WPR Blog Archive

The high-seas weekend rescue of Richard Phillips is a testament to both the heroism and impressive tactical skills of Special Operations Forces and the unparalleled role they play in the selective application of force. But as the weekend drew to a close and Somali pirates vowed to revenge the lives of their own and fired upon the aircraft of a departing congressman, it was depressingly obvious that the rescue effort succeeded in quelling only one part of the problem. It was a tactical success in the midst of a much larger strategic headache. Other ships remain in the custody of […]

This. Can’t. Be. Good.

I’ll dispense with the introductions – my colleague Matt Dupuis did a fine job earlier and in any case I doubt I could puff myself up in a way that would be particularly impressive – in favor of jumping right in. One of the great things about twenty-first century media is the diversity of opinions. I’m particularly excited by the potential that the chattering classes’ digitization has to bring in fresh perspectives and question stale policies and assumptions. Hand-in-hand with the modern landscape of opinion writing, though, comes the obligation to recognize that some “fresh” perspectives that haven’t gone mainstream […]

JERUSALEM — At least on the face of it, one of the more unlikely people to show up at the gates of Gaza recently is Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams. One would think that with all the recent problems in Belfast he would have his hands full keeping the boys back home from cranking up the troubles, but nevertheless there he was last Thursday (after having his pal Tony Blair run interference for him with the Israelis) wearing his kaffiyeh and chatting it up with Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Referring to Gaza as an “open-air prison,” Adams called on both […]

In less than one week’s time, U.S. President Barack Obama endorsed the vision of a world without nuclear weapons on three separate occasions, outlining a broad and ambitious arms control agenda for his administration on his recent trip to Europe. The president has announced as his first arms control priority the negotiation of a successor accord to the 1991 START 1 U.S.-Russian agreement, which expires in December of this year. Obama also announced that his administration would “immediately and aggressively” seek U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and launch a diplomatic effort to negotiate a treaty banning […]

Good morning. I am one of the two Matt’s that Judah has asked to pinch hit for him this week while he vacations here in the States. He asked me to do this even if I at one point insulted his age by not knowing who Warren Zevon was. But since Judah is one of my favorite bloggers, it is an honor to be part of the team steering the ship this week in his absence. Thanks to him and Hampton for organizing this and allowing Matt and me to run wild and hang our hats here for a few […]

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Today’s selection is a stretch as far as foreign policy themes go, since it deals with my hometown of New York, and not some far-off, distant land. But to an expatriot in Paris, New York sometimes feels like a far-off, distant land. And since I’m heading back on Sunday for a ten-day visit, it’s a stretch I’m willing to make. While I’m gone, Matt Eckel and Matt Dupuis from Foreign Policy Watch will be keeping things lively here, starting on Monday. If you’re not already familiar with their stuff, click through and take a look. You’ll see why we thought […]

I haven’t devoted much space to the implications of Avigdor Lieberman holding the job of Israeli foreign minister, because I never expected a guy giving nine-hour interviews to corruption investigators to last long in it. Sure enough, now word comes that Lieberman’s facing the very serious possibility of indictment. Am I the only one who figured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuhad given Lieberman the foreign ministry because he expectedLieberman to take a fall, and soon? If that really was the plan, it looks like it might work to perfection.

Following up on the discussion of regional strategic balance in Asia, this article on Indian-Chinese maritime rivalry in the Indian Defense Review is essential reading. The IDR is often an outlet for the Indian military’s extreme nationalist wing, but this particular article takes an objective analytic approach to the subject that’s well worth a close read. Significantly, the U.S. is trying to wrap up wars in the Middle East andSouth Asia that have increasingly transformed our operational capacityinto a ground-based force of occupation, at the very moment when theemerging strategic focus of just about all of the world’s majormilitary braintrusts […]

The would-be “Twitter revolution” in Moldova is already showing signs of fizzling, with no new reports of protests, the original organizers of the anti-government gathering of 15,000 distancing themselves from the violence of a few, and the leader of the Communist government attempting to spin the protests as a coup plot by neighbor Romania rather than as a spontaneous outpouring of anger against his feckless government. Yesterday, however, the Internet was, yes, atwitter with news of this Twitter Revolution. Almost as soon as this New York Times story was posted on the Times’ Web site yesterday (and on the front […]

The news that U.S. representatives will join the P5+1 talks with Iran is significant, but not really news. Same goes for the reaction from Tehran, which remains cautiously receptive and noncommittal. I’m more curious about the reaction from the EU3, particularly France. My hunch is that that will have a lot to do with what “reaching out to Iran on a one-to-one basis” — as per White House officials cited by the NY Times — amounts to. If that takes place on a strictly defined, single-issue basis — i.e. Iraq security cooperation, or Afghanistan supply routes — it shouldn’t cause […]

Interesting how the Annapolis conference — which was widely considered too little, too late from a lame-duck Bush administration — has suddenly taken on a different meaning now that, a) Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman repudiated it; and, b) U.S. President Barack Obama name-checked it in his speech before the Turkish Parliament. Part of that’s a reflection of the fact that a policy approach is only as good as the political capital behind it. But I wonder if, political capital and all, Obama doesn’t risk getting drawn into a very public battle that can’t be won. The political obstacles on […]

More smart stuff from Sam Roggeveen, who points out that alert is not the same thing as alarmed, but nevertheless admits to a case of nerves: The thing to remember is that China does not have to match the U.S.in global capability terms for U.S. allies in the Pacific to startgetting nervous about the strategic balance. All China has to do is bea credible competitor in the region, and that is already the case. Roggeveen goes on to argue that “. . . we have already passed the point at which the U.S. could militarily intervene in a Taiwan conflict […]

Part of making WPR a foreign policy community means making it responsive to the interests and needs of our readers. Which is another way of saying that we’d like to hear from you. In particular, we’d like to know what sort of subjects you would like to see covered as part of our in-depth feature article themes. So send us your ideas, and if we use one of them as a theme for an upcoming set of feature articles, you’ll win a free one-year subscription to WPR’s premium content. That means access to all of our in-depth feature articles as […]

I think Michael Cohen and I probably agree on more than he realizes, or at least more than what this post suggests. He identifies the militarization of foreign policy as the greatest danger of “embedding counterinsurgency doctrine in military planning.” I’m not sure about the causation there, since I don’t think the militarization of foreign policy depends exclusively on the trend towards COIN. But regular readers of the blog know that I consider the militarization of foreign policy not just a future danger but an alarming reality. And I agree with Cohen that the seductive “war-lite” aspects of COIN will […]

I took a bit of a drubbing around the web for my post about President Barack Obama’s Prague speech yesterday. Matt Stone pointed out that our NPT commitment to “methodically disarm” (his words) is the flip side of the deterrence coin, while John Boonstra suggested that “bad timing” is a weak reason to foreswear the goal of no nukes, because “it will never be a good time to pursue nuclear disarmament.” I don’t disagree with either. In fact, having gone through Obama’s speech again, I find myself in agreement with all of the actual policy initiatives he identifies, ably summarized […]