WPR Blog Archive

So just after I posted this morning about how a confrontational stance with Russia ignored the reality that we need their cooperation on a host of important issues, I got a call from Bob Gates thanking me for tipping the internal Bush administration debate in favor of a more realist approach. Seriously, though, I might have been too quick to characterize the Bush response so far as confrontational, since this is about word for word what I was arguing: Overall, the administration’s strategy reflects a desire to defend Georgia’s territorial sovereignty and its symbolic role as an emerging democracy, while […]

It’s admittedly been a while since I wrote about Iraq, which is a testament to the ways in which that conflict has become a mature stabilization operation. Twenty-three U.S. soldiers dead in August is twenty-three too many. But the security gains since January 2007 are enormous and game-changing. I was opposed to the Surge when President Bush announced it, I’ve been skeptical of the weight it’s been given as a causal factor of the decline in violence, and I remain unconvinced that it has accomplished its ultimate strategic goal of ensuring that Iraq’s ethnic, sectarian and factional conflicts are resolved […]

Following up on yesterday’s post about the costs of Russia’s invasion of Georgia, Richard Hainsworth has a great article in Moscow Times (via The Russia Blog) comparing market reactions to the conflict with the reaction to the American invasion of Iraq (barely a blip): Whatever the reasons or motivations for Russia’s invasion into the sovereign territory of another country, investors were not prepared for this unpleasant surprise. Their investment models did not include this factor. When U.S. troops go anywhere, they are accompanied by journalists, news conferences and public warnings. Investors may not like a military conflict and they may […]

We are pleased to announce that World Politics Review now features video reports from Agence France-Presse. Watch our latest videos in the WPR video section. AFP wants viewers of its videos to be aware of the following copyright terms: AFP material shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium. AFP news material may not be stored in a whole or in part in a computer except for personal and nom-commercial use. AFP will not be held liable for any delays, inaccuracies, errors or omissions in any AFP news material or […]

Since Hong Kong was handed back to China by the British in 1997, politics here has been defined by a push and pull between pro-communist and pro-Capitalist factions. Spooked by human rights atrocities like the Tiannanmen Square massacres on the mainland and by the prospect of being subsumed by communist China, a deep-rooted suspicion of Beijing and its influence on local politics has haunted Hong Kong for the past decade. But while capitalist Hong Kong has not altered much in character since the handover, China has changed radically. The country has opened up enormously to foreign investment and influence. Its […]

Thomas PM Barnett puts it well: From history’s perspective, it can’t get much dumber than this: our globalization sweeping the planet in the form of an international liberal trade order, but right at its apogee, the four million-man army nations [note: U.S., Russia, India and China] find a way to turn on each other more than the collective problems and opportunities staring them in the face. Barnett argues here, meanwhile, that globalization should be the grand strategy of American foreign policy, and it seems to me that any assessment of the Clinton presidency would conclude that that was, in fact, […]

I haven’t gone through the NSG’s India waiver, but I’m skeptical of the value of an agreement that both sides seem to think supports their mutually exclusive positions. The key sticking point was whether India would be guaranteed an uninterrupted enriched uranium supply in the event of, say, a resumption of nuclear weapons testing. India says yes, the NSG says no. Says Jeffrey Lewis at Arms Control Wonk: One of the two parties is wrong. I am not eager to find out which. The agreed upon solution seems to be that everyone will do their best to make sure we […]

Daniel Drezner makes a compelling case for the geopolitical and financial costs Russia has suffered due to its invasion of Georgia. Among the former, its embarrassing isolation as the only country (outside of Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua) to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Among the latter, the $21 billion that fled the Russian markets in the war’s aftermath. I agree that the decision to recognize the two breakaway provinces was a strategic error, both for the reasons Drezner identifies, but also because it wasted a pressure point the Russians could have saved for later. But I’m less convinced by an argument […]

If you haven’t already read Dexter Filkins’ NYT feature on the Pakistani tribal areas (via Small Wars Journal), do so now, before the “Invade Pakistan” chorus swells. As Filkins’ reporting makes clear, there are multiple layers to the power struggle going on there, and the complexities of the competing rivalries make the debate Stateside seem simplistic at best. Within the Pakistani leadership there’s a civilian-military split, and within the military there’s an ISI/fundamentalist faction that’s not necessarily integrated into the chain of command. Within the tribal areas, there’s a Taliban-traditionalist split that includes both homegrown rivalries as well as foreign […]

The widower of Benazir Bhutto, Asif Ali Zardari, will be Pakistan’s next president after winning a majority in today’s elections. Zardari wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post on Thursday in which he promised, if elected, to amend the consitution to reduce the powers of the presidency, enhance the power of the legislature, and restore an independent judiciary. He also pledged to “work to defeat the domestic Taliban insurgency and to ensure that Pakistani territory is not used to launch terrorist attacks on our neighbors or on NATO forces in Afghanistan.” Will he follow through on these promises? We’ll see. […]

In the Sergio Leone-inspired, and admittedly simplistic, formulation of the above headline, Iraq is the good, Somalia is the bad, and Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are the ugly. The must-read from today’s media roundup of commentary concerns Iraq and comes from CNAS’s Nagl, Kahl and Brimley. The three analysts recently returned from Iraq advise policymakers on “How to Exit Iraq,” saying the answer has little to do with “‘all in’ or ‘all out’ way that Iraq is debated in Washington” at the moment. The most worrying piece of analysis I saw in today’s papers assesses U.S. and Ethiopian […]

Going through the French press coverage (Le Monde here, Le Figaro here) of yesterday’s summit in Damascus attended by the heads of state of France, Qatar and Syria as well as the Turkish prime minister, I’m struck by the way in which it illustrates in microcosm the macro models being proposed for the emerging global order. Most of the analysis has been about what the summit, and the processes that preceded it, represent for the influence of the individual countries involved. And while it’s obvious that France and Turkey are both advancing very ambitious agendas for their respective roles in […]

The current issue of Military Review (.pdf, via Small Wars Journal) contains a quiet but significant article by Christopher Housenick titled “Winning Battles but Losing Wars” (p. 91). The overlap with French Gen. Vincent Desportes’ analysis — synopsis here (.pdf), interview here (.pdf) — is pretty striking, especially with regards to the ways in which attacks on state infrastructure in the initial destructive phase of an intervention will inevitably hamper reconstruction efforts in the stabilization phase. According to Desportes, the challenge before Western militaries isn’t to “. . .conduct a ‘better war’. . .[but to] aim for a ‘better peace.’” […]

Hampton directed my attention to these two Francis Fukuyama pieces, one in the WaPo, the other in the FT. I agree with Fukuyama’s two main points from the WaPo, namely that efforts to generalize some sort of autocratic era are pointless, and that the varied autocratic states that do exist are in many ways bound by the globalized system in ways that the ideological autocracies of the 20th century weren’t. They can only go so far, as the headline puts it, although Fukuyama offers the caveat of resource scarcity as a potential driver of conflict. I wonder, though, if his […]

The Leslie Gelb op-ed piece that I flagged yesterday also contained this brief passage that’s been buzzing around in my head ever since: The two groups of realists should seek common ground on the issue of humanitarian intervention. Americans know they can’t be true to themselves and do nothing about genocide. Failure to act against this particular evil corrupts society and inspires deep cynicism, something genuine conservatives always feared. Yet it is foolhardy to try to tame the problem through nation building. Our experience, as in Bosnia, shows we have a good chance to stop or abate the violence through […]

I’ve read some convincing arguments about how Russia’s invasion of Georgia was a strategic blunder. I find them most compelling with regards to the impact it will have on Russian relations with China, as well as with other countries that have a lingering problem with breakaway provinces. But the problem with these instant analyses (my own included) is that the impact of this kind of event takes time to play out, and depends as much on the conduct afterwards as on the actual event.I’m reminded of something a jazzman (I think it was Joe Henderson) said about “blue notes”: they’re […]

As reported by the German wire service the Deutsche-Presse-Agentur (DPA) last week, the American Embassy in Berlin has announced that it will be holding a commemorative service on September 11 for the victims of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. This is hardly unusual. What is unusual, however, is that the service is co-sponsored by the Jewish Community of Berlin (an umbrella group of Jewish congregations) and will be held at the Centrum Judaicum at Berlin’s historic “New” Synagogue. Malte Lehming of the Berlin daily Die Tagesspiegel rightly asks: “Why?” The 9/11 attacks were, after all, attacks on America and Americans, […]