WPR Blog Archive

Well, folks, I’d been meaning to do a year-end wrap up along the lines of the gang at the Interpreter, with a list of everything I’d gotten wrong in 2008. But time’s kind of crept up on me, so instead I figure I’ll take a page out of the George W. Bush playbook and just say I’ve been right about everything and count on history to bear me out. Seriously, I’ll be doing some light posting over the rest of the week, and the WPR front page will be actively updated throughout the holiday. So check in over a glass […]

According to the WaPo, President-elect Barack Obama is prudently withholding comment on the escalation in the Israel-Hamas conflict, since there’s really nothing to gain and everything to lose by wading into those waters. For some reason, I manage to avoid mentioning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in calmer times, but feel compelled to weigh in when things get worse, which among other things helps explain why Obama’s resting up in Hawaii in anticipation of assuming the presidency, and I’m, well, not in Hawaii and not anticipating assuming the presidency anytime soon. But without trying to offer a unified field theory or provide […]

In a post earlier today, I disagreed with a point Shadi Hamid made about the inherent stability of democracies’ foreign policy. But I consider him to be one of the sharpest analysts out there. In fact, I recently included him in response to a query about the best “up and coming” defense and foreign policy analysts. To get a sense of why, read his explanation (via Dan Drezner) of the strategic calculations behind Hamas’ decision to escalate its rocket attacks, knowing they would provoke a massive Israeli response. Short version: Sometimes rational calculation is expressed through apparently irrational actions.

Laura Rozen passes on some analysis on background from a “well known Arab American analyst” on the broader strategic stakes of the Israel-Hamas escalation that’s worth reading, especially in light of this, from Marc Lynch (a.k.a. Abu Aardvark), on the high anxiety sweeping through Jordan’s royal family. Setting aside who’s right, for a moment, to concentrate on who’s making sense, I have trouble understanding how anyone can believe Hamas might be defeated militarily, mainly because, like all asymmetric adversaries, Hamas begins at a point already beyond military defeat. Its only hope is to provoke conflict in the hope that it […]

Comparing Iraq’s ambitions to play a regional role — similar to that of Turkey — with Egypt’s relative irrelevance, Shadi Hamid at Democracy Arsenal concludes that democracies are capable of more stable foreign policies than dictatorships, especially those propped up by foreign support. Without disputing the nature of the Mubarak regime, I’m not so sure that Egypt is as irrelevant as Hamid suggests. After all, the Israel-Hamas ceasefire was negotiated via Egyptian mediation. The distinction Hamid makes regarding externally imposed dictatorships (e.g. Egypt) and indigenous ones (e.g. China) might also apply to democracies, given the nature of Baghdad’s dependence on […]

I wonder which was the oddest part for Samuel Huntington: to be best-known for a thesis that was so easy to pick holes in, or one that was so often misrepresented. (Heather Hurlburt does a nice job of pointing out both — holes and misrepresentations — at Democracy Arsenal, while the Boston Globe’s obituary fills in some of the blanks for those, like me, who knew him in reference to his late-career opus.) There are admittedly many minor details — and not a small amount of major ones — that Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations got wrong. But it’s important to […]

The other story of note over the weekend was the announcement by the Georgian Foreign Ministry that the U.S. and Georgia would be signing a Strategic Partnership Agreement on Jan. 4. The declaration sent the State Dept. scrambling to issue its own statement, and illustrates yet again the way in which, regardless of the merits of a U.S.-Georgia strategic partnership, a U.S.-Saakashvili partnership leaves us exposed to the whims of a man who has demonstrated his willingness to force our hand in very problematic ways. That said, the agreement itself, if it is in fact modeled on the recently inked […]

Looks like we’d better hand out more Viagra.

It often seems as if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict exists to serve as a constant reminder that things can always get worse. Over the weekend, they did. For those preoccupied with laying blame, there seems to be plenty to go around. Hamas’ decision to celebrate the end of the six-month-long ceasefire with a shower of rockets on Sderot would be a good place to start, were it not for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza that has worsened in plain sight but to the apparent disinterest of the world. The humanitarian crisis is a result of the Israeli blockade, which in turn […]

I think it’s safe to say that when a Nobel Peace Prize winner calls for the threat of force to remove you from power, you’re on the proverbial “wrong side of history.” Hopefully it also means that Robert Mugabe’s days as president of Zimbabwe are numbered. I had the honor and privilege of meeting and interviewing Archbishop Desmond Tutu, just following his Nobel Prize, as part of a PBS student panel TV program. (One of the fellow panelists that morning was Rachel Swarns, now the Washington correspondent for the NY Times.) I’ll never forget how, even in discussing the plight […]

A spokesman for the Chinese defense ministry repeated China’s decade-long interest in building or acquiring an aircraft carrier, according to DefenseNews. Of course, the rule of thumb with carriers is that if you have one, you don’t have any, as the recently completed fifteen-month dry dock of France’s only carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, demonstrated. I’m not enough of an economist to know whether the current global economic downturn argues for such a costly project (economic stimulus) or against it. The spokesman’s remarks came at a press conference announcing the participation of three Chinese vessels in the anti-piracy patrols off […]

With all the “he says, she says” over just how the Russia-Georgia War started, it seemed only a matter of time before a charge of American involvement was raised. For my part, I’d found it either particularly reckless or particularly suspicious that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili would start a war with Russia immediately following joint military exercises with American forces, and while some of the latter were still present in the country on Georgian military bases. Something tells me that the more we learn about the conflict, the more we’ll come to appreciate the voices of reason in its aftermath. […]

Yesterday, in his WPR Global Insights column, Richard Weitz mentioned Russian negotiators’ insistence on limiting delivery systems and not just nuclear warheads in future strategic arms agreements with the U.S. Yesterday’s failed test launch of Russia’s Bulava sub-launched nuclear-capable missile (via DefenseNews) might explain why. It’s the fifth test launch out of ten to have failed. The Russian navy was planning on introducing the missile in 2009 had the test been successful, which at a 60 percent success rate illustrates both the urgency Russia feels to upgrade its aging nuclear arsenal and the difficulty it is having to do so. […]

A quick followup to my earlier post in defense of undue pessimism. According to the common wisdom, it’s churlish to deny that the Surge in Iraq was successful. And I suppose it was successful if “the Surge” is used to refer to a time period rather than a tactic. But everyone who has followed the Iraq War closely knows that there was a convergence of factors that led to the improved security situation. The increased troop presence and changed tactics associated with the Surge were a prominent one, but it’s impossible to know for sure whether they were determinant. Even […]

This, from Peter Cassatta writing about the application of a troop surge to Afghanistan at the New Atlanticist, resonated quite a bit with yours truly: However, the Iraq surge should at least have taught us that condemninga strategy before it is underway can be unduly pessimistic. That’s the closing caveat to a balanced piece examining how the tactic will be applied, its chances for success, and the obstacles it faces. I’m not sure I’m willing to renounce undue pessimism. It serves the valuable purpose of forcing people to develop strong arguments. But I’m not only open to the possibility that […]

I’m not sure why this (AFP via DefenseNews) made me chuckle, but it did: An Iranian warship has entered the Gulf of Aden to protect Iranianvessels against pirates off the coast of Somalia, state radio said onDec. 20. “After traveling morethan 4,000 maritime miles . . . an Iranian warship entered the Gulf ofAden to protect Iranian ships against pirates,” the radio said, withoutfurther details. I like the way the UN, NATO and EU are mounting multilateral missions to secure shipping lanes for international trade, while Iran sends one ship to protect . . . Iranian ships. So now that […]

Now that the idea of sending more troops to Afghanistan has begun to take hold as an emerging consensus, the number has begun to rise. What began as 20,000 has now become a “window of overall increase” between 20 and 30K, according to JCS Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen in a weekend press conference (via Army Times). Add in support troops and we’ll probably end up at the 40K number that a plugged in contact confided had been circulating around Washington as far back as a month ago. (Remember that the Surge was initially proposed as a 20K troop increase, but […]