WPR Blog Archive

I’m always a bit skeptical about triumphant military operations that encounter no resistance, especially when the operations are of he counterinsurgency variety. And sure enough, it turns out that one of the reasons the Pakistani sweep of the Khyber Pass turned out to be such a success was because “. . .there are indications that the militants had moved out of the area before the offensive was launched.” That, of course, is the nature of an asymmetric insurgency. What’s interesting is that we’re increasingly seeing the rise of the asymmetric state, by which I mean a state that can’t actually […]

To follow up a bit on last week’s mega-post on Turkey, three articles demonstrate how pro-active and dynamic, but also pragmatic, the Turkish foreign policy approach is. Whether reaching out to Russia for more integrated trade, Iran for gas pipeline deals, or the African Union for increased access and influence, Turkey is taking advantage of its regional centrality, a feature underlined by Ahmet Davutoglu in his assessment of Turkey’s strategic identity. The article on the AU summit also mentions that Turkey is angling for votes to make it onto the UN Security Council for 2009-2010. Given their flexible and pragmatic […]

The errors that resulted in the accidental shooting of 17 civilians at a French military demonstration in Carcassone began well before live rounds instead of blanks were mistakenly loaded into an assault rifle by a seasoned veteran sergeant. According to an eye-witness cited by Jean-Dominique Merchet on his Secret Défense blog, the shooting took place during a mock liberation of a hostage, while the squad of four was demonstrating an armed retreat under fire with the use of a smokescreen: During the entire firing sequence, two soldiers fired to cover the other two who retreated, then they changed roles, marking […]

“We are willing to make joint efforts with the U.S. to cohere to the dialogue and consultation mechanism and take each other’s concerns into consideration to better achieve mutual benefits.” — Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in remarks following his meeting with Condoleezza Rice. Translation: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, in talks with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday, called on the United States to take measures to stabilize its currency and prevent further slowdown of the global economy. . . China was taking measures to safeguard its stable economic development and hoped the United States would overcome its credit […]

This post by Sam Roggeveen originally appeared on The Interpreter. The big diplomatic news of the day is that North Korea has handed over a partial accounting of its nuclear program, and in return the US will remove North Korea from its sponsors of terrorism list and ease sanctions. Those who support this move call it ‘huge news…and…a giant step in putting US-North Korea relations on a new and more constructive track.’ But it’s worth reading some of the critics too, in order to get a picture of just how much is missing from the deal and how much work […]

From Der Spiegel, a photo essay titled, China: From Mao to the Space Age. Quite an odyssey. The image of the couple on a bicycle under a bridge as tanks pass overhead the day after the Tiananman Square massacre is particularly haunting. So many of our projections about China’s rise are based on the assumption that the regime has won its gamble of offering prosperity and security as a trade-off for political liberalization. That strikes me as a premature conclusion. The China democracy movement probably came too early, both in China’s process of emergence and the world’s process of integration. […]

It’s important to remember, as Congress tries to determine who authorized what interrogation practices and when, that the interrogation practices themselves are but one abhorrent component of a larger system of black sites, kidnappings and renditions. And as Amnesty International points out in a report released Tuesday (.pdf), American agents couldn’t have carried out that program without the assistance of various European governments: The role of European states in renditions and secret detention has ranged from active participation to tacit collusion. European agents have arrested or detained suspects and turned them over to US custody without judicial process. They have […]

I’d just like to flag a couple of WPR articles for any readers who might enter the site directly through the blog. David Axe, who is a frequent WPR contributor, has travelled to Eastern Chad to report on the humanitarian crisis in the region as over 250,000 Darfur refugees, refugees of the Central African Republic’s civil war, and internally displaced Chadians converge on the frontier delta. I covered the story last March for WPR from the comfort of Paris. David’s conditions are quite a bit more dangerous, and his first two dispatches (here and here) are well worth a read. […]

At the end of a two-day summit that wound up today, the EU and Russia announced the start of formal negotiations for a longterm strategic cooperation agreement to replace the one signed in 1998. Those who like to read significance into minor trivia might take note of the date: July 4th. The negotiations, which have been previously blocked by Poland and most recently Lithuania, are set to address a wide range of subjects, but prominent among them will be increased economic integration between Russia and the Euro zone. That means everything from visa waivers for travel to the all-important energy […]

Transcript WASHINGTON — On the Hill this week, the House considered the future of U.S.-India relations, while the Senate debated improvements to the United State’s strategic partnership with Pakistan. On Wednesday, the House Foreign Affairs’ Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia discussed America’s evolving relationship with India. Rep. Gary L. Ackerman, who presided over the session, began the hearing with sweeping praise of the United States’ partnership with the South Asian nation: “[I]f there is one area in the subcommittee’s jurisdiction where President Bush got the policy right, it is towards India. . . . In the area […]

Foreign Policy’s Blake Hounshell has a point. Make that five points.

In a Democracy Arsenal post on what’s missing from the discussion about American strategy, Shawn Brimley ties together a variety of disparate events into a coherent whole that he calls the “era of the contested commons,” combining threats to the integrity of both new commons (e.g. cyberspace and satellites) and more traditional ones (e.g. maritime routesand unclaimed territories like the Arctic). Brimley argues that in focusing too narrowly on the conduct of two wars, we’ve ignored the role that was the centerpiece of our global leadership position: American power and influence are derived principally by providing the key global public […]

Readers of the blog know that I’ve been very impressed by Turkey’s diplomatic navigation, not only of the PKK crisis, but of regional matters in general. So when I saw this article in Le Point on Ahmet Davutoglu, PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s foreign policy guru and the Turkish “Kissinger”, I did some digging. What I came up with, this January 2008 article (.pdf) from Insight Turkey, is definitely worth a read for anyone interested in Turkey and the Middle East in general, and the changing global role of a dynamic Middle Power in general. In the article, Davutoglu describes Turkey’s […]

This post by Rory Medcalf originally appeared on The Interpreter. I’ve a lot of respect for the work of the Arms Control Wonk, Jeffrey Lewis, whose blog consistently provides some of the world’s best in-depth news, speculation and background on arms control issues. But I think he has it wrong in his latest post on India and nuclear testing. Jeffrey intriguingly cites the discrepancies between two major statements by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and makes much of the fact that the more recent of these, delivered at a 9 June disarmament conference in New Delhi, omitted reference to India’s […]

Diplomatic engagement with Iran is inevitable, not because they’re “ten feet tall and on a roll,” as this WaPo article (via Laura Rozen) puts it, or even because they’re “dangerous, and clever, and good at asymmetric warfare.” Diplomatic engagement is inevitable because it’s the only official means of communication between nations besides war, and war is in neither Iran’s nor our interest. On the other hand, I don’t think that diplomatic engagement should be organized under a logic of “[T]hey have a lot of vulnerabilities — and. . .we can exploit them.” At this point, too, how to manage the […]

Judah writes that “We still don’t know how the final chapter on the Surge will turnout, because we still don’t know how the final chapter on Iraq willturn out.” I agree with the second part of the sentence, but not the first. Declaring the Surge a success need not wait until the final chapter of the story of the entire war is written. That, it seems to me, is akin to arguing, for example, that the validity of the original decision to go to war should only be judged against the ultimate failure or success of the war. (If the […]

This Oxford Business Group article on the potential rebirth of the Russia-Syria strategic relationship (via Friday Lunch Club) illustrates that, while Russia is not yet in a position to project its influence as widely as it did during the Cold War, the Middle East is already well within its reach. It also illustrates the fine line that American policy, both regional and global, will have to walk in the post-Bush era. Whether in terms of values (democracy promotion) or interests (containment/isolation of adversaries), readily available alternatives exist to American influence and support. Sovereign wealth funds, for instance, are increasingly allowing […]