Defense & Security Archive

MORE MONEY FOR PAKISTAN — There was good news for Pakistan and bad news for India from Washington this week. Pakistan, which has done a poor job of suppressing Taliban and al-Qaida incursions into Afghanistan at a cost of American and NATO lives, is likely to have an extra $5 billion of the U.S. taxpayers’ money lavished on it in extra aid. This one-time grant would be in addition to the $1.5 billion annual package over ten years now awaiting passage through congress. Meanwhile, the Indian media has interpreted a statement in President Obama’s first address to Congress on Tuesday […]

When Thai security forces recently raided the offices of the Working Group on Justice for Peace (WGJP) in the country’s insurgency-torn south, it may have been business-as-usual for a military with a checkered human rights record. But a report released last week by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) shows this is part of a disturbing global trend. The report (.pdf), “Assessing Damage, Urging Actions: Report of the Eminent Jurists Panel on Terrorism, Counterterrorism and Human Rights,” argues that the Bush administration’s post-9/11 “war paradigm” has led to a globalization of extraordinary legal measures which result in an unprecedented corrosive […]

Since taking office in 2002, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe has not wavered from his campaign promise to use a “firm hand” to eliminate the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). By all indications, Colombia’s counterinsurgency effort has been largely effective in weakening the rebel group, considered to be a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union for its involvement in high-profile kidnappings and drug trafficking. But an unintended side effect of Uribe’s tough approach has been the deterioration of Colombia’s bilateral relations with Ecuador and Venezuela. Colombia has accused its neighbors of being sympathetic to the FARC and […]

On Feb. 12, Iraq became the latest country to join the Chemical Weapons Convention. The country’s entry was especially important in light of the widespread use of chemical weapons by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein against his foreign and domestic enemies. Under Hussein, Iraq developed a major chemical weapons industry. During the 1980s, the regime killed thousands of people by repeatedly employing chemical weapons against both Iranian troops during the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran War and its domestic opponents, most infamously in the March 1988 mustard gas attacks on the Kurdish village of Halabja. With Iraq’s entry, the CWC (as the Convention […]

Of foreign policy’s dirtiest words, which do Americans least like to hear: war or state-building? That is the question the Obama administration now has to ask itself about Afpakia, the most volatile swath of South Asia. Afghanistan, the world’s largest opium producer, is a failed state. Pakistan, chronically unstable, possesses dozens of nuclear weapons. India, the regional power, would typically stabilize all of this, but it has been at war with Pakistan, on and off, for the last six decades. As the new administration in Washington contemplates an Afpakia strategy, at first glance nearly everyone seems to agree on the […]

On Feb. 16, the Pakistani government announced a truce with insurgents in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). In the agreement, the government agreed to promulgate Islamic law in one-third of NWFP. Pakistani officials are arguing that Islamic law is a popular demand, and that the creation of state-led Islamic courts will reduce support for extremism. However, rather than vitiating jihadism, the accord will legitimize radical ideology and demonstrate the efficacy of violence in its realization. NWFP’s citizens have not been agitating for the establishment of Islamic law. True, the province was governed from 2002 to February 2008, by the Muttahida […]

CHILDREN APPEAL FOR END TO CHILD SOLDIER USE — Children from more than 100 countries recently appealed to world leaders to do more to end to the use of children as combatants in armed conflicts. Despite international protocols preventing the practice, an estimated 250,000 children around the globe are fighting as soldiers. Former child soldiers and young activists personally delivered their plea in the form of a petition featuring 250,000 red handprints to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Feb. 12, the fifth anniversary of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Child soldiers are still […]

The IAEA just released its latest report on Iran’s nuclear program (available here for download as a .pdf file via Arms Control Wonk), and if the past is any indication, expect the accompanying spin and analysis to be a bit misleading. According to the actual report, the IAEA essentially determined that Iran has continued running the centrifuges it already has online and has added some more, and that the efficiency of the centrifuges already online has improved. The Iranians, meanwhile, once again refused to allow the more rigorous and transparent inspections mandated by the Additional Protocol, used a loophole to […]

The results of Israel’s recent elections, combined with the 22-day offensive against Gaza, have led many to wonder about the future of peace talks with the Palestinian Authority. But the jockeying for power in Israel between the centrist Kadima party and the right-wing Likud overshadows another significant obstacle standing in the way of any future peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians: namely, determining who, between the more secular Fatah leaders in the West Bank and the Islamist Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip, represents the Palestinian people. “No matter the outcome [of negotiations to form an Israeli government], the fact […]

Those sneaky French. Just when you think you can trust them, they turn around and stab you in the back and do exactly what they’ve been saying they’d do. Okay, cheap shot, because Judy Dempsey’s piece on Sarkozy’s NATO-EU defense grand bargain doesn’t exhibit any of the paranoia usually on display in American analysis of France’s EU defense ambitions. Two things, though. This isn’t quite true: But most of Europe has no stomach for tough missions like Afghanistan. It has not supported France in playing a bigger role in Africa. The Europeans do not want to spend more on defense, […]

Many Americans believe that Barack Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress will lower defense spending and restrain the militaristic foreign policy it underwrites. The coming years should destroy that myth. America’s overly aggressive and fiscally reckless defense policy will survive the Democratic majority. The Obama administration inherits runaway defense spending and leadership of a military that wants more. Non-war or base defense spending will be more than $515 billion in fiscal year 2009. Adjusting for inflation, that’s 40 percent higher than the defense budget when George W. Bush took office. Add the wars, nuclear weapons research, veterans, and homeland […]

This article is based on the book, “Organizing for a Complex World: Developing Tomorrow’s Defense and Net-Centric Systems,” recently published by the CSIS Press. Programs such as the Army’s Future Combat System, the Coast Guard’s Integrated Deepwater System program and the FAA’s Next Generation Air Traffic System are far more ambitious than any previously attempted. They combine groundbreaking technologies to create large, network-centric systems-of-systems with unprecedented capabilities. But such ambition brings unparalleled complexity, making these programs susceptible to cost overruns, schedule slippages and performance shortfalls. In recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee (pdf), Secretary of Defense Robert Gates […]

In January, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton advocated a new national security strategy entailing closer cooperation between the State Department, the military, government and civilian humanitarian agencies, and foreign allies. “Smart power,” she called it. Just a month later, U.S. smart power is becoming a reality in one of the world’s most troubled regions. Off the coast of Somalia, a country that hasn’t had a functional government in 18 years, a Navy-led international humanitarian and training mission has joined a new, firepower-heavy counterpiracy fleet, while State Department negotiators play a key supporting role. What has emerged is a complex, sophisticated […]

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Thirty years after Pol Pot and his henchmen were driven from power, surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge have finally begun appearing in court after being charged with crimes against humanity. Kaing Guek Eav — more commonly known as Duch — on Tuesday became the first of the ultra-Maoists to stand before the bench of five U.N.-sanctioned judges for his role in the alleged torture and extermination of more than 16,000 people. Initially, the victims were held at the S21 detention center that Duch ran before being sent to the killing fields on the outskirts of […]

Russia’s foreign arms sales recently had another banner year, breaking all post-Soviet records, causing Moscow policymakers to celebrate. Meeting with the Commission for Military-Technical Cooperation with Foreign States on Feb. 10, President Dmitry Medvedev reported that the value of Russian weapons exports in 2008 exceeded $8.35 billion, up from $7.4 billion in 2007, also a record. On Feb. 12, Alexander Fomin, deputy director of the Federal Service on Military-Technical Cooperation, said that Russia planned to export $8.5 billion of arms in 2009. On Feb. 16, Nikolai Dimidyuk, special programs director for Rosoboronexport, Russia’s arms export monopoly, announced that the company […]

NEW DELHI — In the wake of last November’s Mumbai terror strikes, which revealed weaknesses in India’s homeland defense capacity, India’s inability to fight a full-fledged war is now being increasingly exposed. Years of political neglect, corruption, red tape and indecisiveness have left the Indian Army (and to some degree the Navy and the Air Force) without the wherewithal to fight a protracted war against neighbor Pakistan, let alone more powerful China. Problems with India’s defense modernization program — valued at more than $50 billion over the next five years and to include new fighter jets, nuclear submarines and war […]

INTEL CHIEF SIGNALS CHANGE — Adm. Dennis Blair, President Obama’s new director of national intelligence, has lost no time living up to his reputation as a hard-driving boss. The intelligence community has been at work since last December compiling the 2009 Annual Threat Assessment, which the new director submitted to Congress Thursday. According to a well-informed source, when Blair arrived to take up his post some days ago, the finished draft was handed to him, but to almost everyone’s consternation he rejected it. Intel officers had to scramble to produce a new version shifting the emphasis from terrorism to the […]