WPR Blog Archive

Noah Feldman’s cover article in this past Sunday’s New York Times is a must read. Feldman provides useful background on how the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court are increasingly affecting foreign policy. His framing of the debate surrounding the intersection of constitutional law and international law is also quite useful. He describes the two sides of the debate as “conservative and inward-looking” vs. “liberal and outward-focused,” and illustrates how in two recent decisions — Boumediene v. Bush and Medellín v. Texas — the liberal and conservative view, respectively, each notched a victory. Feldman writes: The Boumediene decision saw the […]

So after resigning from office, Ehoud Olmert goes on the record about the need for Israel to make serious concessions in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights: Who thinks seriously that if we sit on another hilltop, on another hundred meters, that this is what will make the difference for the state of Israel’s basic security? As Matt Eckel over Foreign Policy Watch puts it in so many words, Great, now you tell us. But the timing isn’t only bad because Olmert no longer has the power to act on his newfound convictions. It also puts his […]

AFOE’s Edward Hugh offers a solid analysis of the current financial turmoil roiling Russian markets, that among other things debunks the idea that the invasion of Georgia was an essential cause — as opposed to a catalyzing event — of the capital flight in the invasion’s aftermath. In other words, absent other fundamental weaknesses and contributing factors, there’s no way of knowing whether globalized markets would have “punished” Russia’s muscle-flexing in the Caucasus. While most of the loud arguments about the Russian invasion have framed it in terms of NATO enlargement and some sort of moral obligation to defend Georgia’s […]

Arif Rafiq at Pakistan Policy Blog explains why you’d need to take the best parts of Obama’s approach, the best parts of McCain’s approach, then improve them both significantly, before you’d have a viable Pakistan policy. Very good analysis worth reading. Rafiq makes the point that both candidates continue to emphasize a Musharraf-centric rhetoric that was perhaps relevant during the winter primary campaign, but ignores the ways in which Pakistan’s situation has dramatically changed over the past nine months. The major problem with Obama’s Pakistan policy is his insistence on unilateral strikes against high-value al-Qaida targets within Pakistani territory. As […]

Sam Roggeveen at the Interpreter wonders how I can be so sure that when a Michigan ad for Barack Obama targets John McCain as a foreign car owner, the emphasis is on foreign car owner, not foreign car owner. In other words, there’s the hint of protectionism that Sam worries about, but not the xenophobia he initially mentioned. Truth is, I can’t say for sure that Obama’s protectionist rhetoric is just rhetoric. But I think that the next phase of globalization will be as much dominated by immigration (ie. the liberalization of labor markets) as by protectionism. Case in point, […]

Tom Barnett flags this WaPo article (from August) about the ways in which women’s emergence in the workforce is challenging traditional gender roles and family structures. As Barnett puts it: Globalization is a job threat to us, but it’s a social revolution to most countries around the world. Another area where the hidden costs of “The Rise of the Rest” have yet to be calculated into the emerging redistribution of global power and influence. I’ve already discussed the ways in which America has a head start on the kind of multicultural society globalization will ultimately select for. China, for instance, […]

A few weeks ago, it looked like the Rice-Gates faction was winning out in the Bush administration’s internal debate about how to respond to Russia’s invasion of Georgia. That view argued in favor of restraint and a collective response with our European allies instead of unilateral “punitive” measures. But according to this LA Times article (via Ilan Goldenbeerg at Democracy Arsenal), the Cheney hardliners might be carrying the day. This faction is advocating for “. . .the continuation of what they confirm has been a White House-imposed communications blackout on most dealings with Russia and a halt to nearly all […]

We’ve talked a lot in this space about Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ advocacy of “strengthening [the United States’] capacity to use ‘soft’ power and for better integrating it with ‘hard’ power,” as he put it in his landmark November 2007 speech at Kansas State University. WPR contributor Sam Brannen wrote of the speech at the time that “Secretary Gates may have written the first chapter in the next Quadrennial Defense Review, due in 2009.” Indeed, it’s a good bet that soft power capabilities will be a major focus of the next version of the every-four-years strategy document that is designed […]

With the security situation in Iraq improved to the point where Secretary of Defense Robert Gates referred to entering the “endgame” in Congressional testimony yesterday, the question of what to do in Afghanistan is getting more and more attention every day. In the same testimony Gates, when pressed, conceded the possibility of adding three more brigades to our troop presence there next spring. That’s in addition to the additional brigade announced by President Bush for February, and would roughly meet the repeated requests of theater commanders. Meanwhile, the White House has announced an interdepartemental strategic review of Afghanistan policy to […]

It’s becoming increasingly clear that foreign capital will not be a major factor in the bailout of the financial sector. A lot of the equity purchases made recently by sovereign wealth funds haven’t exactly panned out, after all, and as Badr al-Saad, managing director of the Kuwait Investment Authority, succinctly put it: We are not responsible for saving foreign banks. This is the duty of the central banks in these countries. Meanwhile, the calls for foreign participation is ironic, given all the anguish over sovereign wealth funds invading the American financial sector earlier this year. But I suppose the biggest […]

Laura Rozen has a rundown of Barack Obama’s intellligence braintrust over at Mother Jones. As Laura points out, the question of intelligence reform has been a “stealth topic” so far during the campaign, and while some of her sources argue that’s appropriate for such a vital, bipartisan issue, I’m glad to see some discussion of it. I’m also impressed by the kind of broad dialogue Obama is commissioning to address the problems the Bush administration’s approach to politicizing intelligence has created. Of course, listening to a broad spectrum of opinions doesn’t make the final decision any less political. But at […]

Janine Davidson at Intel Dump cites a Tom Johnson and M. Chris Mason piece in the Atlantic, All Counterinsurgency is Local, before discussing the tension between the tactics of counterinsurgency, which emphasize engaging with governance and authority at the most immediate (ie. local) level, and the strategy of counterinsurgency, which emphasizes shoring up governance and authority at the national level: [T]he question we need to examine is about tradeoffs. What are we sacrificing from a national or international security perspective when we focus on human security at the local level, as Johnson and Mason suggest? What might an international system […]

Big mistake in terms of political optics for Barack Obama to send Joe Biden to address the National Guard Association yesterday. But the proposal Biden floated to elevate the National Guard to the level of the Joint Chiefs strikes me as the first substantial change in military posture presented by either candidate. It reflects the fact that the Guard has been transformed from a strategic reserve to an operational reserve to meet the needs of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. I suppose one more Chief at the table could be a recipe for more turf wars and gridlock. But it […]

Whether or not the American bailout of the financial sector includes significant regulatory provisions, there’s already an emerging European consensus that the current crisis demonstrates the need for a regulatory body on a global level. From the EU Observer: Peter Steinbrueck, Germany’s Social-Democrat finance minister, raisedon Sunday (21 September) the idea of “an international authority thatwill make the traffic rules for financial markets,” while speaking toGerman radio, Reuters reports. Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is to outline proposals forjust such a body, run under the authority of the International Monetaryfund, in a speech to the Labour Party conference on […]

For various reasons, including the lack of a credible capacity, Russian naval posturing in the Atlantic and Caribbean doesn’t pose a serious threat to the U.S. It does, however, disturb South America’s emerging balance of power, specifically by reinforcing the threat that Venezuela poses to Brazil’s regional influence. (See Marcelo Ballvé’s WPR piece.) So it’s not really a surprise that Brazil would seek to shore up its naval deterrent capacity by adding five submarines — four diesel-powered and one nuclear-powered — to its already existing fleet. It is, though, surprising that it would turn to France to partner in the […]

Last Thursday, two agents of the German foreign intelligence service, the BND, who had been stationed in Baghdad during the Iraq War in 2003 testified before the intelligence oversight committee of the German Bundestag. The purpose of the hearing was to determine what exactly they were doing in Baghdad at the time and, above all, whether the information they reported back to BND headquarters in Pullach could in turn have been used by American military command. The latter possibility is regarded as controversial in Germany and has previously been reported as established fact by the New York Times. (The Times […]

A quick word on today’s vote by the French Parliament to extend the mission in Afghanistan, which for political reasons was never in doubt. The vote comes in the aftermath of the Taliban ambush last month that left ten French soldiers dead, an ambush that has had a very long media trail here in France. Immediately after the shocking news, gruesome rumors circulated about the circumstances surrounding the soldiers’ deaths, rumors that the authorities were very slow to respond to. Soon thereafter, Paris Match published photos of the Taliban who had been involved in the ambush, provoking a storm of […]