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Hillary Clinton’s inclusion of Azerbaijan in her current round of diplomatic visits, which also included stops in Poland and Georgia, reflects the need to balance the U.S.-Russia reset with symbolic reassurances to regional friends and allies. In particular, the Georgia and Azerbaijan stopovers underline the increased importance to the U.S. of good bilateral relations in the Caucasus and Central Asia. The reason? The Northern Distribution Network, the supply lifeline to U.S. and other NATO forces in Afghanistan, comprehensively covered in this CSIS report (.pdf). Azerbaijan is part of NDN South, the back-up route that starts at the Black Sea port […]

I’ve gotten a number of e-mails from regular readers wondering what happened to the Off-the-Radar news roundup we used to feature on the blog: We gave it a home of its own on a channel called Leading Indicators: Off-the-Radar News. Now, instead of a round-up, each item is its own post, to facilitate searchability and linking. You can subscribe to the RSS here. Alternatively, if you’d prefer to get all our blog content — Trend Lines and Leading Indicators — on the same page, you can do that on the Real Time channel, which simply combines the two. The RSS […]

Virtually unnoticed, U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu have quietly set the stage to move forward Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, mend their tense personal relations and build a working relationship that takes the legitimate interests of their two countries into account. In a series of low-key moves, both men have worked to ensure that their meeting today at the White House demonstrates improved relations since Netanyahu last visited Washington in March. Differences then over Israeli settlement policy in Jerusalem produced one of the tensest moments in U.S.-Israeli relations in recent history. Netanyahu canceled subsequent talks scheduled for […]

Almost everyone would welcome greater cooperation between Moscow and Washington on ballistic missile defense. But decades of frustrating experience have taught us that this is precisely the wrong issue to make the centerpiece of the U.S.-Russia reset, notwithstanding what Andrew Futter argues in his WPR Briefing from last week. Rather than waste additional time and goodwill on the endeavor, we need to think more creatively about deepening bilateral collaboration regarding other issues, including promoting regional security in Afghanistan and Central Asia. Nevertheless, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statements during her visit to Poland last weekend show that the Obama […]

Last month, members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) met to discuss new rules for admission to the regional security group. In an e-mail interview, head of the Asia practice group at Eurasia Group and adjunct senior fellow for Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, Evan A. Feigenbaum, discusses the evolution of the SCO. WPR: What is the significance of the SCO’s newly articulated membership procedure, and what does it reflect about the organization’s approach to future expansion? Evan Feigenbaum: At their June 11 summit in Tashkent, the six SCO heads of state approved new rules for applications and […]

The goal of global partnership between the United States and China, the cornerstone of my strategic vision for the past half-decade, has taken a beating lately. The Great Recession has led too many Americans to doubt in our own economic system and political institutions, while encouraging undue appreciation of China’s. Similar trends can be seen on the Chinese side, with our system unduly discredited and theirs fantastically exalted. Is the world better-served by this growing Chinese hubris than it was by America’s recent bout of the same vice? Hardly. Zero-sum calculations have no place in this age of globalization’s rapid […]

“Other states indicate themselves in their deputies . . . . but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors . . . but always most in the common people. Their manners speech dress friendships — the freshness and candor of their physiognomy — the picturesque looseness of their carriage . . . their deathless attachment to freedom — their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean — the practical acknowledgment of […]

Hard to argue with Harlan Ullman’s analysis of why we’re losing in Afghanistan. It’s a nice succinct summary of a lot of the arguments that many critics of the war, most notably Michael Cohen, have been making. And Rory Stewart is worth reading, too, just to remember the conceptual blinders we’ve collectively got on. I happen to remain relatively optimistic about the political feasability of redefining victory and drawing down the Afghanistan war at or near the July 2011 target date. But I think the subsequent transition will not be toward a full withdrawal, but more toward the kind of […]

Having reached an agreement on the New START treaty in April, the Obama administration’s next step in its pursuit of a new strategic partnership with Russia appears to be establishing some type of joint collaboration on ballistic missile defense (BMD). These recent efforts should be applauded, as they hold the potential to reinforce trust and cooperation between the two powers, as well as to solidify a united defense against the growing threats from Iran and North Korea. Such an accord would also appear to be integral to the prospects of achieving further nuclear arms reductions agreements and working gradually toward […]

Invariably, when Americans engage in nation-building exercises around the world, it is hoped that the indigenous leaders that emerge will be cast in the mold of our Founding Fathers. We are looking for the George Washingtons, Thomas Jeffersons, and James Madisons to take the helm in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Inevitably, we are disappointed when the Hamid Karzais, the Nouri al-Malikis and others fail to live up to these often-idealized expectations. Maybe it would help if we substituted a different set of historical names and role models. If we can’t get a Washington in Afghanistan, we’d certainly do well […]

What exactly is President Barack Obama prepared to do in order to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons? And just how committed is the American president to curtailing the Islamic Republic’s nuclear enrichment efforts? Taken together, these questions represent one of the most important and most consequential unknowns in the realms of diplomacy, foreign policy, and geostrategic planning today. It is no exaggeration to say the course of history will be shaped by what lies behind the veil that is hiding Obama’s true plans for Iran. Bit by bit, an image of the Obama administration’s long-term views on how to […]

Last week, the U.S. Congress overwhelmingly approved updated Iran sanctions legislation, significantly expanding the scope of existing U.S. sanctions against Iran, and in particular, its petroleum industry. The bill’s major impact is to include under the U.S. sanctions regime companies and other institutions that provide goods or services to Iran’s petroleum industry, as well as those that export gasoline to Iran. It also expands the list of possible penalties that the U.S. president can impose, including a prohibition on any transfers of funds through U.S. financial institutions. The new legislation, if utilized judiciously in conjunction with multilateral sanctions imposed by […]

The United States and the European Union have signed a bank data-transfer agreement that will give U.S. authorities access to EU bank transfer data, under EU supervision, in an effort to combat terrorism. In an e-mail interview, Kurt Volker, a former U.S. Ambassador to NATO and managing director of the Center on Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University, explains the importance of a U.S.-EU bank-data transfer agreement. WPR: What is the background of the current dispute? Kurt Volker: In the days and years after Sept. 11, 2001, the United States and Europe worked together to track terrorist financing, in order […]