Defense & Security Archive

The main debate at this year’s National People’s Congress in Beijing centered on the balance between socialism and capitalism, what Premier Wen Jiabao called the “two unswervinglies.” The communist country’s first private property law, a new tax code for businesses, and increased social spending for rural regions were debated contentiously in the Great Hall of the People — at least by the standards of China’s highest legislative body — as well as in the state-controlled press. Less controversial amongst the 3,000 delegates and Chinese press was a significant increase in military spending. However, this announcement caused the greatest anxiety outside […]

Editor’s Note: This article is the first of a two-part series on the gang culture and violence in Guatemala. Read Part II. GUATEMALA CITY — The ambulance arrives with its siren wailing and a team of medics runs to the emergency room entrance. The doors of the vehicle burst open and a trolley is lowered down with a young man lying on it groaning. It is 2:19 in the morning and Gersen Armando Ramirez Santus, a tattooed gang member, has just been shot twice in the chest on the crime-teeming streets of this city. Guatemala is a nation still traumatized […]

The signing last month of the India-Pakistan “Agreement on Reducing the Risk from Accidents Relating to Nuclear Weapons” represents an essential next step in the security normalization process between the two countries. The accord, signed on Feb. 22 in New Delhi, culminated three years of general discussions and several months of detailed drafting sessions. Although differences persist regarding the status of Kashmir and other issues, the governments of India and Pakistan have adopted several confidence-building measures in recent years. This reconciliation process began in December 1988 with an agreement that prohibits either country from attacking the other’s nuclear installations and […]

Violence and militancy in Nigeria — particularly in the oil-rich Niger Delta — continues to hamper petroleum production in the volatile West African nation and threatens to disrupt upcoming presidential elections, analysts and experts tell World Politics Review. In just the last few days, at least 10 people have been killed in an around Port Harcourt, the de facto capital of the delta, where some 2 million barrels of oil are produced a day, according to independent estimates. Dozens of kidnappings since the beginning of the year by armed militants have prompted foreign oil firms to evacuate thousands of workers […]

Submarine-launched Trident ballistic missiles are currently the United Kingdom’s only nuclear delivery system, and the submarines that carry them are nearing the end of their operational lifetimes. A serious debate has arisen in Britain over whether new submarines should be developed — and, by extension, whether the country should renew its independent nuclear deterrent. The U.K. currently deploys its Trident nuclear missiles on four Vanguard-class submarines, which are due to be decommissioned in the 2020s. In December 2006, the British government found that designing and building new submarines to carry the Trident force would take 17 years — in order […]

On March 2, Italy’s political crisis ended as rapidly as it had begun when the Italian parliament reconfirmed Romano Prodi as the country’s prime minister. By obtaining majority backing in both the Chamber of Deputies (by 342-253) and the more closely divided Senate (162-157) — Italy’s lower and upper houses of parliament, respectively — Prodi prolonged the tenuous life of his center-left governing coalition. The previous week, Prodi’s coalition government lost a key foreign policy vote in the Senate after the defection of two Senators resulted in the government’s falling just short of the necessary majority in that body. The […]

MADRID, Spain — How many people spilled through the streets of Madrid on Feb. 3, marching alongside relatives of Spain’s terrorism victims, as they protested concessions the government appears prepared to make in order to re-engage the Basque separatist group ETA in a no-fault “peace process”? Well, there were either 1.5 million or 181,200 people taking part, depending on whose police force you want to believe. That latter figure is courtesy of Spain’s National Police, which is controlled by Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s Interior Ministry. The claim of 1.5 million is from the Foro de Ermua, the group […]

KADENA AIR BASE, Japan — Eyeing the threat of a potentially nuclear-armed North Korea, Japanese leaders are navigating delicate domestic politics and a complicated relationship with Japan’s closest ally, the United States, as they embark on selective military improvements. The Japanese constitution, written with U.S. guidance in wake of Japan’s catastrophic defeat in World War II, categorically prohibits a standing military. Since the 1950s, the nation has maintained “self-defense forces” that are military services in all but name. Nevertheless, legal limitations and a deep vein of pacifism among the Japanese electorate have hamstrung the development of these forces. Japan devotes […]

TBILISI, Georgia — The breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia has voted in parliamentary elections its leaders hope will confer long-awaited international recognition, but Georgia’s president and the West dismissed the ballot and said results will not be recognized. Abkhazia’s status has become a sensitive issue between Georgia and Russia, which has given tacit support to separatists there and in nearby South Ossetia. Although the conflicts remain frozen, analysts say the region is a potential flashpoint as tensions mount between the two countries. Georgia accuses Russia of interfering with its internal affairs, while Moscow counters its southern neighbor has become increasingly […]

Russian dissatisfaction over U.S. plans to deploy missile defense radars and interceptors in Poland and the Czech Republic has become so intense that senior Russian political and military leaders have recently warned that Moscow might withdraw from the two most important arms control treaties relating to European security. First, Russian policy makers have indicated they might renounce the December 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. This accord prohibits Russia and the United States from developing, manufacturing, or deploying ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers. Its negotiation ended one of the most dangerous periods of […]

Corridors of Power is written by veteran foreign affairs correspondent Roland Flamini and appears in World Politics Review every week by Sunday morning. Click here for the Corridors of Power archives. WHO OWES WHOM? — Invasions, as the Bush administration can attest, are costly undertakings. But in the case of Iraq, the United States is unlikely to follow the example of the Russian government, which has sent Afghanistan the bill for the 1979 Soviet invasion and subsequent occupation. Moscow is asking the Afghans to pay $9 billion it says Russia spent on “development” in Afghanistan in the infamous decade that […]

As the U.S.-led coalition force enters its fifth year in Iraq, a look back at two pivotal insurgencies from the mid-20th Century provides crucial lessons for our future actions in Iraq. Both the British experience in Malaya and the French experience in Algeria contain exceptional insights that are worthy of reconsideration as we refine our counterinsurgency actions. Though they differed in some important ways, those two counterinsurgencies show how the basic aims of most insurgencies, and therefore the strategies needed to defeat them, are fundamentally the same. These similarities remain despite the technological modernization and profound advances in warfighting that […]

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — In the coffee shops and tea houses of this modernized, stylish city, the hushed talk is of a faltering economy, rising racial tensions, and the man Malaysians either love or loathe. Old political warhorse Mahathir Mohamad, now 81 and recovering from a recent heart attack, has yet again demonstrated his refusal to retire gracefully with the mantle of respected elder statesman. After antagonizing his anointed successor as prime minister on a range of issues — even accusing the Abdullah Badawi government of presiding over a police state — and recently wading in on the side of […]