WPR Blog Archive

Just saw on the news that French President Nicolas Sarkozy made a surprise stop in Baghdad, accompanied by Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and Defense Minister Hervé Morin. (No shoes for Nicolas, apparently.) Obviously there are some contracts — especially defense contracts — to be gained, so the visit isn’t selfless. But I couldn’t help but think this is part of the French effort to get President Obama to walk back the tough love on NATO troop increases for Afghanistan. According to Le Figaro, Sarkozy is the first Western head of state not part of the invading coalition to visit Iraq. […]

One of the reasons the U.S. is looking for overland supply routes intoAfghanistan is because air links are more expensive. But as Richard Weitz points out in his thorough analysis of the Afghan supply problem,NATO (and European) strategic airlift also happens to be in prettyshort supply these days. The SALIS and NSAC programs were stopgapmeasures designed to hold until the Airbus A400M is delivered. Theformer involves 15 NATO nations leasing strategic airlift fromUkrainian and Russian firms as needed. The latter is a multinationalconsortium to buy three C-17s as pooled assets. Those A400Mswere originally scheduled to be delivered this year, but […]

A funny thing happened over the weekend, besides me getting knocked for a loop by a bad chest cold. Friday it seemed as if the Obama honeymoon was over. The Iranians were lobbing satellites into space, the North Koreans were trucking ICBMs cross-country, Russia was strong-arming Kyrgyzstan into shuttering our air base, and the Republicans were doing the bipartisanship approach to economic stimulus like Tyson did Marvis Frazier. Now it looks like the Russians love us again, the Iranians are willing to talk, Kyrgyzstan is willing to deal, and the big winner on economic stimulus is Obama. Anyone got a […]

Tensions between Cambodia and Thailand appear to be easing after both countries agreed to pull their remaining troops out of a disputed border area near a 900-year-old temple which was the site of armed clashes last year. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said after meeting with Thai Defense Minister Prawit Wongsuwan that an agreement had been reached to jointly demarcate the area. “There will be no more military confrontation in that area,” Sen said. “I told the Thai delegation that this is an historic moment. We have solved the problems today so there will be no troubled legacy for our […]

This is perhaps the most important change in U.S. foreign policy by the Obama administration so far. Good policy starts with a rational process, and the new system that National Security Adviser James Jones outlines in his interview with the Washington Post closely mirrors the recommendations of many of those experts who have examined how to build a better-functioning national security policymaking process. Here, for example, is our own Richard Weitz summarizing the findings of the Project on National Security Reform, a nonpartisan organization funded by Congress, foundations and the private sector: Interagency cooperation remains possible at the tactical level […]

I bet if I told you that today’s selection is from the Clash, you’d assume it was going to be about sending diplomatic cables from London. That would be understandable, because I’d initially intended to go with London Calling. But then I ran across this other nugget, and I couldn’t pass it up. It’s not an easy track, speaking as it does about the gap between Joe Strummer’s idealist expectations and the harsher realities he encountered on a trip to Jamaica. It reminded me of my own first trip to the “Third World,” in my case Ecuador, when I left […]

Matt Eckel cruelly sums up most of the arguments I make here on the blog in four words: Makes sense in theory. . . . More particularly, he was responding to this post on U.S.-Russia cooperation on European missile defense, and the idea of a three-pillar security architecture for Europe. Here’s Matt: All this to say that if there’s going to be a comprehensive collectivesecurity arrangement between the U.S., Europe and Russia, there has tobe a comprehensive convergence of security interests. That doesn’t seemto exist right now. A better idea, from my perspective, would be totrade European missile defense for […]

Towards the end of last year, there were some indications that the U.S. military was preparing for a significant escalation of the Afghanistan War. Now, though, it seems like the Obama administration is increasingly signaling a more modest set of strategic goals. One of Nikolas Gvosdev’s readers suggested they would return us to: . . . September 2001 — to the initial offer made by President Bush to theTaliban. Turn over Al-Qaeda and don’t export subversion to otherstates, and we won’t interfere in your internal affairs. I’m not sure how accurate a depiction of Obama’s signals that is, since from […]

I thought I’d follow up Richard Weitz’s and JD Yuan’s China twofer from Tuesday with a handful of news items I’ve flagged over the past few days: First (via DefenseNews), China doubled the amount of its attack sub patrols last year to the (non-alarming) new total of 12. Still, in combination with the modernization of its missile capabilities (also via DefenseNews), it confirms China’s strategic emphasis on theater denial: Whatconcerns U.S. defense circles is the increasingly flexibility andaccuracy of China’s ballistic missile arsenal, including theintroduction of mobile launchers, maneuvering warheads, improved targetsensors, and command and control, [Loren Thompson, chief operating […]

World Politics Review contributor Emil Sanamyan appeared yesterday on Russia Today to discuss the prospects for U.S.-Russian arms control talks, missile defense and Iran policy.

Public diplomacy has become a buzzword over the past few years, particularly with regard to outreach to public opinion vis à vis the U.S. in the Arab World. President Obama’s inaugural address and subsequent interview with Al Arabiya are notable examples of how seriously the new administration is taking the matter. But what about the Arab world’s public diplomacy vis à vis American opinion of it? If the English-language Website of the League of Arab States — better known as the Arab League — is any indication, it doesn’t seem to be a very high priority. The U.S. seems to […]

Nicolas Gros-Verheyde cites two prominent EU diplomats (here and here) to the effect that the Obama administration has pulled the plug on European-based missile defense, even if it will languish away quietly to deny the Russians a victory lap. That was before the Iranian launch of a satellite, however, that could theoretically put Israel and Europe in range of its missiles. Of course, Iran has everything to gain from keeping the wedge between the U.S. and Russia firmly in place. So the timing of the launch isn’t surprising. The intelligent response would be to invite Russia into the European missile […]

The circle seems to be closing in on the Obama administration’s “regional approach” to Afghanistan. Supply route problems in Pakistan and Central Asia seemingly give Russia an enormous amount of influence over the success or failure of any ambitious plans to create a stable Afghan democracy. Not surprisingly, there are now reports of goalposts growing legs, with preventing the Taliban and al-Qaida from threatening America the new priorities. (Imagine reading that back on Sept. 12, 2001.) And Richard Holbrooke hasn’t even had a chance to dust off his elbow-twisting chops in Pakistan and Afghanistan. To my mind, this inevitable reality […]

Switzerland is hardly a bellweather for Europe. But as the only non-EU country of Western Europe, it has a certain liberty of action that could offer insights into how voters with a real choice might react to the implications of the coming economic slump. So I’ll be watching the outcome of this referendum (via the IHT) — regarding the renewal of Siwtzerland’s freedom of movement treaties with the EU member states — pretty closely. The sticking point for the Swiss right is the comparative economic level of the EU’s two newest members, Romania and Bulgaria. That resonates with something I […]

For anyone who enters the site through the blog, I thought I’d call your attention to the latest WPR feature issue, The Changing Landscape of U.S. Intelligence. Its three articles examine the state of American intelligence after the Bush years, in terms of institutional reform (Richard Weitz here), collection techniques (Mark Lowenthal here), and the past and future of intelligence politicization (Jason Vest here). Definitely worth reading if you’d like to get a sense of the intelligence agenda for the Obama administration moving forward.

One of the yet-to-be-determined aspects of the fallout from the Gaza War is the longterm damage to Israeli-Turkish relations. So far, there has been a lot of heated rhetoric, immediately followed by reminders that the two nations have solid and durable ties. As Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan put it at the height of the conflict, “I would like to remind those who call for Turkey to freeze ties withIsrael that we administer the Republic of Turkey, not a grocery market.” But now Israel seems to be signalling to Ankara what seems like a put-up-or-shut-up moment, with defense sources […]

In his WPR feature article from last November, A Grand Strategy Agenda for the Next President, Thomas PM Barnett defined President Obama’s challenge as leaving enough space between the security demands America makes of targeted nations and the “safe harbor” security guarantees it is willing to grant them so as to create the room for diplomatic maneuvering. Under the Bush administration, the lack of wiggle room between the two amounted to a demand for capitulation, and created standoffs everywhere. The Bush administration’s response was a campaign of diplomatic and economic isolation (Syria and Iran), or else confrontation (Russia) with similar […]