WPR Blog Archive

I didn’t realize she needed to polish her image. If you ask me, any more polish and you’ll need sunglasses just to look at her. Agreed, though, that women over the age of 28 don’t need makeup.

If you’re wondering why the headline of this DefenseNews article is “Russia Admits China Illegally Copied Its Fighter,” it’s because everyone knows China reverse engineers indigenous products from imported models, but the Chinese market has so much pull that people sell them the hardware along with technology transfers anyway. Then the trick becomes how to get the Chinese to respect the contract without making them lose face. A guy I met here in Paris who works for Alstom, the French train manufacturer, was telling me how they started seeing their trains show up in South America under Chinese brand names. […]

A few years ago, anytime the Pakistani government negotiated some sort of ceasefire or peace agreement with extremist militants in the FATA, the Western governments fighting those same militants in Afghanistan condemned the moves as undermining efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, instead proposing enlarged military operations, complemented by targeted missile attacks from American drones, to defeat the insurgency. None of those peace deals ended up holding up, but despite limited increases in the pace of military operations, neither the FATA nor Afghanistan is any more stabilized than it was then, and arguably less so. So it’s hard to say who got […]

Last week I noticed a minor item about a French nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed submarine, Le Triomphant, that had been forced back to port after colliding with a submerged object, which the Defense Ministry suggested could have been a “container.” I’m not a naval expert, but that struck me as very odd, since the sub was cruising beneath the surface, but not scraping bottom where I’d imagine a lost container would wind up. Today, the AP is reporting that the “container” the Triomphant struck contained another nuclear reactor and more nuclear weapons, because it was none other than the British nuclear […]

I couldn’t find true video of it, but today’s selection is one of the more beautiful songs off one of Tom Waits’ more beautiful albums. I was bitten by the vagabond bug and began dreaming of the great escape at a relatively young age. So this sort of imagery was already talking to me when I first heard it as a teenager: Planes and trains and boats and busesCharacteristically evoke a common attitude of blueUnless you have a suitcase and a ticket and a passportAnd the cargo that they’re carrying is you. I’ve argued before that citizen diplomacy is the […]

The problem with any analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that if it gets too bogged down in details, the problems become intractable, and if it treats the issues too generally, it has little practical use. Yesterday, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing on the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts in the aftermath of Gaza, and this testimony by Ziad Asali (.pdf) is well worth a read. Asali gives both immediate and longterm background on the Gaza War and the rise of Hamas, as well as a post-action report that gives a sense of the actual task […]

Counterintuitively, the interregnum period following Israel’s elections offer something of a window of opportunity in terms of negotiations both to secure a durable ceasefire in Gaza and to obtain the release of Galid Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped near Gaza and held for three years now. Because the political component of who on the Israeli side might benefit from concessions is momentarily suspended, the room for dealmaking seems to have been expanded. At any rate, there have been reports from Cairo all week that point to an imminent announcement of an 18-month truce. The rest of the formula — the […]

This Economist article on how major league sports remains pretty much recession-proof sent me looking for Babe Ruth’s famous quote in response to a reporter informing him that the salary he was holding out for in 1930 — $80,000 — was $5,000 more than then-President Herbert Hoover made: What the hell has Hoover got to do with it? Besides, I had a better year than he did. What I didn’t realize was that Ruth, in addition to being an economist, was also a counterinsurgency theorist: It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up. Especially if they’ve got the […]

Turkey, whose refusal to allow American forces to invade Iraq from its territory tested our relations back in 2003, is ironically in discussions with American military planners to allow us to withdraw from Iraq using Turkish territory. (That follows on the news that French President Nicolas Sarkozy was in Baghdad earlier this week.) That’s as it should be, of course, since we have every reason to leave Iraq more carefully, and with broader support, than we entered it. That means, too, listening to our friends a bit more than we did six years ago: The same official said Turkey advised […]

World Politics Review managing editor, Judah Grunstein, appeared on France 24’s panel discussion program, The Debate, to discuss the Israeli elections alongside Hanan Ashwari, J.J. Goldberg, and Danny Danon. Part one can be seen here. Part two can be seen here.

The interesting thing about walking back our objectives (and/or additional troop deployments) in Afghanistan is that it instantly reduces our need for Russia’s help. Add to that an (admittedly still theoretical) warming of relations with Iran, and you’ve got further lightening of need for Russian support (on the nuclear standoff), as well as a diversified energy source for Europe. There are still plenty of areas where our interests overlap with Russia’s, and it seems silly to needlessly antagonize Moscow, especially if it’s to cultivate alliances with unreliable and/or unstable states like Georgia and Ukraine, or to deploy unproven and not […]

Good thing I complained to Hampton earlier about finding absolutely nothing interesting to write about today. He sent word that DNI Adm. Dennis Blair is testifying before the Senate Select Committee for Intelligence today, and attached his testimony (.pdf). As I flipped through it, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d read the passages on pp. 19-20 (i.e., the parts about Iran’s uranium enrichment and weaponization programs) somewhere before. And it turns out I had, because the entire bit is pretty much a word for word copy-and-paste from the 2007 Iran NIE. The very same 2007 Iran NIE that, according […]

So much for knowing who’s going to govern Israel. A few things, though, have become clear. First, while everyone still gives lip-service to the two-state solution, the two possible governing coalitions are either unwilling by principle (Likud, Lieberman, Shas) or unable by circumstance (Kadima, et al) to deliver the actual concessions on West Bank settlements and Jerusalem that Israel will ultimately need to make in order to secure a final status agreement with the Palestianian Authority. Second, by Israeli security and military criteria, the Gaza War has to be considered pretty close to a best-case scenario: very significant damage to […]

That Swiss referendum on whether to extend the country’s free movement of labor agreements with the EU apparently passed with much greater ease than polls had suggested. Sixty percent of voters approved of the extension. So while there’s a whiff of protectionism in the air these days, it so far remains limited to products, not labor.

After Obama, Khatami? Not so fast, says Geoffrey Kemp writing at the National Interest: Khatami represents the smiling face of Iranian reformers. He is knownas a “moderate,” primarily because he has a more lax attitude towardssocial issues, such as women’s dress. But on the fundamentals of theIranian Revolution he is a hard-liner. . . . . . . There is no indication at this point that the nuclear program will slowdown under a Khatami presidency. Those who welcome the announcement ofhis candidacy are correct that it will lead to an exciting presidentialrace. But those who think it will change the […]

We are pleased to announce that World Politics Review’s subscription-only service has arrived! For the moment, our features will make up the bulk of our subscription content. We’ll continue to publish new feature themes every two weeks. Check out our latest theme, on “The Changing Landscape of U.S. Intelligence,” with articles by Jason Vest, Mark Lowenthal and Richard Weitz. And stay tuned for upcoming themes on the state (pun intended) of the Westphalian system and the geopolitics of water. Although most of our daily briefings and columns will remain freely accessible, we’ll also be publishing subscription-only articles in those sections […]

When I first read the transcript of Vice President Biden’s remarks in Munich over the weekend, I couldn’t help but think the language with regard to Russia sounded remarkably similar to that of the Bush administration (prior to the Georgia War, anyway). So I was a bit surprised to see the Russians respond so warmly to it. Apparently, “press the reset button” translates better into Russian than “sovereign states have the right to make their own decisions and choose their own alliances” or “we will continue to develop missile defense to counter the growingIranian capability, provided the technology is proven […]