Defense & Security Archive

In a region rife with seemingly unsolvable conflicts, one budding relationship is demonstrating that not all hope is lost in the Middle East: Once implacable enemies, Turkey and the autonomous Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq are forging ever-closer political and economic ties, independent of the Iraqi central government in Baghdad. The Turkish-Iraqi Kurdish relationship is blossoming despite the failure of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s “Kurdish initiative,” an effort to mend relations with Turkey’s domestic Kurdish minority, who account for some 20 percent of the Turkish population. The world’s largest ethnic group without an independent state of its own, […]

When hundreds of thousands of Darfuri refugees flooded across the Chad-Sudan border in 2003, fleeing a campaign of ethnic cleansing orchestrated by the Sudanese government and its militia proxies, the U.N. and various aid groups raced to help. Humanitarian workers built a vast and sophisticated network of refugee camps to house as many as 300,000 people. The European Union and, later, the U.N. deployed peacekeepers to protect the camps. By 2008, the refugee camps in eastern Chad had become a self-contained society, one of the biggest and seemingly most permanent in all the world. It was also a major reason […]

Almost a year ago to the day, members of the Honduran military physically removed then-President Manuel Zelaya from the presidential palace, stripping him of the presidency and forcing him into exile in Costa Rica. In spite of massive international attention and multilateral efforts in the days and months that followed, reconciliation — both domestically and internationally — remains elusive. The region continues to be divided over current President Porfirio Lobo’s legitimacy, to the point that on a recent return flight from Peru, Lobo’s plane had to bypass Ecuadorian airspace because the Ecuadorian government still refuses to recognize his presidency. Arguing […]

Since late last year, members of the U.S. Congress have introduced no less than 34 different bills dealing with information security and Internet policy. Many of these bills are well-meaning, such as the House resolution calling upon Vietnam to “release imprisoned bloggers and respect Internet freedom” — even if the bill applies no penalties and, more importantly, appropriates no money. But the more significant “cyber” bills are the ones dealing with the security of the Internet. Since April 1, 2008, when Sens. Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe introduced a particularly mammoth piece of cyber legislation, Congress has worked diligently in […]

The first official visit of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to Washington last week offers a convenient opportunity to assess the current Russian-U.S. relationship. Since assuming office, one of the priorities of U.S. President Barack Obama and his foreign policy team has been to improve ties with Russia and other foreign governments that had become alienated from the United States. Relations between Washington and Moscow became especially strained in 2007 and 2008 following the acute confrontations that arose over the planned U.S. missile defense deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia’s August 2008 War with Georgia, and other issues. Despite […]

The Gulf region ranks among the most valuable and strategically important pieces of real estate in the world because of its abundance of oil and gas resources and its location at vital geographic crossroads for the world’s security and economy. And until viable alternative energy resources emerge to sufficiently fuel the global economy, the Gulf region will continue to be one of the most strategically contested regions of the world for years to come. In large part due to this strategic importance, the Gulf has been wrought with instability for decades, plagued by both conflict between states in the region […]

For several decades, a number of factors in Africa — including ideological differences among the continent’s young states, the unfinished nature of its liberation, and profound external, non-African interference — prevented any meaningful regional cooperation in the field of peace and security. But with the end of the Cold War, the concomitant proliferation of conflicts throughout the continent, and Africa’s sudden marginalization in world affairs, the states of Africa were galvanized into regional security cooperation in the late 1990s. Since then, much has been achieved. Regional organizations like the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Economic Community of West African […]

Perhaps the most surprising feature of the protracted crisis in Kyrgyzstan is what has not happened: Neither of Eurasia’s two preeminent regional security institutions, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), have coordinated a military intervention in that country. The mass protests, deaths, and refugee crisis involving perhaps 1 million people has represented one of the most acute challenges to Eurasian stability in the history of either organization, both of which were founded almost a decade ago. In mid-June 2010, the Kyrgyz interim authorities even directly appealed for Russian military intervention on their behalf, but […]

Watching a president dismiss a senior general inevitably calls to mind Abraham Lincoln, who during the Civil War sacked generals left and right until he found one who served his purposes, and Harry Truman, who famously fired Gen. Douglas Macarthur during the Korean War. Unlike his predecessors, who removed generals either for their performance or due to disagreements over policy and strategy, President Barack Obama let Gen. Stanley McChrystal go because McChrystal had permitted a command environment that led some of his staff to crudely dismiss the president’s advisers. As if to underscore the continuity in policy and strategy, Obama […]

Are the deck chairs being reshuffled on the Titanic that is the Afghan war? First, Afghan President Hamid Karzai forced the resignations of his interior minister, Hanif Atmar, and the head of his intelligence services, Amrullah Saleh. Next, the U.K. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Sherard Cowper-Coles, went on indefinite leave, turning over his post to his deputy. Now, in the aftermath of the infamous Rolling Stone profile, U.S. President Barack Obama has removed Gen. Stanley McChrystal as commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, replacing him with Gen. David Petraeus. What is interesting to note, of course, […]

BUJUMBURA, Burundi — For the capital of a country just years removed civil war, this steamy lakeside city is surprisingly cosmopolitan. Though Burundi, according to IMF statistics, has the lowest per capita GDP in the world, no one would guess from Bujumbura’s celebrated nightclubs or its colonial era Art Deco buildings. In the hills that rise from the plain of the city center, shantytowns have been razed to make room for McMansion-style houses, reflecting a growing middle class that’s also on display at the city’s lakeside. There, on a recent Sunday, throngs of urban Burundians, ex-pats and international travelers lounged […]

A recent headline in Britain’s Sunday Times must have sent blood pressure readings soaring on both sides of the gulf known on one side as the Persian Gulf and on the other as the Arabian Gulf: “Saudi Arabia gives Israel clear skies to attack Iranian nuclear sites.” Had Riyadh really struck a deal with the Jewish state, making it easier for Israeli jets to pound Iranian targets? The Times quoted anonymous “defense sources in the Gulf” who maintained that the kingdom had gone as far as to conduct practice drills in which its air defenses would stand down, allowing flights […]

MEXICO CITY — Ten years ago, Mexico’s National Action Party (PAN) swept to power on an agenda of change, ousting the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) after 71 years of uninterrupted rule. The PAN agenda included more jobs, 7 percent economic growth and honest government — a departure from the PRI, which had presided over a political system oiled by corruption and patronage. A decade later, removing the PRI from power on the federal level remains the party’s greatest accomplishment. Much of the center-right party’s agenda has gone unfulfilled, and the PAN has largely failed to establish itself as a party […]

As if to provide yet one more piece of evidence of the Afghan tragedy, the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released a report yesterday showing the devastating effects of domestically produced opium on Afghanistan’s own population. It complements other studies (.pdf) that have highlighted the suffering that Afghan opium, heroin, and other opiates cause in other countries. Taken together, the reports make it clear that solving the Afghan drug challenge will require a comprehensive multilateral approach. Yesterday’s UNODC report (.pdf), entitled “Drug Use in Afghanistan: 2009 Survey,” confirms a pattern seen in the international evolution of the […]

BOGOTÁ — If the opinion polls are any indication, Colombians will vote for continuity rather than change as the country elects its president in run-off voting on Sunday. Barring a major surprise, Juan Manuel Santos, former defense minister and heir-apparent to the hardline polices of outgoing conservative President Alvaro Uribe, is poised to become the next Colombian president. The latest polls give Santos a seemingly insurmountable lead of 66 percent to 27 percent, over his rival and two-time Bogotá mayor, Antanus Mockus. During first-round voting last month, Santos won nearly 47 percent of the vote, just shy of an outright […]

In the aftermath of its disastrous raid on the Mavi Marmara, part of a flotilla that tried to break the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza, Israel has come under intense pressure to lift the embargo of the Hamas-run territory. The decision of how to handle Gaza under Hamas rule is an extraordinarily complicated one for many political, strategic and humanitarian reasons. In fact, there is one aspect of the embargo that many of its presumably peace-loving opponents fail to note: Ending the blockade of Gaza could kill the chances for peace. There is a reason why Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas […]

The new space craft’s launch occurred without much fanfare. On April 22, the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B prototype roared into orbit atop a rocket launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Some 15 years in development, the X-37’s technology, performance and purpose all are cloaked in mystery. Two months after the unmanned vehicle’s launch, it is still in orbit, performing its unspecified tasks behind the military’s veil of silence and ambiguity. That has caused concern among potential rivals of the U.S. The X-37, which looks like a quarter-scale Space Shuttle, is just 29 feet long from nose to tail and boasts […]