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Speaking today at a discussion hosted by the New America Foundation, former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband put his thumb on a sensitive issue for Washington. Much as their leaders might secretly wish it, the West’s governments can’t simply take a decade off of foreign policy to focus on rebuilding at home. “You’ve got to do the internal and the external at the same time,” he said. Yet that kind of multitasking is precisely what has eluded President Barack Obama as he and his administration struggle to put out the fiscal fires started by House Republicans. Perhaps the most prominent […]

Over the weekend, members of special mission units under the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command carried out raids in Somalia and Libya, capturing a senior al-Qaida operative in the latter country. While these attacks often come across as lightning strikes in the media, no detail is spared in terms of coordination and preparation. Trend Lines spoke with three experts about the disconnect between how these operations appear versus how they operate. “The events this weekend were both significant and insignificant,” David Maxwell, associate director of the Center for Security Studies and the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University, told Trend […]

As American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan wound down and the conflict with al-Qaida shifted away from large-scale, protracted military operations, President Barack Obama announced a major adjustment in American strategy (.pdf), stating that the United States “will of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region.” Today there is growing criticism that this rhetoric has been backed by little substance and that what became popularly known as the “pivot” to Asia is stalled. In part this is due to the persisting political dysfunction in Washington that hinders all serious initiatives, but it also reflects deeper, more intractable strategic factors that offer […]

Iran’s missile program does not make headlines as often as its nuclear efforts. But the missile program is tied to the nuclear program in two different ways: technically, because Iran has been keen to develop rockets that could carry a nuclear warhead; and legally, because United Nations sanctions against Iran target the missile program almost as much as the nuclear one.

Over the past 25 years, the Muslim world has witnessed constant struggle between liberals and conservative Islamists. Liberals want a state that will generally be democratic, but will not permit majorities to discriminate against less powerful groups in society or violate basic human rights; liberal Muslims among them are able to reconcile twin commitments to both liberalism and Islam. Conservative Islamists generally want a state that is democratic but is constitutionally barred from adopting policies inconsistent with their understanding of Islam, which they interpret in a manner that is irreconcilable with liberal principles. The state advocated by conservative Islamists must […]

Post-conflict states have to deal with many difficult issues. Drafting a constitution that maximizes the prospects of political stability is just one. Recently, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia have found this element of the transition process particularly problematic. Other countries, too, have had varying degrees of success. In 2012, Nepal’s constituent assembly collapsed before a constitution could be agreed on, whereas Fiji has just promulgated a new constitution. One of the issues that is always hotly debated is the best form of executive-legislative relations. Is political stability more likely under a presidential system, a parliamentary system or some mix of the […]

On Aug. 15, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa announced that he was abandoning the initiative by which Ecuador would commit to leave 846 million barrels of oil in the ground under Yasuni National Park, in the Amazon, if the international community donated $3.6 billion to the country to compensate for the foregone revenue. The announcement sparked protests and a movement backing a national referendum on the issue, but Correa was quick to consolidate political support for his decision. Last week, Ecuador’s Congress approved Correa’s plan to drill in the park, even as the Constitutional Court approved a request by environmentalists for […]

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and the Pentagon have conducted a series of ballistic missile defense (BMD) tests in recent weeks that confirm the growing capabilities of the Navy’s premier at-sea interceptor.* Even better, the tested system will soon deploy in Europe to bolster NATO’s front-line defenses against Iranian missile threats. The remaining challenges are to induce European allies to contribute more resources to NATO’s collective missile defense efforts and for the United States to make better use of its proven sea-based defenses by incorporating them into a homeland defense role. On Sept. 9, the MDA detected, tracked and intercepted […]

The past decade has seen an explosion of creative institutional design in new democracies. From Indonesia to Iraq, scholars and policymakers interested in the management of ethnic conflict have engaged in overt “political engineering” with the aim of promoting stable democracies in deeply divided societies. Among advocates, several contrasting approaches to political engineering for the management of social cleavages have been evident. One is the scholarly orthodoxy of consociationalism, which relies on elite cooperation between leaders of different communities, as in Switzerland. Under this model, specific democratic institutions—grand coalition cabinets, proportional representation elections, minority veto powers and communal autonomy—collectively maximize […]

In the aftermath of the late-September attack on Nairobi’s Westgate mall by Islamist militants linked to the Somali terrorist group al-Shabab, Kenyan authorities reportedly stepped up arrests of Somalis living in Kenya. In an email interview, Anna Lindley, a lecturer in migration, mobility and development at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, explained where Somali refugees live and the likelihood of their return. WPR: What are the main concentrations of Somali refugees outside the country, and how long have they been there? Anna Lindley: Nearly 1 million Somalis are registered as refugees in the region of […]

Over the weekend, Tunisia’s Islamist governing party, Ennahda, formally agreed to relinquish power in favor of a caretaker government that will supervise new elections. According to Sherelle Jacobs, Tunisia has managed to avoid the chaos of Egypt’s anti-Islamist collapse in large part because Ennahda has been willing to compromise: Ennahda has avoided alienating secularists and liberals on the same scale as the Muslim Brotherhood during precarious political moments. For example, tensions between Tunisian secularists and Islamists soared overnight following the assassination of Tunisia’s secular opposition leader, Chokri Belaid, in February. The then-prime minister, Hamadi Jebali, immediately responded with political concessions. […]

Sunday was the final day in a three-week registration period for Afghan presidential hopefuls to file their candidacies with Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission. When the commission closed yesterday evening, having stayed open late to accommodate a last-minute flood of registrants, 27 candidates had officially entered the race to succeed President Hamid Karzai in what will be the country’s first democratic transfer of power, with elections scheduled for April 5, 2014. The campaign will take place as most international troops prepare to depart the country by the end of 2014, when the mandate of the International Security Assistance Force officially expires. […]

The United Nations Security Council’s management of the Syrian conflict since 2011 has frequently been a source of disappointment and disgust. The council has now put in place a framework for the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons and unanimously called for humanitarian access to war-torn towns and cities. Yet these gestures cannot erase memories of its earlier deadlocks and prevarications over the crisis, and the council members still seem unable to compel the Syrian government and its foes to make a peace deal. Could the Syrian war nonetheless precipitate changes in the way the Security Council handles future atrocities? Last […]

Had President Barack Obama not canceled his Southeast Asian tour, he would have touched down in Indonesia today for his third visit to the country as president. With Indonesia’s July 2014 presidential election fast approaching, it is uncertain whether he will visit the country again with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as his counterpart. Nevertheless, Obama and Yudhoyono can congratulate themselves on having overseen a blossoming partnership. Since the two leaders signed a Comprehensive Partnership Agreement during Obama’s first visit in 2010, significant progress has been made to institutionalize cooperation and consultation between their governments. The agreement created a joint commission […]

CONAKRY, Guinea — Guineans at home and abroad finally went to the polls on Sept. 28 to elect 114 members of parliament. Despite multiple delays and a series of demands from the opposition for fair political competition, preliminiary results suggest that President Alpha Conde’s ruling Rally of the Guinean People (RPG) party won a relative majority, thus solidifying the gains made during Conde’s first three years in power and further intensifying the rivalry between the country’s different political factions. However, the opposition Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea (UFDG) coalition has disputed the early results and withdrawn from the vote-counting […]

With his diplomatic intervention in Syria and his much-discussed article in the New York Times last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin has reaffirmed his reputation as a shrewd interlocutor on the world stage and a discerning analyst of global sentiment. He has inspired a wave of commentary about Russian resurgence reminiscent of 2007, when Time magazine named Putin person of the year for putting “his country back on the map.” Unless Russia can improve its demographic outlook and retain its competitiveness in global energy markets, however, occasional maneuvers on Putin’s part will be unlikely to translate into an enduring Russian […]

Last week, I expressed my skepticism that the Obama administration would be able to sustain its stated commitment to “rebalance” U.S. policy from the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific region, given the priorities that the president laid out in his speech before the United Nations General Assembly. Barack Obama was supposed to correct that by undertaking a major visit to East Asia this weekend and next week, centered on the forthcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Indonesia and the ASEAN and East Asia summits in Brunei. The trip was to be an opportunity to demonstrate a renewed U.S. commitment to […]