WPR Blog Archive

The early leaks on the Quadrennial Defense Review are all going the “COIN-hybrid war” crowd’s way. Essentially, this represents an ideal of versatility and adaptability up and down the military food chain, with the same units being able to blow things up, build them up and keep civilians safe while doing so. And so long as that kind of approach doesn’t degrade our ability to go big, which is the big concern of the haters, or tempt us into interventionist hubris, which is the big concern of the doubters, it’s an intellectually attractive ideal. Of course, like all ideals, it […]

To veteran news correspondents — including this one — who were in Tehran in 1979, some of the events unfolding last week were eerily familiar. Thirty years ago, as this past week, the violent ebb and flow filled the streets day after day, as the Shah’s security forces battled supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini. Yet thirty years ago, there were surprisingly few actual deaths: Iranian army personnel carriers and tanks were tucked away in side streets in Tehran waiting for the order to suppress the unrest. But the Shah, weakened by cancer and under pressure from the Carter administration to limit […]

As the world was riveted to the events in Iran last week, the beleaguered government of Somalia put out an S.O.S. for international military support in its deteriorating fight against al Shabab guerrillas and other radical opposition forces. Thus far, only Kenyan government officials have publicly responded with threats of military intervention. But there remains the possibility that troops from Ethiopia, Djibouti, the Sudan and Uganda might be deployed in a combined warmaking/peacekeeping operation under the banner of the African Union and other international and regional organizations. More than 5,000 peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi are currently deployed to protect […]

Today’s selection demonstrates that, while some of the images might age, the theme, sadly, never seems to go out of date. Notice, by the way, the color of the balloon John Lennon carries in the opening demonstration. As I said earlier this week, the events in Iran separate the idealists from the realists. And what I’ve realized about myself is that I’m something of a hybrid: realist when it comes to relations between states, and idealist when it comes to the relation between citizen and state. I’m not sure whether and how we can influence the outcome in Iran for […]

Here is what the experts are saying about North Korea’s nuclear strike capabilities in response to Pyongyang’s threats to test another long-range missile on July 4: Gen. James Cartwright, Deputy Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday that North Korea would need three to five years to be able to launch a missile that was capable of reaching the West Coast of the United States. Hawaii and Alaska are already in range. Yesterday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that the U.S. is ready and able to deal with any short-term threats to Hawaii “should it become necessary.” […]

If you read only one article about the Afghanistan war each week, make it this Washington Post article. If you read dozens of articles about the Afghanistan War each week, make sure to add it to the list. It is a very, very eye-opening piece of reporting that illustrates to what degree our failure in that theater has to do as much with shockingly poor conception, management and execution as it does with the difficulty of the task. It also shows to what degree foreign policy failures are determined, often years prior, by domestic policy failures. Just like it often […]

There’s nothing really surprising about Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s speech today. (Andrew Sullivan’s got the full text, and the Guardian has a write-up.) And appearances to the contrary, there’s nothing really untrue about it, either. Yet. By that I mean that up to now, this really has been a conflict that has remained within the institutional structure of the state. By drawing the line today — and he really had no choice but to do so — Khamenei has essentially forced Moussavi to decide whether his opposition will remain in the realm of politics, or cross over into the […]

Picking up on my “sports is politics by another means” post from yesterday, Michael Wilkerson, over at FP’s Passport blog, put the call out to readers for more examples. Commenter Chembai points out a couple I missed, including China’s Ping Pong diplomacy and the Beijing Olympics. The boycotted 1980 Moscow games are in the latter category as well, characterized as “one big political statement.” Not really match-ups in the way I was thinking. The Ping Pong diplomacy, too, escaped my memory, because I was thinking more along the lines of confrontation. The brilliance of the Ping Pong diplomacy of course […]

In the days preceding this week’s historic meeting of the BRICs — Brazil, Russia, India and China — in Russia, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was in Moscow promoting Israeli-Russian ties. Lieberman took the opportunity to point out that Russian attitudes towards Israel were better than in a lot of Western European countries where, in Liberman’s calculus, sympathy for the Palestinians in the wake of Gaza amounts to anti-Semitism. Born in Moldova and a fluent Russian speaker, Lieberman was able to speak to Putin directly in Russian. Each pledged to develop ties further, to involve Russia in Middle East issues. […]

The global economic crisis is driving increasing numbers of impoverished individuals into the hands of human traffickers, according to this year’s Trafficking in Persons report released by the State Department this week. “Trafficking weakens legitimate economies, breaks up families, fuels violence, threatens public health and safety, and shreds the social fabric that is necessary for progress,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote in Wednesday’s Washington Post. Clinton warns: “The problem is particularly urgent now, as local economies around the world reel from the global financial crisis. People are increasingly desperate for the chance to support their families, making them more […]

You win some: After a rancorous argument over missile defense, Democrats on theHouse Armed Services Committee voted June 16 to limit the number ofmissile interceptor silos in Alaska to 30, scrapping 14 more that wereplanned when Republicans controlled Congress and the White House. Then they voted not to increase spending on the years-late, billions-over-budget airborne laser. Or to spend $400 million on a missile defense site in Europe. You lose some: After more than 16 hours of squabbling over the 2010 defense budget,weary committee members voted 31-30 at 2:30 a.m. to keep the F-22program alive by making a $369 million […]

In her WPR column today, Frida Ghitis makes a very strong case for getting Middle East diplomacy off the podium and back into the negotiating room. As usual, it’s a great column, and the point is well taken. President Barack Obama has such a gift for oratory that it’s understandable he wants to use it to his advantage. But as Ghitis argues, loud public declarations tend to box in negotiating positions. That’s good if you have no intention of yielding and you basically just want to put your counterpart on the spot. But that doesn’t seem like a promising approach […]

It looks like the Iranian regime has found its strategy fordealing with the opposition: decapitate the organizational leadershipthrough targeted, “quiet” arrests, while co-opting the visibleleadership through open-ended “dialogue.” This is where thingsget very tricky for Moussavi to navigate. If he rejects the GuardianCouncil’s overtures out of hand, he is essentially rejecting theregime’s institutional legitimacy, thereby pushing him over the edgefrom protest into revolution and giving the regime a credible reason toshut him and his demonstrations down. But if he engages too earnestly,he runs the risk of losing momentum for the movement, with littlerecourse if the ruling ultimately turns out unfavorable, […]

I’ve been thinking for a while that Hillary Clinton has really been all class since she took over as secretary of state, dispelling just about every disparaging thing said about her during the presidential campaign. No sense of privilege or entitlement, just good, old-fashioned hard work. Apparently, it took a broken elbow to slow her down, and the first thing she did was issue a statement expressing her appreciation to the hospital staff that treated her. I know 2012 is a long ways off, but if she keeps going like this, she’s liable to end up with a pretty formidable […]

Claude Rakisits, writing in the Australian, describes the aftermath of the Pakistani campaign to oust the Taliban from Swat: Few people seem to realise that the Pakistan army’s militaryoperation to dislodge the Pakistani Taliban militants from the SwatValley has caused about 2.5 million people to flee and seek refugeelsewhere. This vast and sudden movement of people is the world’sbiggest since the 1994 Rwandan genocide. About 80 percent of theseinternally displaced people have been accommodated with friends,families and even total strangers because the government of Pakistanwas utterly unprepared for this humanitarian disaster. The good news is that the Pakistan army has […]

This NY Times report on the makings of a “thaw” in Pakistan-India relations is certainly the storyline Washington is hoping for. The problem is that India feels like Pakistan isn’t doing enough to fight terrorism, Pakistan feels that no one is doing more to fight terrorism, and both sides are to a large degree right. President Barack Obama’s initial hopes to play the peacemaker between the two was a non-starter with India. And as Siddarth Srivastava points out in his WPR Briefing, the subsequent pivot to bring Pakistan more explicitly on board with the U.S. counterterrorism approach is increasingly perceived […]

In his WPR feature article (sub. req.) on the Tamil insurgency in Sri Lanka, Brian Calvert discussed how LTTE’s chances for surviving the military eradication it suffered on the island depended on the Tamil diaspora: The Tigers were such a formidable guerrilla army because of theirglobal operations, and LTTE’s international network remains in place.What happens next will be determined by how well the international armis able to recover from the loss of its leader, and how well it managesto maintain its vast fundraising capacity. . . . The Tigers were a highly centralized network centered aroundPrabhakaran and senior leaders in […]