WPR Blog Archive

Looks like with regards to what I wrote earlier about finding the balance with China, the new administration is leaning more towards “accepting the limits of our liberalizing influence” than towards maintaining the “low-end threshold of our expectations.” There will be plenty of time to get Beijing’s dander up the next time the Dalai Lama passes through Washington. But for now, in the opening days of a new administration, I’ve got to agree with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “We pretty much know what they are going to say” on human rights issuessuch as greater freedoms for Tibet, Clinton told […]

The IAEA just released its latest report on Iran’s nuclear program(available here for download as a .pdf file via ACW), and if the past is anyindication, expect the accompanying spin and analysis to be a bitmisleading. To unpack the actual report, essentially the IAEAdetermined that Iran had continued running the centrifuges it alreadyhad online and had added some more, and that the efficiency of thecentrifuges already online had improved. The Iranians, meanwhile, onceagain refused to allow the more rigorous and transparent inspectionsmandated by the Additional Protocol, used a loophole to deny inspectorsaccess to a heavy water reactor under construction but […]

A lot of people have been questioning the timing of President Barack Obama’s announcement of a troop increase for Afghanistan. Obama had already delayed his decision by a few weeks, and some, like Joe Klein, wondered why he didn’t wait for the outcome of his much-heralded strategic reassessment. James Joyner doesn’t connect the dots, but his write-up of yesterday’s NATO defense ministers’ summit suggests a speculative explanation to Obama’s Tuesday announcement: As widely foreshadowed, the United States used the occasion of ameeting of NATO defense ministers in Warsaw to call on its Europeanallies to contribute more troops and resources to […]

In the post-Iraq War Middle East, everything is regional and all roads lead to Tehran. Here’s Laura Rozen on George Mitchell’s debriefing to American Jewish “community leaders”: Mitchell said that on the plane back from his recent trip to the MiddleEast, he had re-read his eight-year-old report on thePalestinian-Israeli conflict, and was struck by how much the situationhad changed. Among the changes he noted, Mitchell said that eight yearsago, no one talked about Iran. But this time, everyone mentioned it,both Israeli and Arab leaders. What’s interesting is the way the Iran bogeyman, whether real or imagined, is reshaping everyone’s strategic […]

Max Bergmann, as usual, with a smart take — by which, of course, I mean an opinion I agree with — on the EU and why we need a high-profile ambassador in Brussels: Sending a person with some bureaucratic clout would also send apositive signal of support to the effort to expand EU integration intothe foreign policy realm. If we start using the EU as a means throughwhich to conduct our foreign policy, it could also encourage Europe todevelop a more coherent and cohesive foreign policy. As the financialcrisis severely reigns in our ability to act in the world, we […]

World Politics Review’s managing editor, Judah Grunstein, appeared yesterday on France 24’s short-format interview program, Top Story, to discuss the prospects for U.S.-Syrian rapprochement. You can find the video here.

Harry Harding has a rundown at the Asia Foundation’s In Asia blog of Chinese perspectives on President Barack Obama and how they have evolved from the campaign to the transition to the early administration. In a nutshell, the Chinese government prefers known quantities to newcomers promising change because it doesn’t like surprises (vive la revolution!), prefers Republicans to Democrats because the former are less likely to harp on things like human rights (although McCain’s League of Democracies caused them some concern), is perfectly happy with the benign neglect accorded China by this year’s campaign rhetoric, and reads Congressional transcripts (like […]

Depending on who you listen to, the F-22 is either a boondoggle, or the key to America’s air superiority in the coming century. One thing that’s interesting to note, though, is that Israel, Japan and Australia would all love to get their hands on it, but can’t due to the U.S. export ban on the aircraft. (Okay, there’s a bit of sticker shock, too.) One of the big arguments against expanding orders for the F-22, besides the fact that we’re kind of hard up for cash these days, is that it plays no counterinsurgency role. My hunch, though, is that […]

Those sneaky French. Just when you think you can trust them, they turn around and stab you in the back and do exactly what they’ve been saying they’d do. Okay, cheap shot, because Judy Dempsey’s piece on Sarkozy’s NATO-EU defense grand bargain doesn’t exhibit any of the paranoia usually on display in American analysis of France’s EU defense ambitions. Two things, though. This isn’t quite true: But most of Europe has no stomach for tough missions like Afghanistan. It has not supported France in playing a bigger role in Africa. The Europeans do not want to spend more on defense, […]

In the immediate aftermath of President Obama’s announcement of an American troop increase in Afghanistan, Germany has signaled a troop increase (600 additional troops) and French planners are formulating contingencies for a troop increase (up to 800 troops) as well (both items via Secret Défense).Both moves represent token increases compared to the 17K Obama justannounced (12K in combat troops, 5K in support troops), although theFrench increase, if ultimately agreed to, would solidify an upcomingreorganization of French forces into a unified brigade. The increasesare also significant political gestures that reflect Obama’s politicalcapital here in Europe. So the Afghan “surge” is not […]

Tom Ricks flags a Chinese “soft power” bridge-building project in Africa and worries about Chinese military contractors: . . . Bridges don’t bother me somuch. What really worries me is the day when Beijing starts deploying “private securitycontractors” to African countries, in part because that might be when theprecedents established by the U.S. government in Iraq come back to haunt us.Among other things, Chinese mercenariesare gonna be much cheaper than their American counterparts — and also are likelyto be even cozier with their own government back home. Now, Ricks is right when he says, previously, that “China is serious about […]

Marc Lynch has a must read post on Arab efforts to forge some sort of common ground between “rejectionists” (Hamas, Qatar, Syria) and “moderates” (Saudis, Egypt), with a discussion of the implications in terms of Hamas-Fatah powersharing talks, Hamas-Israeli ceasefire negotiations, and subsequent Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. Syria, not surprisingly, plays a prominent role in the equation, as does Qatar. For all the pessimism that followed the Gaza War and the subsequent Israeli elections, the urgency of the abyss seems to be playing a positive role, at least with regards to mending Arab/Palestinian internal rifts. It remains to be seen whether […]

The situation in Guadeloupe has a number of particularities that make it a not-very-ideal reference to other poor places in the world. As an island, the cost of foodstuffs and necessities remains high despite the recent drop in global commodity prices. But it’s hard to read about the month-long general strike there taking a violent turn without thinking about the potential for generalized instability as a result of the global economic downturn: The strike also is exposing racial and class tensions on islands wherea largely white elite, many the descendants of colonial settlers, makesup only 1 percent of the population […]

As a vocal skeptic of plans to escalate the war in Afghanistan, I should be dismayed by President Barack Obama’s approval of 17K additional troops. But for various reasons, I think it’s a smart move. His initial delay in making the announcement led me to believe that he might be having second thoughts about doubling down. But after the delay, the announcement of a very muscular increase demonstrates the kind of resolve that won’t necessarily win the war, but will allow us to eventually withdraw at a time of our choosing, rather than under duress. That’s not an insignificant gesture, […]

I try to avoid wading into the field of economics, where a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, and a lot of knowledge doesn’t seem to help matters much these days either. But I recall from the distant fog of a high school term paper that one of the initial complicating factors in the onset of the Great Depression was the buildup of inventory. I’d understood that the recent advances in communications technology, along with more efficient production and delivery systems, had largely streamlined inventories to be more responsive to real-time demand. But this WaPo article suggests that […]

Besides continuing a distinct pro-Czech slant in his recent EU reporting, Steven Erlanger’s NY Times article on the Czech Republic’s desire to see President Barack Obama pass through on his European visit highlights the challenge of how to think of the EU. Is it Brussels and the president of the EU Commission? Is it the country holding the EU presidency? Is it the heads of state summit? I remember some discussion of this point in the context of a presidential visit last fall, and how including the EU to the “Troika” (UK, France, Germany) would send a strong signal of […]

Is it possible we’ve actually reached the high-water mark for American forces in Afghanistan? Or is President Barack Obama simply holding the military command’s feet to the fire on approving recent troop requests to send a message? A few months ago, common wisdom seemed to have 30K additional troops penciled in for Afghanistan, with a couple brigades already inked in for January deployment. But Obama has yet to give the green light on even the two brigades, let alone the Afghan “surge” people were talking about. Part of that has to do with waiting for the outcome of the strategy […]