WPR Blog Archive

In case you enter the site through the blog, I just wanted to call your attention to the latest WPR feature issue, “The Curtain Rises: Obama’s Opening Act,” that just went live on the front page. Although the articles themselves are behind our subscription firewall, you can still sign up for a free trial here. The difference between our “105 Days” rundown and other “100 Day” collections you might have seen is more than just the five days. It’s the five contributors: Thomas P.M. Barnett, Steve Clemons, Anthony Cordesman, Nikolas Gvosdev and Joshua Muravchik. Between them, they offer a breadth […]

President Obama’s plan to send 4,000 more troops to Afghanistan — in addition to 17,000 previously announced — was apparently a compromise between his political advisors and his military ones. Described as a “down-payment” option on future commitments once the Iraq draw-down is completed, this measure seems designed to buy time in the hope that Afghan President Karzai, who is meeting with President Obama on Wednesday, will get his army and his government in good enough shape to effectively engage with the Taliban and their allies. The Washington consensus seems once again to be that the U.S. is not engaged […]

Friday Lunch Club quotes this WSJ article on Iran’s plans for regional hegemony in the Middle East: Arab states are especially concerned because Tehran has succeeded in transcending sectarian and ideological divides to create a coalition that includes Sunni movements such as Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, sections of the Muslim Brotherhood, and even Marxist-Leninist and other leftist outfits that share Iran’s anti-Americanism. . . . Tehran plays a patient game. Wherever possible, it is determined to pursue its goals through open political means, including elections. With pro-American and other democratic groups disheartened by the perceived weakness of the Obama administration, […]

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan just named Ahmet Davutoglu his new foreign minister as part of a cabinet shake up. That means that my favorite foreign policy adviser just became my favorite foreign policy maker. This essay (.pdf) is a good place to start to get up to speed on Davutogu’s very sharp analysis of Turkey’s foreign policy posture. I’d been thinking recently that there seemed to be some drift in Turkey’s “zero problem” approach, mainly from the part of Erdogan. Davutoglu’s appointment, accompanying this interesting item of a surprise visit by Moqtada al-Sadr to Ankara, makes me think […]

Looks like the Chinese have been paying attention to U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine, because construction of this hydroelectric station as part of a poverty-relief program in Xianjing, home to a Muslim insurgency, is certainly sound “hearts and minds” practice. Looks like the U.S. military’s evangelical community in Bagram hasn’t been paying attention to U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine, because distributing Bibles and planning conversion strategies in Afghanistan, home to a Muslim insurgency, is certainly not sound “hearts and minds” practice.

I’ve been following recent developments in French-American relations with some concern, because after having correctly calculated that political advantage was to be had in “befriending” the toxic, late-term Bush administration, it increasingly seems like President Nicolas Sarkozy has decided the opposite is true with regards to the wildly popular, young Obama administration. So far, there are only behind-the-scenes whisperings to signal that France has once again passed into the “opposition,” in particular some post-London G-20 spin debunking the “Obama as savior” line pushed by the White House press team. But if Sarkozy’s “alignment” with Bush had everything to do with […]

Back in March, Joshua Foust wrote a WPR feature article (sub. req.) examining counterinsurgency in Kapisa Province, Afghanistan. Today, over at his Registan.net haunts, he follows up on some more recent developments. I liked this quote from a Stars and Stripes article he cites: “When you can conduct your operations without shooting any bullets,it’s a good criteria of success,” said Col. Nicolas Le Nen, the Frenchcommander. Reason for cautious optimism, which is good news. If nothing else, Afghanistan will have done wonders for mutual respect between the U.S. and French militaries, because from what I’ve read, there’s quite a bit […]

Today’s selection is a movie scene, since this week saw a bunch of foreign policy bloggers come up with their Top Ten lists of films that “tell us something about international relations more broadly,” as Stephen Walt, who kicked things off, put it. Sam Roggeveen came up with his list here, and has the rest of the links as well. If the criteria didn’t include being a good film, I’d have mentioned the Lord of the Rings, essentially the story of building ad hoc alliances in a world where multilateral institutions have fallen into decline. And if you could somehow […]

What do Bill Clinton, the Rev. Rick Warren, Harvard’s Michael Porter, and Google’s Eric Schmidt all have in common? According to Philip Gourevitch, writing in this week’s New Yorker, they are all friends of Rwandan President Paul Kagame — part of his “kitchen cabinet” of advisers. Like Stephen Kinzer of the New York Times, Gourevitch has definitively fallen under the spell of Kagame and his ambition to turn Rwanda into the Singapore of Central Africa. There are, however, several assertions in this piece which are a bit dodgy, not least of which are Gourevitch’s estimates of the numbers killed in […]

Very fascinating post by Yigal Schleifer on the Turkish “Deep State’s” roots in a NATO Cold War program. The program involved paramilitary networks trained as “stay behind operations” in the event of a successful Soviet invasion. The networks were apparently widespread throughout Europe. Turkey’s is just the last to be “purged.” Well worth a click.

I’m not sure exactly what went down at the side meeting between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chinese President Hu Jintao at the London G-20 summit. But it seems like it must have been one wildly successful pow wow. Last week, the two countries signed a string of — yup, you guessed it — nuclear deals. This past week, former President Jacques Chirac — a noted sinophile who once corrected a Chinese museum curator about the details of an antique vase on display — visited Beijing, and was greeted with a Chinese call to “boost the China-France comprehensive strategic partnership.” […]

This video of Conoleezza Rice has been getting quite some attention around the web. Before offering some quick remarks, I’d just like to say hat’s off to Michael Wilkerson, a WPR alum finishing up his Stanford degree, who as best as I can tell was the first person to get this. A few things jumped out at me about this. First, as Friday Lunch Club noted, the very ex-post-facto realpolitik take on foreign policy that Rice espouses with regard to Saudi Arabian human rights violations. Interesting that this realist pass is only extended to American friends, not adversaries. I’ve long […]