forces in Conakry highlights the challenges impeding Guinea’s political transition since the death in 2008 of Lansana Conte, Guinea’s leader for 24 years. Despite some progress toward stability, the outcome of the transition remains uncertain. The military coup launching the transition soon mobilized the civilian population into opposition; an unprovoked attack by members of the security forces in September 2009 on a protest rally in a Conakry stadium, including mass rapes, triggered a slow-motion progression toward elections. The maiming of junta leader Dadis Camara by a military rival opened […]

Talk of America’s “pivot” toward Asia echoes around graduate school classrooms and foreign ministry corridors. The Obama administration believes the United States has overinvested in the Middle East and underinvested in the Asia-Pacific, where the bulk of its future opportunities and challenges lie. So now America is rebalancing its investment portfolio. A defense white paper from America’s most reliable ally in the region, Australia, should therefore be closely read in Washington. The message from the Australian Government’s 2013 Defense White Paper is that if the United States is rebalancing, then so is Australia. This white paper is very cautious in […]

Pakistan’s elections Saturday will be the first time in the country’s 66-year history that things are going according to plan: A democratically elected civilian government completed its five-year term, ceding power to a three-month caretaker government that will oversee another election. Nonetheless, political violence in the past few weeks has effectively restricted campaigning to a single province, Punjab. This will all but ensure that the increasingly unpopular incumbent Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), whose campaign has been curtailed by the violence in its electoral strongholds, is removed from power. But even if the PPP had not been kept from campaigning, it […]

Indian External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid visited Tehran last weekend to attend the 17th meeting of the India-Iran Joint Commission. Though the most surprising outcome of the visit was the agreement on a common diplomatic initiative for resolving the Syrian crisis, a number of other agreements, including for the expansion of the strategically important Chabahar port on the Arabian Sea, signal a closer alignment on a more critical geopolitical interest that the two sides share: ensuring long-term stability in Afghanistan. Clearly the scheduled U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan is driving a new diplomatic engagement between India and Iran. Contrast this […]