Latest Archive

ON THE MARGIN — As usual, Washington’s foreign ambassadors went to the two conventions in force. Though they pay their own way, they are officially guests of the political parties, which corral them into a assigned areas to witness the proceedings, limit their access to the delegates’ portion of the floor to a few group visits, and organize programs of activities outside the convention itself. At the Republican Convention this week, the ambassadors’ schedule (interspersed with the occasional policy conference) included a visit to an ethanol production plant in Winthrop, Minn., and a tour of Minnesota Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau’s […]

Following years of promising gains since 2001, Afghanistan is in a tailspin. Not long ago, a sophisticated Taliban assault on a Kandahar prison freed 1,200 inmates, including 350 Taliban members. The attack came only weeks after Afghan President Hamid Karzai survived a fourth assassination attempt. The main forces behind the country’s downward spiral are al-Qaida and the Taliban, which have found sanctuary in the vast unpoliced region of western Pakistan known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Stabilizing the Afghan-Pakistani front of the war on terrorism will require U.S. policymakers to re-examine the fatal misconception that they face only […]

The current issue of Military Review (.pdf, via Small Wars Journal) contains a quiet but significant article by Christopher Housenick titled “Winning Battles but Losing Wars” (p. 91). The overlap with French Gen. Vincent Desportes’ analysis — synopsis here (.pdf), interview here (.pdf) — is pretty striking, especially with regards to the ways in which attacks on state infrastructure in the initial destructive phase of an intervention will inevitably hamper reconstruction efforts in the stabilization phase. According to Desportes, the challenge before Western militaries isn’t to “. . .conduct a ‘better war’. . .[but to] aim for a ‘better peace.’” […]

The Leslie Gelb op-ed piece that I flagged yesterday also contained this brief passage that’s been buzzing around in my head ever since: The two groups of realists should seek common ground on the issue of humanitarian intervention. Americans know they can’t be true to themselves and do nothing about genocide. Failure to act against this particular evil corrupts society and inspires deep cynicism, something genuine conservatives always feared. Yet it is foolhardy to try to tame the problem through nation building. Our experience, as in Bosnia, shows we have a good chance to stop or abate the violence through […]

HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS PRESS IOC ON FUTURE GAMES — Human rights groups are calling on the International Olympic Committee to promise that human rights guarantees will be part of the process for awarding future Olympic Games. Reporters Without Borders, Freedom House, Students for a Free Tibet, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are among the more than a dozen groups calling for more IOC attention to human rights as a criteria for selecting host nations. The success of the Beijing Games was tempered by Chinese authorities’ ongoing human rights abuses, and many worry that the games sent the wrong message […]

For a man known as a safe but unexciting pair of hands, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda managed to make a splash this week with his unexpected announcement that he will step down as prime minister, less than a year into the job. On the face of it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise. With Fukuda’s approval ratings having plunged to the high 20s, a deadlocked Diet, 50 million lost pension records and controversial health insurance reforms, the prospects for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party were not exactly rosy ahead of a lower house election that has to be called […]

From Aug. 20-21, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visited the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi at the invitation of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Assad last visited Russia in late 2006, when he met with then Russian President Vladimir Putin. At the beginning of their Sochi meeting, Medvedev greeted Assad by remarking that, “We are grateful to Syria for its support on issues related to the well-known recent conflict with Georgia, which committed an act of aggression against South Ossetia.” Assad responded that, “we wish to once again express our support for the Russian position as regards the recent conflict and […]

TORRÉON, Mexico — Fernando Martí, the 14-year-old son of a Mexican sporting goods magnate, was kidnapped in June, strangled within a few days of his abduction, and found in the trunk of a car in the nation’s capital in August. His ordeal — along with stratospheric levels of drug violence and the recent designation of Mexico as the country that leads the world in kidnappings — has provoked a groundswell of outrage across Mexican society. Politicians, civil groups, newspaper commentators, the business community — virtually everyone drawing breath from Tijuana to Cancun agrees that Mexico’s rampant criminality must be addressed. […]

Seen from space Saudi Arabia looks like a chunk of reddish clay chiseled from a vast slab linking the Arabian Gulf in the east to the Atlantic coast of Mauritania in the west. This desert-like landscape, stretching almost 5,000 miles across the Middle East, stands in stark relief to the green, fertile lands of Turkey and Europe to the north and the central African jungles of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the south. However, looking closer, from the perspective of an airplane flying over the kingdom, one would notice that the great sand sea of Saudi Arabia […]

At an emergency Sept. 1 meeting in Brussels, European Union leaders adopted the unexpectedly stern stance of threatening to suspend negotiations with Moscow on a renewed cooperative framework agreement unless Russian troops withdraw from Georgia. The decision was amplified by the drama of the gathering, which represented the first emergency session of the EU heads of government, formally known as the European Council, since the beginning of the 2003 Gulf War. According to the statement of the Extraordinary European Council, “Until troops have withdrawn to the positions held prior to 7 August,” when they first intervened in Georgia, “meetings on […]

I did manage to get through one book while I was away, America at Arms, a study of American strategic culture written by Gen. Vincent Desportes. Desportes was until yesterday the commander of the French Army’s Force Employment Doctrine Center. Today he assumed his new duties as commander of the Inter-Army Defense College. On starting the book, my first thought was that it should be required reading in France. Upon finishing it, my final thought was that it should be required reading in America. While not his primary concern, Desportes’ analysis helps put the strategic debates of the immediate post-9/11 […]