WPR Blog Archive

For an optimistic take on how recent events in the Middle East might advance American interests, there’s David Kenner in The New Republic, and Scott Peterson in the Christian Science Monitor. Kenner explains how popular resentment over Hizbollah turning its weapons against fellow Lebanese, as opposed to Israeli occupiers, might turn their battlefield success into a Pyrrhic victory. Peterson discusses how an Israeli-Syrian peace deal, admittedly a longshot, might if not drive a wedge between Syria and Iran, at least accentuate the differences in their parallel but not common regional interests. (For an even more thorough examination of where Damascus […]

In case you’re not in the practice of doing so, I highly recommend clicking through to WPR’s daily Media Roundup as a supplement to your regular news aggregator if you have one, or as an intelligent survey of the morning’s top news and commentary if you don’t. That’s where I ran across this Henry Kissinger op ed on the globalization backlash and what to do to keep it from gathering steam. The irony of the current wave of protectionist sentiment is that it’s coming from the “consumer” nations, and is accompanied by the growing sentiment that globalization poses not only […]

I spent the morning discussing an online multimedia project and some of the difficulties posed by technological lag in the developing world, then ran across this when I got back home. William Irwin Thomson once wrote that we imagine our societal past as a progression of discrete evolutionary stages moving from the simple to the complex, ignoring the fact that a broad range of societal complexity exists concurrently in the present. The Brazilian government ministry that organized the flyover explained that it was trying to raise awareness about the need to protect these “uncontacted” tribes. I wonder if it will […]

CIA Director Michael Hayden tells the Washington Post that al-Qaida is on the run: In a strikingly upbeat assessment, the CIA chief cited major gains against al-Qaeda’s allies in the Middle East and an increasingly successful campaign to destabilize the group’s core leadership. While cautioning that al-Qaeda remains a serious threat, Hayden said Osama bin Laden is losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Islamic world and has largely forfeited his ability to exploit the Iraq war to recruit adherents. Two years ago, a CIA study concluded that the U.S.-led war had become a propaganda and marketing bonanza […]

On its own, Chad is one of the poorest and most desperate countries in the world. Now, to make matters worse, Chad finds itself sandwiched between conflicts in Sudan and Central African Republic. Hundreds of thousands of refugees from those countries have flooded into Chad in recent years. The U.N. is struggling to keep up. Just this week, the High Commissioner for Refugees began moving 10,000 CAR refugees to a new camp, trying to outpace Chad’s paralyzing rainy season. It’s a “situation that regrettably gets very little play in the media,” according to U.N. rep Bryn Boyce. AllAfrica.com has more: […]

Last year I argued that Darfur’s Arabs needed to be represented at the peace talks, even if this meant giving a seat to the militia leaders who make up the Janjaweed. This dynamic has been completely overlooked in the crisis, but if there is to be peace in Darfur the Arab tribes there will need to buy into it. Activists tend to argue that this unduly complicates things and makes peace less attainable, but I strongly disagree. If a peace deal was signed between the central government and the rebels (which is even less likely now), there is little reason […]

It hasn’t gotten much notice, but in the aftermath of Pakistan’s elections, the post-Benazir Bhutto PPP has been drifitng closer to Pervez Musharraf, and is essentially now standing in the way of the efforts to remove him from office through conventional means (ie. the reinstatement of judges likely to rule him ineligible to hold office). The result has been for the anti-Musharraf movement to harden its posiiton, calling for his removal through article six of Pakistan’s constitution. That procedure would leave Musharraf, if tried and convicted, facing the death penalty for high treason. Arif Rafiq of Pakistan Policy Blog has […]

One of the arguments advanced to justify Israel’s recent peace overtures to Syria was that a security guarantee might empower Damascus to sever its close ties to Tehran. Yesterday’s announcement of a new Syrian-Iranian defense cooperation pact, though, should put that one to rest. Some people will point to this as proof that a peace deal with Syria is unrealistic. What’s unrealistic, though, is the idea that we will somehow isolate Iran through a policy of containment that neither Iran’s allies, nor some of our own, have an interest in pursuing. At some point, it would be useful to realign […]

As an aside to Peter Kiernan’s WPR article on Iran looking towards the East for its gas pipeline projects, I just came across this brief ISNA wire report that Iran will begin exporting Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) to China and Europe in 2010. The disadvantages of LNG, from what I understand, are the processing and transportation costs. The advantage is that, once processed, it becomes a much simpler bilateral commodities transaction, as opposed to the longterm, multilateral agreements required by a pipeline. Asia’s demand for energy, as Kiernan points out, is already undermining American attempts to isolate Iran. That will […]

It’s no coincidence that Vladimir Putin chose France for his first foreign visit as Prime Minister. The visit demonstrates the growing importance of the two countries’ bilateral relations, in the context of Russian-EU relations. Russia and the EU will begin negotiations next month for a new Cooperative Framework Agreement, and France assumes the EU presidency in July. In a sign, too, of how central civil nuclear energy has become to French foreign policy, Putin will be accompanied by the head of Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear agency, which is seeking to broaden its collaborative contracts with its French counterpart, Areva.

The Lowy Interpreter has a must read guest post about what Iran’s nuclear negotiators have learned from the country’s hair-raising traffic maneuvers. Here’s my favorite: Principle 2: Wear them down Driving — When you drive the wrong way down a one-way street, and meet someone coming the other way, turn your engine off and start eating lunch. Eventually they will reverse. Nuclear negotiating — Take extended periods to ‘review’ new proposals. Hand out ambiguous promises of new cooperation. Your nuclear program has been the flavour of the month for a while. It won’t be forever. Clever stuff, but also revealing. […]

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that al-Qaida has managed to lose the battle for hearts and minds in the Arab world at a faster pace than we have. Indiscriminate bloodbaths are likely to do that, especially when it comes from what’s supposed to be the home team. More importantly, an operational philosophy that appeals predominantly to sociopaths will always have a hard time advancing a convincing societal program. Dan Drezner has got a useful rundown (complete with lengthy citations) of the emerging discussion. To the extent that the Iraq War provided al-Qaida with a broad playing field to employ […]

In a DOD press briefing today, U.S. Pacific Command Commander Adm. Timothy Keating described what he told Burmese officials earlier this month about the U.S. military’s ability to assist in the distribution of aid in Burma. Keating traveled with USAID director Henrietta Foe on the first relief flight into Burma on May 11. Since then, Keating said, the U.S. military has flown about 70 missions carrying 1.4 million pounds of relief supplies to Yangon. But, despite the seemingly generous terms which Keating recounted in today’s press conference, the government of Myanmar has yet to allow the U.S. military to assist […]

This from Democracy Arsenal’s Max Bergmann seems about right to me. Saying you want to save military action as a last resort, as John McCain does, is great. But if your first resort is to set unconditional demands that your adversaries have already rejected, you wind up getting to your last resort pretty quickly. To use the language of “Getting to Yes,” unless you want to settle for your BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) right off the bat, you’ve got to actually explore the possibility of a negotiated agreement. Negotiating doesn’t mean being naive about your enemies and […]

While on the subject of negotiating with Iran (we were on the subject, right?), via Jason Sigger of Armchair Generalist comes this Zbig Brzezinski-William Odom WaPo op-ed titled “A Sensible Path on Iran.” Their approach is just that, sensible, even if it can be accused of being optimistic about the possibilities that a Grand Bargain could offer. It’s important not to be naive about the Iranians (Ali Larijani, for example, while a bitter domestic rival of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was nonetheless far from a cream puff when it came to EU and IAEA negotiations), something I emphasized yesterday on Sirius’ Blog […]

Two views of John McCain’s address on nuclear proliferation. Nikolas Gvosdev, who examines it through a political lens and gives it a qualified approval, and the CSIS’ John Wolfsthal (guest posting at Democracy Arsenal), who examines it through a non-proliferation lens and gives it a once over with an aluminum baseball bat. Interestingly, Gvosdev found a parallel between McCain’s treatment of Russia and the rhetoric Brack Obama used in his speech to the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs back in April 2007. Ironic, given the differences in how they’d actually deal with Russia.

Nikolas Gvosdev’s right. Europe’s return to the center-right does not equal an automatic alignment with American positions. In fact, I’d argue that on the points of disagreement (which Gvosdev identifies as Russia, the EU’s limits, and Iran), we’d be better off realigning our positions to theirs than vice versa. (I’d add differences in counterterrorism and stability operations docrine, and the emphasis given to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process as a driver of Middle East conflict, to the list.) The consequences of policy differences have been significantly dedramatized on both sides of the lake to the point where no one here in […]