Defense & Security Archive

Abu Bakar Bashir might be the “Teflon teacher.” Since the 1970s, he has preached Islamic theocracy in Indonesia, and lived 13 years in exile to avoid a jail sentence for his beliefs under the secular dictator Suharto. Even in Indonesia’s new, more liberal political climate, he has been hauled before Indonesian courts for involvement in bomb attacks on churches, the 2002 Bali bombings, a Jakarta attack, and for being the spiritual leader of the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). But the charges haven’t really stuck. Prosecutors have had limited success linking him with JI, convicting him only of being part […]

By teaming up with allied nations on defense acquisition programs, the United States hopes to reduce the cost of weapons such as the Joint Strike Fighter, the next-generation fighter aircraft for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. But some question the benefits of cost-sharing with other countries. In the view of one defense analyst, such arrangements limit U.S. decision-making flexibility and offer little in return. “It’s a huge impediment to the American strategic debate” to conduct big defense procurement programs in conjunction with allies, according to Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow in foreign policy studies at The Brookings Institution, a […]

On May 26, 2004, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) launched the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI), a collaborative program aimed at securing vast stocks of dangerous nuclear material scattered around the globe. The program, run by a semi-autonomous agency within the DOE known as the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), has two central elements: repatriating or otherwise securing nuclear fuel; and converting reactors to use new, more proliferation-resistant technology. The program has seen some success and has even received more funding than expected, but so far progress has been slower than initially hoped. Programs like GTRI (others include the […]

RIBNITSA, Transnistria — Last month, a trolley bus ambled along a Soviet-era street on a hot afternoon, and blew up before it reached its next stop. Eight people were killed, and 46 injured in this July bomb blast, creating a rumble not quite strong enough to pique the interest of the war-fatigued Western press. It happened again two weeks ago when a trolley bus on a similar route, this time touring around on a quiet Sunday afternoon, was blown to bits, killing a 50-year-old man and six-year-old girl. Ten people were injured, many of them seriously. The following day, a […]

Now that the border between Lebanon and Israel has changed from war zone to twilight zone — an eerie landscape where the potential for renewed fighting hangs heavily in the air — history’s pundits can review their recent pronouncements on the conflict to see just how useful they proved. They can examine what they wrote to see how much it really helped us understand what just transpired in the Middle East and how effectively they guided the peacemakers in their search for a solution. A close look, I’m afraid, will show that history’s lessons have proven confusing, contradictory and even […]

NEW DELHI, India – Amid mixed reports of a rebel withdrawal and relative calm, there continue to be fierce and bloody clashes on the island nation of Sri Lanka between military forces of the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), commonly known as the Tamil Tigers. Some analysts have begun dubbing the ongoing violence the beginning of ‘Eelam War IV’ — a reference to the repeated failure of peace talks in the 20-year-old civil war in the tiny country off India’s southern tip. But Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa continues to deny such, saying instead […]

To better prepare its troops for tough counterinsurgency warfare, the U.S. military is investing in super-realistic exercises that combine traditional live-fire training with sophisticated cultural instruction and Hollywood-style special effects that blur the lines between training and combat. At the start of the so-called Global War on Terrorism, the military’s combat training infrastructure reflected an entrenched Cold War mentality. At the sprawling National Training Center (NTC) in California’s Mojave Desert, armored brigades maneuvered against an Opposing Force equipped with mock Soviet tanks. At the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) in the Louisiana bayou, light infantry battalions trained on simulated battlefields […]

As the proverbial dust settles over the battlefields of southern Lebanon, a major change in the landscape of legal regulation of warfare is taking hold. This change, first exposed by the military operations launched by the United States against Al Qaeda, has led to the widespread expectation that conflicts between states and transnational non-state entities must be governed by the laws of war, a body of international law historically applied to conflicts between states. While the extent of combat and associated destruction witnessed by the world in the recent conflict between Israel and Hezbollah may suggest that such a proposition […]

The United States has no plans to join the U.N. stabilization force destined for southern Lebanon, but the Bush administration is pressing the international community to speed up troop deployment if the fragile cessation of hostilities has any chance of becoming durable. Technically, it is the U.N.’s responsibility to recruit and shape the 15,000-strong force, but World Politics Review has learned that on Wednesday foreign ambassadors in Washington were called to the State Department where a senior U.S. official called for more haste in pledging and sending contingents. Diplomats who attended the meeting, which was not publicly reported, said the […]

Israelis take very seriously the admonition that during the life-and-death times of warfare, criticism of the government and the military must wait until the guns have gone quiet. This time, the effort to refrain from second-guessing proved particularly challenging. That’s because the results proved frustrating, painful and frightening in the 34-day war against Hezbollah. The rumbles of a political earthquake are now following the conflict that destroyed Israel’s aura of invincibility. Now that the soldiers are returning home, the shakeup will begin and the careers of respected politicians and military men will be changed forever. This conflict lasted longer than […]

For Pakistan, any celebration over the counter-terrorism successes of the last week has been extremely short-lived. Shortly after American and British officials lauded Pakistan’s efforts to thwart the plot to blow up U.S.-bound planes, the focus of ongoing global investigations turned inexorably towards the South Asian nation. This focus is driven by overwhelming evidence that the country remains a hub of terrorist activity and is attracting followers from around the world. As news of arrests in Great Britain and Pakistan broke, Pakistani officials did their best to emphasize an Afghanistan-based Al Qaeda connection but admitted that the majority of the […]

European intelligence sources were surprised by the news of the alleged plot to blow up five U.S. airliners over the mid-Atlantic. This was not because a major strike by Islamist terrorists was in itself unexpected. But European intelligence organizations, sources said Saturday, had anticipated that the target would be an international institution, or the energy center of a major city, such as a large power station. Instead, the thwarted attack turned out to have echoes of 9/11. Though al Qaeda has not been firmly linked to the plot, the evident Pakistani connection brings it geographically close to Osama bin Laden’s […]

SARAJEVO — Campaign rhetoric and political infighting are heating up as Bosnia and Herzegovina heads toward general elections this fall, the sixth such vote since the war-torn nation bloodily seceded from the former Yugoslavia in 1992. With the May secession of tiny Montenegro from what’s left of Yugoslavia — now known simply as Serbia — the challenge of staying united has never been so great for Bosnia and Herzegovina’s two entities, the Serb-leaning Republika Srpska (RS), and the predominantly Muslim-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBH). One need only listen to Milorad Dodik, the man leading in the polls and […]

The Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which is already changing the way the U.S. Air Force does business, could undergo an evolutionary leap in endurance, or the time the aircraft can stay in the air, in the next few years. Global Hawk, produced by Northrop Grumman Corp., can fly autonomously for up to 35 hours at a time, at an altitude of 60,000 feet or higher, while scanning an area of some 40,000 square miles, according to the company. With a more advanced engine, however, Global Hawk could stay up far longer — weeks, even months at a time, […]

When Marine Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler presided over the July transfer of the American-led anti-terrorism task force in the Horn of Africa from the U.S. Marines Corps to the U.S. Navy, his statement of achievement was simple. “Since the camp was established [in late 2002] there has not been one terrorist attack in the Horn of Africa, although there have been many attempts,” he said. When the American military’s Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) was established in November 2002 in the tiny country of Djibouti, the region was fast becoming a theater of operations for […]

On any given night in north Bogotá, groups of athletic, broad shouldered young men with cropped hair, conversing in their native American-English, can be seen enjoying beers in the upmarket bars of the Colombian city. Most of these men are among the 800 U.S military personnel and 600 U.S. civilian government contractors allowed to work in Colombia as part of the U.S. aid package known as Plan Colombia. It has been almost a year since the first phase of Plan Colombia officially ended. Since then the Colombian government has been left wondering whether U.S aid to Colombia will continue to […]

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice drew many raised eyebrows when she predicted that the battle between Israel and Hezbollah marked the ‘birth pangs’ of a new Middle East. Maybe she was showing extraordinary prescience; maybe foolhardy optimism. Several weeks and hundreds of deaths after the conflict erupted, the path to a ‘new’ Middle East looks as treacherous as it has for a generation. The deck seems stacked against Secretary Rice’s hopeful forecast. The government of Israel is determined – and is solidly backed by public opinion at home – to put an end to the Hezbollah threat and thereby […]