WPR Blog Archive

Something of a blog spat has broken out between Andrew Exum and Michael Cohen, and before weighing in, I’ll endorse the suggestion made by one of Exum’s commenters that the two ought to hash this all out over some drinks. Both take an intellectually honest approach to questions of national security, and I’m sure that together they’d generate more light than heat. So take a chill, guys, COIN-bayah. As for the case on the merits, I’d say they’re both right and wrong. Cohen’s right when he says that we’re not really engaged in a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Exum finds this […]

This is a bit counterintuitive. But despite this being a speech and not policy, which is to say words and not deeds, I was left with the thought that the new beginning of President Barack Obama’s address in Cairo essentially closes the era of faith and opens the era of works. I mean that with regard to his own personal trajectory, in the sense that the listening and talking phase is over. Now it’s time to deliver. But I also mean it with regard to our broader national trajectory. By basing his appeal — on America’s behalf — on an […]

Back in the early ’70s I spent a week at a Sufi-inspired music camp in Marin County, California. It was a typical New Age celebration of the inner spirit, in a setting inspired by the musical and whirling dance traditions of Sufism, the so-called mystical branch of Islam. Back then, the militant form of Islam was hardly a ripple on the water. More than 30 years have since passed, but it was all brought back this week by images in the New York Times showing Somali Sufis gathered around a campfire singing and chanting, much as we did in the […]

According to the Times of India, President Barack Obama’s nonproliferation team — and especially Robert Einhorn, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s just-announced special adviser on nonproliferation — is “considered hardcore nonproliferationsist in the old Democratic mold.” In particular, Einhorn, Ellen Tauscher (under sec. of state for arms control) and Timothy Roemer (U.S. ambassador to India) are all seen as hostile to the U.S.-India nuclear deal. But one Indian analyst dismissed fears that they might throw a wrench in the works, saying: There is nothing to be alarmed about. We havegot most of what we wanted in terms of global sanctions […]

Despite being a lifelong camper, a one-time vegetarian and a dedicated, if lazy, supporter of environmental causes, I’ve also always been a GM man. (With the exception of the ’72 Dodge Dart that I owned for the three weeks it took me to find my beloved ’81 Oldsmobile Delta 88, nicknamed “The Penthouse.”) So obviously, the recent news has been tough. Still, I don’t think anything could be more emblematic of the shift in global geopolitics than Hummer going Chinese. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Hummer fan. In fact, the only thing I find more ridiculous than a […]

U.S. coverage of Pakistan’s spotty effort to battle extremists is understandably U.S.-centric. So we hear a lot about what Islamabad should do to contain the FATA-based Taliban who are also feeding the Afghan insurgency. Since last November’s Mumbai attacks and the subsequent unveiling of the Obama administration’s regional strategy, there’s been a bit more attention paid to India’s concerns. But what doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves is China’s concerns about Uighur separatist terrorist groups, and Iran’s concerns about Baloch separatist terrorist groups, both also using Pakistani territory as a safe haven (both via John McCreary). In other […]

Laura Rozen spun her rolodex and got some more on today’s meeting between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki. Apparently the meeting had been scheduled for a few week’s back and then postponed, so it’s the substance — getting Iran back to the P5+1 negotiating table — more than the timing — U.S. President Barack Obama’s imminent visit — at play here. And according to Rozen’s sources, the Iranian consensus on how to respond has yet to emerge. I’d be surprised if one does before the upcoming Iranian presidential election. It’s hard to tell with such […]

Most of the commentary I’ve seen about the Russian role in the stand-off over Iran’s nuclear program has to do with Russia’s refusal to support strengthened UNSC sanctions to punish Tehran for not being more transparent with the IAEA. But an alternative formulation of that reflection would be Russia’s refusal to pressure Tehran to be more transparent with the IAEA to begin with, thereby avoiding the need for sanctions altogether. So when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says, after meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, “We have confirmed the need to assure theinternational community of the exclusively peaceful nature […]

Seemingly lost in the news cycle is the fact that the Kurds just started unilaterally pumping “their” oil through a pipeline headed north to Turkey. The oil comes from a field jointly developed by a Canadian and Turkish consortium. This is one of those outcomes that would have seemed incredulous even last year. But there has been an increasingly visible sea change in Turkey’s relationship to Iraqi Kurdistan. Hannes Artens discussed it in his WPR briefing a few weeks back. But it now seems that Ankara has warmer relations with Iraq’s Kurds than with its own. What exactly that means […]

I’ve mentioned before that of the European partners, France might be the most resistant to the Obama administration’s policy of engagement with Iran. The concern, as far as I can tell, is in part ideological, because I really do believe that French President Nicolas Sarkozy is sincerely convinced of the need to keep Iran from even approaching a nuclear weapons capacity. But more than anything, the concern is one of harmonization. The French have been spearheading the European effort to hold the line since the December 2007 NIE, and if the U.S. entrance into the negotiations were somehow parallel to […]

India’s disappointment with a Pakistani court decision freeing one of the Pakistan-based suspects behind the Mumbai attacks is understandable. But it’s also a case where the external demands on the Pakistani judiciary (i.e., to serve as a hanging judge) are flying in the face of Pakistan’s internal needs. The independence of Pakistan’s judiciary played a central role in the crisis thatbrought democratic rule back to the country, and the stand off betweenthe executive and the judiciary has continued under the civilian ruleof President Asif Ali Zardari. In a WPR op-ed last March, Arif Rafiq argued that strengthening the judiciary and […]

In its annual State of the World’s Human Rights report released May 28, Amnesty International emphasized the relationship between economic injustice and human rights, and argued that the decreasing focus on rights, both in principle and in practice, highlights the need for a new approach to the issues. In order to truly — and finally — end the cycle of global rights abuse, AI argues, the world must adopt an approach based on multilateral, multi-stakeholder collaborations that end impunity and the enrichment of the few at the expense of many. AI’s Secretary General Irene Khan sought to rouse action in […]

Pondering the question of why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues even though there “is a near-universal consensus on the nature of the political solution,” Judah suggested yesterday that it’s because “the Israelis don’t realize that they have lost, and the Palestinians don’t realize that they have won.” That reasoning implies that the two-state solution would be regarded by Israel as a defeat and by the Palestinians as a victory. But if thinking in these categories is at all useful here, it is the other way round: It is not the Israelis, but the Palestinians who regard the two-state solution as a […]

On the 10th anniversary of Nigeria’s return to civilian rule, Nobel Prize-winning author Wole Soyinka lowered the boom on what he called Nigeria’s “sham democracy.” In a scathing interview with the BBC, Soyinka condemned Nigeria’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo for a variety of sins. The worst was subverting the democratic process that resulted in Obasanjo’s hand-picked successor, Umari Yar’Adua, taking over as president in 2007. Commenting on U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to make his first African visit to Ghana instead of Nigeria, Soyinka said that Ghana was a more appropriate destination because they have been “behaving like civilized human […]

As an addendum to last week’s post on the difficulties in gauging the intentions of other states, I found myself thinking over the weekend that President Barack Obama’s public diplomacy campaign towards the Muslim world is an illustration of how it is sometimes just as difficult to project one’s own intentions to other states. That difficulty obviously grows out of — and subsequently feeds off of — any divergence between strategic communcation on the one hand, and the reality of national policy as experienced by policy actors and citizens abroad on the other. Not only that, though, some of the […]

A few weeks ago, I did a France 24 program discussing the meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And at one point, the discussion turned into an argument between a former Fatah negotiator and a representative of the Likud party over which branch of Jerusalem city hall was responsible for granting construction permits in East Jerusalem. Ever since, I’ve been finding myself thinking of that exchange as an illustration of how detached from the broad lines of the conflict most Israelis and Palestinians are, but also as an illustration of how detached from the […]

Although televised political advertisements are not allowed in France, each city hall is required to provide space — usually consisting of self-supporting, interlocking metal panels — for parties to present their campaign posters. And last week, the metal panels went up all around town with the latest offerings for the EU Parliament elections coming up on June 7. Outside of the poster for the Parti Anti Sioniste — which looks like a concert poster for an X Clan-Matisyahu-Black Flag triple bill — I hadn’t really paid much attention to them. But passing by the row of them on the way […]