Column Archive

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s announcement last Saturday that he would not stand for re-election, instead nominating his predecessor and current prime minister, Vladimir Putin, to once again assume the office, came as a surprise to those of us who were expecting a continuation of the Medvedev-Putin tandem. At the same time, however, the somewhat trite and simplistic analysis being proferred by those who argue that Medvedev was nothing more than a seat-warmer for Putin until the latter could reclaim the presidency is not particularly helpful in understanding the direction Russian politics has taken — and will take. If Putin had […]

With the remaining loyalists of Moammar Gadhafi’s deposed regime facing their inevitable demise, it comes as no surprise that human rights organizations and international journalists are finding a multitude of mass graves and ample evidence that torture was a routine affair in Gadhafi’s Libya. But as Gadhafi’s bloody excesses return to the spotlight, so too does the corruption and cynicism exhibited by the regime’s fellow travelers from beyond Libya’s borders. It is well known that under Gadhafi, the country consistently maintained its place among the world’s “Worst of the Worst” violators of human rights and political freedoms. And yet, in […]

What future does the United States Army face? During eight years of operations in Iraq and 10 years in Afghanistan, the Army has shifted from being a force focused on high-intensity conventional operations to one more comfortable fighting a dispersed enemy intermingled with the population. However, operations are winding down in Iraq, and an endpoint seems to be nearing in Afghanistan. Armed with the collective experience developed in the War on Terror, how will the Army move forward to face new challenges and threats? The answers involve political and military considerations that may contradict each other. The fact that the […]

The news this past weekend of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s impending return to the presidency has elicited a wide range of commentary on the potential impact it might have on Russia’s foreign policy and, in particular, on U.S.-Russia relations. There are several key points that one should keep in mind when considering the development. First, in the years since he left office in 2008 after serving as president since 2000, Putin has remained Russia’s most powerful figure. He has been able to determine policy in any area and any direction, constrained only by objective factors related to Russian state […]

The real clash of civilizations in the 21st century will be not over religion, but over food. As the emerging East and surging South achieve appreciable amounts of disposable income, they’re increasingly taking on a Western-style diet. This bodes poorly for the world on multiple levels, with the most-alarmist Cassandras warning about imminent resource wars. But the more immediate and realistic concern is the resulting health costs, which will inevitably trigger a rule-set clash between nanny-state types hell-bent on “reining in” a number of globalized industries — agriculture, food and beverages, restaurants, health care and pharmaceuticals — and those preferring […]

In an effort to defuse the short-term crisis generated by the Palestinian push for United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state this week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has offered a compromise proposal: a “precise timetable” of negotiations under the aegis of the Quartet that would produce a final status agreement between Palestinians and Israelis in a year’s time. The proposal’s utility as a practical means of generating an actual solution is minimal, but it could represent a face-saving off-ramp way for the U.S. from the current confrontation. On paper, setting deadlines for negotiations makes sense. But in the real world, […]

When Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in his Tunisian village last December, nobody knew he would electrify the entire Arab world and send the existing political order in the region into a long period of turmoil. Very quickly, however, there were signs that the success of Tunisian demonstrators in toppling their long-ruling dictator had sparked something important — something with probably lasting, although unclear consequences. As the first signs emerged that the movement might catch on elsewhere in the region, a catchy label derived from Czechoslovakia’s brief Cold War-era uprising against Soviet rule quickly engraved itself in the Western […]

Ten years ago, the concept of “network-centric warfare” dominated U.S. military thinking and deployment. An outgrowth of work associated with the Revolution in Military Affairs, network-centric warfare envisioned a battle space in which information dominance and standoff killing power gave the U.S. military supremacy across the combat spectrum. Influential in doctrine and acquisitions, network-centric warfare offered the tempting promise of eliminating Carl von Clausewitz’ fog of war, making the battlefield legible and, for well-prepared U.S. forces, malleable. Platforms such as the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship and DDG-1000, the Army’s Future Combat System, and the F-35 multirole combat aircraft were envisioned […]

Last week, WPR’s Judah Grunstein noted some interesting developments in Russia-Korea relations. These included North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s conferring with President Dmitry Medvedev and other Russian leaders in a rare visit to Russia in August; the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding regarding construction of a gas pipeline connecting Russia to South Korea via North Korea; the launching of a rail link between Russia and the North Korean port of Rajin; and plans to conduct a joint maritime search-and-rescue exercise in 2012. These developments have highlighted Moscow’s desire to play a major role in the future of the […]

Thanks to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the wars they spawned, many people around the world think they’re living through the most dangerous, violent and strategically uncertain period in human history. Well, that simply isn’t true, as the most recent Human Security Report from Canada’s Simon Fraser University makes clear. Entitled, “The Causes of Peace and the Shrinking Costs of War,” the 2009-2010 edition of the annual report marshals a ton of solid data that proves our world is less violent than ever and that it has “become far less insecure over the past 20 years.” The major failing […]

In the aftermath of the Libya operation, my Naval War College colleague Tom Nichols concluded bluntly, “Humanitarian interventions are here to stay and are going to be driven more by moral calculation and military opportunity than by ‘national interest.’” This, it seems, is the new American foreign policy consensus; despite the costly U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the anti-interventionist coalition has lost the policy debate. The current fiscal crisis may trim back the scale and scope of future interventions, but will not eliminate them altogether from the U.S. policy toolbox. Even with its fiscal constraints, the United States will […]

It wasn’t very long ago when American interest in the Middle East focused with piercing intensity on the minutest of developments in Iraq. Over time, however, the gradual drawdown of U.S. forces, the uprisings in the Middle East and public exhaustion with the draining American misadventure in Mesopotamia conspired to take Baghdad out of the headlines. That is about to change. The coming months will bring Iraq back to the foreground. A number of crucial events and opposing forces are now converging, and they will determine whether Iraq, the country Americans spent so much blood and treasure to turn into […]

Over the past two weeks, Israel has seen two critical strategic relationships with key regional allies nearly collapse. In Cairo, protesters stormed the Israeli Embassy, causing property damage but no injuries. This came on the heels of a border incident in Sinai, in which Israeli soldiers in pursuit of Palestinian militants accidentally killed several Egyptian soldiers. The Israeli government has taken steps to reduce tensions with Egypt, but the ability of the latter’s transitional military government to mend fences is unclear. As for the willingness of any new Egyptian government to spend political capital on maintaining a good relationship with […]

Since I was at the Pentagon on Sept. 11 and saw Flight 77 hit the building, the 10th anniversary of the attack naturally causes me to reflect on how much progress we have made in preventing another such cataclysm during the past decade as well as on the challenges that remain for preventing one in the future. Two issues immediately come to mind: further strengthening the Department of Homeland Security and considering how the United States might reduce the high level of anti-Americanism that persists in much of the world. The mere creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) […]

The 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has garnered America almost as much schadenfreude from the world as the original events did. Back in 2001, the line was that we had it coming to us for lording it over the world since the Cold War’s end. Today, it takes the form of writing off our alleged “hegemony” in light of the shifts in global power over the intervening decade, a claim that is as absurd the previous one was insulting. Naturally, the Chinese are celebrated as our presumed replacement. So, as always throughout our history as a superpower, […]

Post-Gadhafi Libya is set to become the next major test of two competing approaches to international affairs — the “gratitude doctrine” of the Western alliance pitted against the “strict neutrality” practiced by Beijing. The “gratitude doctrine,” in short, is the West’s assumption that providing assistance to those seeking to overthrow a repressive regime — especially in the form of timely military aid to counterbalance the overwhelming advantages enjoyed by the forces of the dictator — will produce a successor government that will be more receptive to U.S. and European influence and more responsive to their interests and concerns. The doctrine’s […]

Among the many recent changes reshaping the Middle East’s political topography, one of the most striking has come not from masses of protesters chanting in the streets or from armed rebels fighting for change, but from suit-and-tie diplomats and politicians flexing their muscles in an effort to prove to various audiences just how strong they and their country are. That is how the decades-old alliance between Israel and Turkey, one of the defining features of what now seems a bygone era in the Middle East, is collapsing: in a muddle of acrimony and recrimination. The growing friction has been exacerbated […]