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During the 1990s, the U.S. Department of Defense concluded that it was in a “strategic pause.” With the Soviet Union gone and no equal threat on the horizon, the Pentagon had the luxury of doing things like building a “futures” industry to think big thoughts about long-range changes underway in the security environment and the nature of armed conflict. But today strategic futurists face hard times. As the defense budget shrinks, money and time for forecasting and analysis are hard to come by. There is no doubt that cuts in defense spending are needed, but if thinking about the future […]

On March 8 in Caracas, Raúl Castro, looking somber, stood in a place of honor beside Hugo Chávez’s casket during the late Venezuelan president’s state funeral. Castro was no doubt pondering what Chávez’s death means for Cuba’s ambitious economic reform program — or “updating” of the economic model, as Cubans prefer to call it. Not long after Chávez’s first election victory in 1998, he and Fidel Castro signed the first of what would become more than 100 bilateral cooperation agreements. By the time Chávez died, Venezuela was providing Cuba with some 110,000 barrels of oil daily at subsidized prices, worth […]

On March 24, Pakistan’s former president, Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a coup in 1999 and resigned nine years later to avoid impeachment, ended years of self-imposed exile and returned to Pakistan vowing to contest presidential and parliamentary elections set for May. In an email interview, Colin Cookman, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress specializing in Pakistan and Afghanistan, discussed what’s at stake in the elections. WPR: What are Pakistan’s major political factions and parties as the country heads into the elections? Colin Cookman: Dozens of political parties and hundreds more independent candidates are likely to […]

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai was in Qatar this weekend to talk with the emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, and other officials about establishing an office of the Afghan Taliban insurgents in Doha. Proposals for such an office, designed to create conditions favorable for peace talks, have been under discussion for more than a year. But Karzai is seeking further safeguards to prevent the Taliban from using the office as a propaganda front or mobilization center. In addition, Karzai has insisted that the insurgents must recognize his government, among other preconditions for entering talks. For their part, members of the […]

Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan became acting president in February 2010 following the incapacitation of his predecessor Umaru Yar’Adua. Elected in his own right in April 2011, Jonathan now stands near the midpoint of his first full term in office. His People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which has won every election since Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999, dominates the executive and legislative branches of the federal government and governs 23 of Nigeria’s 36 states. The advantages of incumbency and party dominance will likely assure Jonathan another term when Nigeria votes again in 2015. Yet insecurity, corruption and stalled policy implementation have provoked […]

In recent weeks, the Republic of Belarus has been attempting to break out of its near isolation from the European Union and end a period of tension that began after Belarus’ December 2010 presidential election. Following the arrests of more than 700 protesters in Minsk’s Independence Square after the election, the EU revived its travel sanctions on leading Belarusian political and judicial figures, headed by President Alexander Lukashenko. In response to the EU’s actions and its demand for the release of all political prisoners, including former presidential candidate Mikalai Statkevich, Belarus moved measurably closer to Russia. Belarus is a full-fledged […]

In 2012, Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace ranked Zimbabwe the fifth most likely country to fail — putting it in greater danger than Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti. World leaders frequently describe Zimbabwe under the leadership of President Robert Mugabe as a pariah state. The United States, the European Union and Australia have all imposed sanctions against the Zimbabwean government for not respecting democracy and human rights, and the United Nations has proposed sanctions against Zimbabwe repeatedly. The country has lost many of its onetime allies and has found itself shunned by many in the international community. Despite all […]

Nigeria is no stranger to maritime disorder. In the mid- to late-2000s, the political and criminal insurgency waged by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) cost the country an estimated $1.5 billion in lost annual revenue through oil theft, attacks against petroleum infrastructure and piracy. A measure of peace arrived in 2009, when the government in Abuja introduced an amnesty program that provided skills training and cash stipends for some 26,000 former militants and rewarded their leaders with lucrative security contracts. By 2011, however, a new kind of maritime crime was emerging in the region: the […]

Last week, former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband announced plans to move to New York to head the International Rescue Committee, a leading humanitarian organization. In his new position, Miliband is likely to be a powerful voice in debates over crises such as that in Syria. His decision may have inspired some envy at the United Nations, which would benefit from the services of such a seasoned political operator. U.N. officials are already starting to size up early candidates to replace Ban Ki-moon as secretary-general in 2017. The next leader of the U.N. is likely to be a European. But […]

Last week, Iran, Syria and North Korea blocked the adoption of the Arms Trade Treaty, the first international pact to regulate conventional arms sales across borders, citing its failure to ban weapons sales to rebel groups. In the absence of consensus, the United Nations General Assembly is expected to put the treaty to a vote on Tuesday morning. It is considered likely to pass overwhelmingly. “As we like to say, it’s ludicrous that the global trade in bananas is better regulated than the global trade in arms,” Allison Pytlak, campaign manager for the Control Arms Coalition, an international civil society […]

The United States and Japan are perhaps the two countries for which cooperation on cybersecurity is the most crucial. They are, respectively, the largest and third-largest economies in the world, and two of the largest military powers. Moreover, the economic and military strength of both countries relies on sophisticated intellectual property, military intelligence and trade secrets. As a result, they have more to lose from cyber threats than any other countries in the world. Recognizing the importance of cybersecurity cooperation, leaders in both Japan and the U.S. have advocated bilateral dialogue on the issue. Most recently, during a meeting with […]