WPR Blog Archive

Here’s the funniest bit from this EU Observer piece on the appointment of Joao Vale de Almeida as the EU’s new ambassador to the U.S.: EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, to whom Mr. de Almeida will report directly, praised his “significant experience,” “intellect” and “ability to work with all key actors in this important relationship.” (Emphasis added.) The punchline here lies in the fact that prior to being parachuted into the EU’s external relations unit, de Almeida was EU Commission President Manuel Barroso’s chief of staff, and served as his personal envoy to the G-8 and G-20 summits. So […]

How many people out of the 6 billion who now populate planet earth do you think consider “the naming of the body of water between the Koreas and Japan” a “contentious issue”? It’s impossible to say for sure, but it’s a safe bet that it tops out at about 49 million, and I’d wager it’s significantly less than that. Nevertheless, the Northeast Asian History Foundation has historical maps in hand to support Korea’s claim, made to the Ninth Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names in 2007, that what is now called the Sea of Japan should instead be called […]

I don’t make a habit of writing about things that seem obvious. Torture, for instance, is morally reprehensible and pragmatically ineffective, which is as close to a definition of un-American as I think you can come up with. Once you get caught up in trying to define the gray area, you’ve missed the point. Same goes for DADT, in my book. I won’t write about it often, because to me, there’s just not a whole lot of ground to cover before you run into the basic injustice of the policy. But I bring it up because of this TPM article […]

In what seems like a blast from the past, Argentina is raising the tone in its never-abandoned claim to the Falkland Islands. In all fairness, that sort of thing does tend to happen when ocean-bed oil reserves are discovered in disputed territorial waters. And for now, the first recourse mentioned is taking the matter to the U.N. So even if Argentina has warned it will take “all necessary steps” to defend its claim, a Falklands War 2.0 hardly seems imaginable today. But then again, it hardly seemed imaginable the first time around, either. No matter how the actual dispute does […]

To follow up on Judah’s blog post on the Mabhou assassination, I was struck by the certainty with which he wrote that Mossad did it. I completely agree that Mossad tops the list of suspects. There is no question about that. But when a guy like Mabhou gets killed, you can bet there is more than one suspect. Hamas is despised by Fatah, and both organizations have a history of assassinations. (They also have fairly easy access to Israel, where they can steal passports.) There is also the Iran connection. Mabhou was working with Iranians to bring weapons into Gaza. […]

As United Nations envoy Tomas Ojea Quintana arrived in Burma today to begin a review of the country’s reform progress, authorities reportedly rolled out an unusually patchy welcome mat. On the one hand, days before the visit, authorities released Tin Oo, deputy head of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League of Democracy, ending seven years of imprisonment and house arrest. And the 83-year-old’s vow to immediately resume his political activities didn’t result in any immediate retribution. On the other hand, opposition leaders told the Associated Press that on the following day, authorities sentenced four women to two years imprisonment with […]

Normally I’d have bookmarked this kind of item for an “Off the Radar” post. But for a variety of what seem like obvious, if intuitive and somewhat intangible reasons, I’m elevating major telecom transactions to “On the Radar” status, alongside weapons sales, nuclear agreements, gas and oil deals and the like. In this case, that’s partly because it’s an Indian telecom company, Bharti Airtel, buying Kuwait-based Zain’s African operations, to the tune of a $10.7 billion purchase price. (The deal has yet to be finalized, pending due diligence.) This is significant for a few reasons. First, as Thomas P.M. Barnett […]

If you grew up reading histories of spy agencies, books on codes and the agents that break them, and the entire Sherlock Holmes collection before the age of 10 (guilty on all three counts), the video released by the Dubai police detailing the operation that culminated in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is a must-see. It’s probably the best silent movie spy thriller since Fritz Lang’s “Spione,” or as Andrew Exum put it, “Like watching ‘Munich.’ But for real.” Three things jumped out at me. First, for a senior Hamas military commander, one of the most wanted men in Israel, […]

At the risk of venturing pretty far down Speculation Boulevard, here’s a quick follow-up to yesterday’s post on the sale of Russian S-300 air defense systems to Iran. I mentioned that the timing of Russia trotting out its long-time political line could be meant to drive up the price of any bargain struck over UNSC sanctions. Today, a spokesman for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev refused to rule out Iran sanctions — again, nothing more than the standard Russian line. But at the same time, a Russian defense industry official stated that Russia and Saudi Arabia are finalizing an array of […]

I’ve held off on any Marja “analysis,” because a lot of what I’ve read has struck me as “play-by-play” commentary, and I’m pretty convinced that whatever impact offshore observers can have on the debate is better directed toward strategic objectives than tactical operations. What does strike me as significant about the offensive, though, is what it reveals in terms of the evolution of U.S. COIN operations. It’s been clear for a while that in the “clear, hold and build” model, the U.S. military has no real problem with the “clear” phase, provided it is adequately resourced. The decisive phases in […]

At some point I’m going to make a list of foreign policy non-story stories (in which “Fatah-Hamas Agreement Imminent” will feature prominently). For now, I’ll just direct your attention to the Russian national security adviser’s declaration that nothing is “restricting” delivery of S-300 air defense systems to Iran. This is nothing more than Russia’s political line, unchanged and often-repeated ever since the contract for the sale was signed. “Unrestricted” in this case means that the S-300 system is not covered by any relevant international arms sales agreements because it is a defensive weapon. This does not suggest that delivery is […]

I couldn’t help but notice the stark difference between reactions to last week’s transfer of power in Nigeria (not a peep) and reactions to last year’s political crisis in Honduras (hemisphere-wide condemnation). Say what you will about the optics of how Honduras’ former President Manuel Zelaya was removed from office, but in constitutional terms, it was by the book. Compare that to Nigeria, where the parliament’s vote to transfer presidential powers to Vice President Goodluck Johnathan was clearly extra-constitutional. For now, opposition to the move, both within the executive branch and among the opposition, has been contained. But given the […]

Following President Barack Obama’s surprisingly successful question-and-answer session with GOP legislators a week or so ago, some commentators and politicians suggested that such impromptu encounters should be more frequent, comparing them with the British prime minister answering weekly questions in the British House of Commons. Judging by Monday’s White House talks between the president and the Republicans on pressing domestic issues facing the nation, the constructive tone of that earlier dialogue would seem to have been a flash in the pan. But just for the sake of argument, could there be a case for a regular public “question time” of […]

A funny thing happened on the way to the EU’s post-Lisbon era. While Herman Van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton have largely been invisible in the high-profile posts of president and foreign minister, the EU parliament decided to actually exercise some of its added powers. A few days back, I mentioned a U.S.-EU bank data-sharing agreement that, under Lisbon, needs parliamentary approval to remain in force. (Technically, the measure is a temporary bridge agreement to continue a pre-Lisbon deal until a permanent agreement can be finalized.) Today the EU parliament decided by an overwhelming majority to block the measure. What makes […]

Human rights activists are turning up the heat on British company Vedanta Resources over charges that its operations threaten the existence of India’s Dongria Kondh tribe. Cast as a “David versus Goliath” fight by the tribe and its supporters, the Vedanta story comes at a time when stakeholders continue to look for a firm definition and application of a community engagement concept known as Free, Prior, Informed Consent (FPIC), to benefit indigenous peoples around the world. Survival International has appealed to the makers of the blockbuster movie “Avatar” to help the Dongria Kondh fight off mining plans and the pollution […]

I don’t want to make too much of Pakistan’s offer to facilitate negotiations with the Taliban, because there are still a lot of directions it can take, and many of them are probably bad. But it bears noting that the shift responds to Islamabad’s concerns over securing its influence in a post-American Afghanistan, and was triggered by the July 2011 timeframe that President Barack Obama set for beginning an American drawdown. That suggests two things. First, the regional actors are taking that timeframe a lot more seriously than most American observers, something that was already apparent in the immediate reaction […]

Iran’s decision to further enrich its LEU to 20 percent clearly adds weight to the case against a purely civil nuclear objective. To recapitulate, not only is Iran now producing nuclear fuel despite not having any reactors to fuel, it is also enriching uranium for a medical reactor despite not having the capacity to transform the higher grade uranium into the fuel rods that reactor requires. In so doing, it crosses yet another threshhold toward achieving at least the “Japan option” of mastering all the component parts of a nuclear weapons capacity, ready for assembly when necessary. At this point, […]