WPR Blog Archive

This Commentary article by Peter Feaver, who served as special adviser for strategic planning to the NSC from 2005-2007, is about as positive a spin as can be put on the failures made in prosecuting of the Iraq War, complete with a very rosy appraisal of how the Surge managed to turn things around in the nick of time. About the only sentence in the article that I agreed with was this one: The Petraeus-Crocker report to Congress will no doubt offer further evidence that the new approach is working but is far from having completed its assigned task. No […]

To the Editor: Judah Grunstein’s interesting article on EUFOR/Tchad quotes Yves Boyer remarking on the amazing European fact of an Irish general commanding a European protection force in the heart of Africa (and his further doubts that Ireland would have the political will to take casualties). You should know that this does not mark the first time an Irish general has commanded peacekeeping troops in the heart of Africa, nor the first time Ireland has taken casualties in the cause of peacekeeping there or elsewhere. During the Congo Crisis of the early 1960s, the U.N. command in Katanga and in […]

One of Nicolas Sarkozy’s first major European successes upon taking office last year was the negotiaiton of the Lisbon Treaty, which basically amounts to a do-over of the EU Constitutional treaty that was torpedoed by French and Dutch referenda in 2005. If approved, the Lisbon Treaty will basically free Europe from almost a decade of institutional paralysis that has basically cost proponents of further European integration ten years of precious time. Sarkozy managed to have the new treaty passed by parliamentary vote here in France this past February, causing a minor outrage but no lasting fallout. Ireland, on the other […]

Here’s Marc Lynch trying to turn charcoal into gold: . . .the campaign could be positive if it restored the sovereignty of the Iraqi state over Basra. I’ve been arguing for many months for the urgency of establishing some semblance of effective Iraqi sovereignty, defined in Weberian terms as a monopoly on the legitimate means of violence. The best-case scenario here might be that the Sadr-Maliki truce evolves into a shared effort to extend the sovereignty of the Iraqi state, with the Sadrists and the government working together to curb extralegal armed activities. I don’t think this was the real […]

It went largely unnoticed, but another nuclear domino just tipped over in the broader Middle East, with Algeria signing two agreements with China last week, one to build a nuclear reactor and the other to train their nuclear technicians to operate it. In addition to the concerns this raises about the entire region pursuing a civil nuclear hedge against an Iranian bomb, this particular deal is problematic for two other reasons. The first is China’s history of nuclear exports, which have included deals with Pakistan (to build a reactor despite Pakistan’s non-NPT status) and Iran (which included allegations of weapons-related […]

The chief U.S. correspondent of the Israeli daily Haaretz, Shmuel Rosner, recently argued that American officials were reluctant to put pressure on Israel because “the underlying factors that are obstructing a final arrangement [between Israel and the Palestinians] will not change if Israel removes five outposts or seven checkpoints.” Rosner even offered a presumably imagined exchange between Condoleezza Rice and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak: “Rice pressures Barak to do more. . . . There must be some checkpoint you can remove, she says. Nu, Barak responds, let’s say there is, can Rice point to it and also take responsibility […]

I thought I’d toss this Daily Standard piece by Joseph Loconte on McCain’s foreign policy address into the mix. He seems to come down somewhere between Hampton and myselfon what McCain offers: a little uneasy about the idealist hurdles aLeague of Democracies will present to a realist agenda, but ultimatelyreassured by being more sympathetic to McCain than I probably am. I’dadd that should McCain become president, America will undoubtedly betied down in Iraq for the foreseeable future, meaning that whateverpotential dangers for military adventurism his democracy agendapresented would be moot. As for the democracy agenda itself, I’m trying to get […]

Those interested in Judah’s thought-provoking analysis of McCain’s foreign policy address in Los Angeles last week should also check out David Brooks’ March 28 column about the speech and McCain’s foreign policy views in general. While Judah seems to argue (correct me if I’m wrong Judah) that McCain’s foreign policy vision, because he ultimately puts so much emphasis on democracy promotion, is really just neoconservatism dressed up in realist clothing, Brooks gives more credence to McCain’s attempts to fashion a foreign policy aimed at accomplishing idealistic ends with realistic means. Judah objected most strongly to McCain’s statement that whether Iraq […]

On CBS News’ 60 Minutes tonight, Scott Pelley interviewed German resident Murnat Kurnaz about his time held by the U.S. military as an unlawful enemy combatant, including several years at Guantanamo Bay. Pelley’s report leaves the impression that the Kurnaz case is, pure and simple, the story of a completely innocent man caught up in a corrupt and arbitrary system of U.S. military justice. Writing in World Politics Review in June 2007, John Rosenthal describes how Kurnaz’s case received similar treatment in the German media. Facts that cast doubt on Kurnaz’s credibility, and several aspects of his claims of innocence, […]

John McCain’s foreign policy address is a tricky bundle to digest. Where it’s good, it’s very reassuring; where it’s bad it’s very worrying. The problem to my eyes is that the two seem to be mutually exclusive. In other words, I like the picture he draws of the destination. I just don’t see how you get from here to there using the itinerary he offers. To start with what I liked, I’d agree with Hampton that it’s not just his call for multi-lateralism, but his appeal for taking advantage of all the many and varied instruments of power at America’s […]

This is a toss-off from the McCain post I’m working up, but I couldn’t resist. Here’s John McCain, running down the list of the world’s prominent democracies: Today we are not alone. There is the powerful collective voice of the European Union, and there are the great nations of India and Japan, Australia and Brazil, South Korea and South Africa, Turkey and Israel, to name just a few of the leading democracies. Notice anyone missing? As in, a pretty large democracy, about as close to the territorial United States as you can get? What can Canada do to catch a […]

Thomas Barnett says of the WaPo article describing recent American missile strikes against Taliban targets inside Pakistan: Scary combination: we step up unilateral strikes inside another nation because we fear their new leadership will back away from such commitments. Does that sound sustainable to you? The obvious answer is, No. But this also brings into stark relief the tension between the two pillars of President Bush’s Pakistan policy, namely national security/counter-terrorism on the one hand, and democracy promotion on the other. You’ll recall that it’s in the name of these two policy goals that President Bush was authorized by Congress […]

As critical as I’ve been about recent developments in Iraq, I thought I’d link to this Foreign Policy article by Jason Gluck that suggests that the Iraqi political process is not as hopeless as I’ve suggested. Yesterday I mentioned the challenge of finding metrics that actually reflect what’s going on in Iraq, as opposed to what we want to see. The kind of legislative compromise Gluck describes is tough to quantify, but significant. Hopefully it’s not also irrelevant in light of this week’s violence. Meanwhile, in a sign that Maliki’s crackdown on Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi militia was either pre-mature or […]

Hampton makes a good point that the violence in Basra is occurring in the aftermath of British withdrawal, with the subsequent power vacuum it left. Spencer Ackerman elaborates on that here (via Andrew Sullivan), drawing some conclusions along the way about what America needs to consider in fashioning its own eventual troop withdrawal. So, yes, this isn’t a failure of the Surge in operational (ie. tactical) terms, since the Surge took place in another province. But remember that in January 2007, when President Bush announced plans for the Surge, the British had all of 7,000 troops in Basra province. A […]

I just went to hear U.S. Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guéhenno speak at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Guéhenno is credited by many with bringing U.N. peacekeeping operations back to a respectable state after what Guéhenno himself calls the “tragedies of the 90s” — the series of peacekeeping operations, perhaps exemplified by Yugoslavia and Rwanda, where the U.N. got in way over its head either because there was no real peace to keep, because the deployed force was insufficiently robust, because the mission was ill-defined, or for some other reason. Guéhenno struck me as an impressive and […]

The headlines after John McCain’s major foreign policy address yesterday have focused on the emphasis on multilateralism and his distancing himself from Bush’s “go-it-alone” foreign policy. But it should be noted that he also emphasized what one might call a multilateralism of means — the use of all instruments of national power in creating an integrated strategy: Prevailing in this struggle [against radical Islamic terrorism] will require far more than military force. It will require the use of all elements of our national power: public diplomacy; development assistance; law enforcement training; expansion of economic opportunity; and robust intelligence capabilities. I […]

Judah writes below that what’s happening in Basra is “pretty damning stuff for advocates of the Surge.” In the interest of stimulating a little debate here (and I invite you to weigh in by clicking on our new “discuss this item” button below), I don’t see that this is conclusively the case. To the extent that the strategic goal of the Surge was to create space for political reconciliation, Basra’s descent into fighting is perhaps more evidence that this goal hasn’t been reached. At the same time, however, Surge advocates will be able to credibly make the argument, as I […]