In-Depth Archive

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on Sept. 15, 2009, as part of the WPR feature “Illicit Flows and Transnational Threats.” It is made available here for free, as part of a promotion that ends Jan. 5. To experience more of WPR’s subscription service, sign up for a 30-day free trial. In January 2009, retired Gen. Mauro Tello Quiñones took command of a police unit charged with combating drug-related violence in the popular Mexican tourist destination of Cancún. The assignment lasted just one week. In early February, Tello and two aides were kidnapped and killed. Before murdering Tello, the […]

Editor’s Note: This article was first published on Nov. 10, 2009, as part of the WPR feature “China’s Once and Future Rise.” It is made available here for free as part of a promotion that ends Jan. 5. To experience more of WPR”s subscription service, sign up for 30-day free trial. On Oct. 1, the People’s Republic of China celebrated the 60th anniversary of its founding, most notably with an air show and military parade along Beijing’s Orwellian-sounding Avenue of Eternal Peace. The event showcased China’s arsenal of indigenously made fighter aircraft, tanks and newer-generation Dongfeng missiles, capable of delivering […]

Get a .pdf version of this report. During the last five decades, Colombia’s foreign, defense and strategic priorities have been driven and determined by the country’s internal armed conflict, with the “War on Drugs” becoming the dominant paradigm from the 1980s onwards. This, in turn, has defined Colombia’s relations with Latin America — particularly, in recent years, with its Andean neighbors, Ecuador and Venezuela — as well as its relationship with the United States and Europe. Colombia’s struggle to stem cocaine production, its fight against the drug cartels that sprung up around the drug trade, and its war against the […]

A little more than 10 years after the people of what is now Timor-Leste voted for independence, this small, half-island country has compressed into a few short years what many other post-colonial states have taken decades to achieve. It has been largely destroyed, achieved independence, had a political crisis, transitioned to democracy, and now appears to be heading into a period of political calm and economic growth. After the near-catastrophic events of 2006, Timor-Leste’s prospects are looking relatively positive, even if a number of important caveats apply. After roughly 300 years of Portuguese colonial neglect came to an end in […]

Recent reports note the stalled nature of progress towards international reform in Bosnia-Herzegovina, with many even making exaggerated claims of the threat of renewed conflict in the tiny state. Nevertheless, the European Union state-building project in post-conflict Bosnia-Herzegovina has largely been seen as a success, particularly when compared to U.S.-led state-building efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Clearly the problems faced in Bosnia have been on a different scale, with a relatively calm security situation. However, on its own terms, international regulation since the end of the conflict has achieved much less than was expected when the international state-building project was […]

“We must make sure that the deployment of our troops is not merely the appetizer and that the main course becomes . . . an outbreak of nation-building and infrastructure construction and resources which are . . . not within our capacity to provide for everyone around the world.” After eight years of operations in Afghanistan, and the recent announcement that additional troop deployments will continue to execute a strategy that stretches the military beyond its traditional combat role for at least another 18 months, the above quotation could easily convey the commitment-fatigue prevalent in Washington these days. But the […]