Defense & Security Archive

In its spring issue, the venerable Washington Quarterly asked what has become a perennial question, and the central theme of “Under the Influence”: Is the United States entering an age of decline or renewal? But while everyone agrees on the question, it seems that no one can make up their minds on the answer. At first glance, recent events seem to point to the former, or decline. The financial crisis has not only hobbled the U.S. economy, but has discredited the free-market messages it has long propagated abroad. Years of war without decisive victory in Iraq and Afghanistan has added […]

As if to illustrate the challenges facing an integrated European defense market, the French naval shipyard DCNS is suing Spain’s leading state-owned shipbuilding firm, Navantia, for allegedly stealing trade secrets relating to the Scorpène submarine project. The two companies originally developed the Scorpène as part of a joint venture. But DCNS now accuses its Spanish partner of copying Scorpène technology and using it for the new S-80 submarine that Navantia is building both for the Spanish Navy as well as for export markets, where it will compete with the Scorpène. Navantia says the dispute originated in July 2005, when the […]

During the Cold War, U.S. military forces operated in big, firepower-heavy formations, designed to fight equally big and powerful Soviet formations — or what the Pentagon calls “peer” opponents. Times have changed, but the military hadn’t — until now. In recent months, reformers have successfully fought for sweeping changes to military force structure. The changes are meant to boost the Pentagon’s ability to fight in low-intensity, “persistent” conflicts, as opposed to the short, high-intensity major conflicts expected in the recent past. In addition to the structural changes, persistent conflicts demand new ways of thinking about — and training for — […]

New York and Washington may be separated by only a few hundred miles, but in the last few weeks, they have appeared to be light years apart on arms control and nonproliferation issues. In New York, representatives of more than 100 countries worked from May 4-15 to prepare for next year’s nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference. Buoyed by U.S. President Barack Obama’s April pledge to seek a world free from nuclear weapons, their work was marked by a spirit of cooperation and compromise that had been noticeably absent during the eight years of the Bush administration. They approved an agenda […]

When the global financial contagion kicked in last fall, the blogosphere was quick to predict that a sharp uptick in global instability would soon follow. While we’re not out of the woods yet, it’s interesting to note just how little instability — and not yet a single war — has actually resulted from the worst global economic downturn since the Great Depression. Run a Google search for “global instability” and you’ll get 23 million hits. But when it comes to actual conflicts, the world is humming along at a level that reflects the steady decline in wars — by 60 […]

Two months ago, Turkey seemed on the verge of reaching a negotiated solution to its 30-year war with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — a nationalist, leftist militant group based in northern Iraq and fighting for Kurdish self-determination, which has been labeled a terrorist group by the U.S. and the EU. The settlement — concocted in the corridors of power of Washington, Ankara, and Irbil — lay at the heart of U.S.-Turkish policy for a stable Iraq following the planned U.S. withdrawal in 2010. The stage was set, with Turkish President Abdullah Gül promising that “very good things” were about […]

U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan have established an experimental security force drawn from local Afghan fighters, in a bid to better provide the street-level security that has proved instrumental to defeating entrenched insurgencies. Despite tens of thousands of incoming American reinforcements, most Afghan districts still do not have a permanent troop presence to defend against Taliban incursions. The new Afghan Public Protection Force “enables respected young men of local communities to become public protectors,” said U.S. Army training officer Capt. Marco Lyons. But the force, currently operating only in Wardak province, just south of the capital of Kabul, risks […]

More so than that of other countries, the foreign policy pursued by the Federal Republic of Germany displays deep historical fractures and discontinuities. This reflects the country’s profound identity crisis in the aftermath of the twin disasters of National Socialism and the Second World War. The failure of German hegemonism and power politics after 1870-71, culminating in the unique crimes of the National Socialist dictatorship, underscored the country’s need for a radical break with its old nationalist and militaristic past, and resulted in a renunciation of traditional power politics. Key features of German foreign policy since 1945 include a culture […]

When the Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago, the event’s historic significance was immediately obvious. A divided Germany had been both the linchpin of the agreements sealed at Yalta and Potsdam in February and July of 1945, respectively, and the central fault line of the divided European continent they created. In what amounted to a recasting of some 300 years of European history, post-War European affairs were conducted under the umbrella of opposing blocs, and peace was based on nuclear deterrence. With the Wall gone, the Cold War political order was swept away. Less than one year later, a reunified […]

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Over 400 members of Colombia’s armed forces have been detained for allegedly taking part in extrajudicial killings of civilians in the last two years, according to the country’s attorney general’s office. An ongoing probe into human rights abuses in the Colombian army, known locally as the “false positives” scandal, continues to unfold following the recent arrests of more military personnel. The arrests involve charges that security forces murdered civilians and then passed them off as guerrillas killed in combat in order to inflate rebel body counts. Offers of work were used to lure the young and poor […]

Last week I gave a plenary address to the Joint Warfighting Conference 2009 — the annual East Coast naval extravaganza co-sponsored by the U.S. Naval Institute (USNI) and the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA). This mega-conference opened my eyes to just how much things have changed inside our naval forces thanks to the ongoing long war against violent extremism. To give you an idea of the ground covered, I have to take you back almost 17 years. That’s when the Department of the Navy came out with its post-Cold War strategic white paper entitled, “. . . From […]

MARDAN, Pakistan — Zeeshan Khan, a 17-year-old engineering student, says he knows who Pakistanis blame for what has become the largest migration in their country’s history. “These people are coming due to the bombing,” he said, gesturing to the thousands of refugees milling around the Mardan refugee camp. “Due to the jet artillery, the F-16s, the heavy weapons. All our houses are destroyed.” More than 900,000 people have left their homes in and around Swat valley in the last few weeks, adding to a total of 1.4 million people displaced so far by fighting between the Pakistani Army and militants. […]

A fresh round of fighting near the town of Abeche, in eastern Chad, has claimed the lives of 225 rebels and 22 government troops, according to the Chadian government. The violence is a fixture of life in this dusty desert outpost just 50 miles from Sudan’s embattled Darfur province, and has complicated delicate efforts by regional and world bodies to build a framework for a lasting peace, as well as to care for hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced persons. “A column of mercenaries in the pay of the regime in Khartoum, comprising more than 400 heavily armed […]

At a recent forum on U.S.-Saudi relations in Washington, D.C., current and former Saudi officials decried the previous U.S. administration’s Middle East policies. Yet in shunning the Shiite-dominated government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a regime they deem inimical to their interests, the Saudis — along with other Sunni Arab regimes — appear to have internalized the core foreign policy impulse of the Bush administration. This myopic approach has had the perverse effect of amplifying Iran’s already outsized influence in Iraq and throughout the region. It has also fueled Iraqi suspicions about the intentions of its Sunni Arab neighbors, […]

A newly issued U.S. Army field manual has put people on notice: Video games are serious training tools. In its first revision since 9/11, the U.S. Army field manual for Training and Full Spectrum Operations mentions gaming 32 times, describing it as as a key ingredient in replicating “an actual operational environment.” Released in December 2008, the new doctrine is another reminder of how gaming is rapidly redefining military recruitment and training. The push to use games as a recruiting tool dates back to 2002, when the Army released “America’s Army” — a free, downloadable video game that gave people […]

PUERTO NUEVO, Ecuador — Camaraderie may be the key to military morale, but the 24 Ecuadorian troops traveling towards the Colombian border by helicopter maintain an eerie quiet. The Amazonian jungle stretches out below, apparently undisturbed but for the odd small farm or oil well. But appearances in the jungle can be deceiving. Under the foliage, invisible from the air, are FARC guerrilla bases and cocaine laboratories. The soldiers’ mission over a five-day patrol covering around 25 kilometers will be to find and destroy them. “It’s a reality,” says Gen. Fabián Narváez, the commander of Ecuadorian forces in the border […]

Have we really reached the end of American hegemony? For those who think so, the signs of America’s decline and the rise of emerging powers are everywhere. According to this line of argument, the world’s sole superpower succumbed to overstretch. U.S. failures in the “war on terror” revealed the limitations of American military power, while its role in provoking the global economic crisis revealed the shortcomings of American economic leadership. As a result, rising powers around the world feel suddenly emboldened by America’s visible weakness. Brazil’s president blames the worldwide recession on “white-skinned people with blue eyes,” and Russia and […]