Defense & Security Archive

From the moment the first cell-phone videos of balaclava-clad young men sprinting away from police gunfire began to travel across cyberspace a few weeks ago, the mounting social unrest in Tunisia has caught many by surprise. Even longtime observers have had difficulty explaining how one of North Africa’s most prosperous and, arguably, most socially stable countries became a powder keg of political, economic and social fury. “I thought it could happen, but I didn’t believe it would happen so suddenly,” said Abdelwahab Hechiche, a political scientist at the University of South Florida who engaged in political activism for Tunisian independence […]

The Obama administration still says it will begin withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan in six months. But a recent visit to Afghanistan by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden raised questions about how long the U.S. military will actually stay there and some analysts say there are benchmarks that Washington and NATO should consider in determining the length of their mission.

“The world is beating a path to your door,” said British Prime Minister David Cameron when visiting India last July. Cameron’s words were not mere rhetorical flourish: During the second half of 2010, the leaders of all the permanent U.N. Security Council members passed through New Delhi, underscoring India’s increasing importance in the global system. Significantly, all the visiting dignitaries either affirmed support for India’s claim to a permanent seat on the council or, in the case of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, made a statement “supporting India’s aspirations for a greater role in global affairs.” Indeed, the reordering of global […]

Last year is on record as the bloodiest year yet in Mexico’s war against organised crime, with drug-related deaths jumps to a record high. More than 15,000 people lost their lives in Mexico’s drug war last year. And it has already been a violent start to 2011, with the cartels blamed for more murders.

In pursuit of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s concept of strategic depth, Turkey has been reaching out to rising powers in Asia while at the same time offering itself as a mediator in disputes in its near abroad. As part of this approach, Turkey is leveraging its longstanding ties with Pakistan and its stature as one of the few industrialized countries in the Muslim world to create a diplomatic role for itself in Afghanistan. But in a sign that Ankara’s geopolitical outreach cannot transcend regional fault lines, Turkey kept India out of the January 2010 tripartite summit on Afghanistan at Pakistan’s […]

At the heart of the U.S. war in Afghanistan lies a striking and unresolved contradiction. While the U.S. has sent approximately 100,000 troops to this impoverished, landlocked country to combat a fearsome local insurgency, the actual focal point of U.S. policy in the region largely revolves around protecting and stabilizing a country just across Afghanistan’s eastern border: Pakistan. It’s an ironic but not altogether surprising strategy. After all, Pakistan remains home to Osama bin Laden, his key lieutenants and other terrorist organizations intent on striking American targets. The country maintains a significant nuclear capability, and its ongoing conflict with India […]

The Obama administration has been transmitting a relatively clear set of signals regarding its policy toward Afghanistan ever since the strategic review was completed in December 2010: Progress has been made, but it is “fragile” and “reversible.” According to this argument, since U.S. and allied efforts are showing the first green shoots in terms of being able to train and deploy Afghan security forces that could end up holding territory on their own, it would be irresponsible to change course now. The current strategy must be given sufficient time to play out, even if that does not neatly dovetail with […]

Two Thai detainees charged with espionage have left a Cambodian court after three hours of questioning. The two are members of a group called the People’s Alliance for Democracy, known as “yellow shirts.” They are among seven Thais charged in December with illegal entry and encroachment on Cambodia’s border military zone.

With the U.N. Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) preparing for its Jan. 15 exit, few were surprised by the head of the mission’s final, stern warning. In a statement, UNMIN Chief Karin Landgren warned (.pdf) that “growing differences within the major political parties add to the mistrust between them, and the failure of the peace process to advance had strengthened the hand of those on all sides who derided it as unproductive.” Landgren, like several experts, also warned that a return to war is possible. But will UNMIN’s departure exacerbate the risk? UNMIN was established in January 2007 to support the […]

When Brazilian voters went to the polls last year, they voted for continuity. In electing Dilma Rousseff, a 63-year-old technocrat who had never run for office before, they responded to the pleas of their popular outgoing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Lula, as he is known, had made his preference clear. “A vote for Dilma is a vote for me,” he told them, with both leaders promising that she would continue moving Brazil down the same path. When it comes to foreign policy, Dilma, as Brazilians call their new president, has also said she will follow her predecessor’s line. […]

China has confirmed that it has conducted a successful flight test of a new stealth fighter jet. The news was announced while U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is on an official visit to the China. Chinese President Hu Jintao stated the tests were pre-planned and the timing was a coincidence.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who met with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Sana’a, Yemen, comments on the fight against terrorism being a top priority of the U.S., and of Yemen. Clinton’s trip marks the first time in 20 years that a U.S. secretary of state has visited Yemen.

We have long known that retired military officers have a cozy relationship with the military-industrial complex. A recent article in the Boston Globe fleshed out the nature of this relationship, detailing the extent to which retired senior officers have moved to private-sector defense companies in the last decade. Indeed, this career path has become considerably more common: “From 2004 through 2008, 80 percent of retiring three- and four-star officers went to work as consultants or defense executives, according to the Globe analysis. That compares with less than 50 percent who followed that path a decade earlier, from 1994 to 1998.” […]

Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in December 2009, President Barack Obama expressed his concern that the existing global “architecture is buckling under the weight of new threats.” Part of the problem is that there is no true global-security forum. In the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, Amitai Etzioni suggested that the resulting ad hoc anti-terrorism coalition might evolve into what he termed a “Global Safety Authority,” but this has not occurred. The U.N. Security Council, which according to the United Nations Charter is supposed to take up this function, has several problems. First, its membership is […]

A central theme of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign was the need to revitalize the institutions of governance for 21st-century problems. “We cannot meet 21st-century challenges with a 20th-century bureaucracy,” he declared in one notable stump speech, and the sentiment was repeated throughout his campaign. Once in office, President Obama made the same claim regarding international order and governance. The 2010 National Security Strategy (NSS) (.pdf) acknowledged that in a world facing transnational threats, and one where “new centers of influence” would shape diplomatic options, international cooperation was a necessity. But it recognized that outdated institutions are as much an […]

As federal deficits rise, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is looking to cut spending by close to $100 billion in the next five years, a sign that even the Pentagon’s massive budget is subject to government-wide belt tightening. Gates discusses the new budgetary measures, his China trip and “don’t ask, don’t tell” with Jim Lehrer. A transcript of the interview can be found here.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates unveiled his much-anticipated budget cuts last Thursday, signaling the beginning of the end of the decade-long splurge in military spending triggered by Sept. 11. Gates presented the package of cuts as being the biggest possible given the current international security landscape, warning that any deeper reductions could prove “potentially calamitous.” Frankly, I find that statement hard to swallow. How can America basically match the rest of the world’s defense spending combined, and then describe anything less as “potentially calamitous”? Clearly, given the “nation’s grim financial outlook,” as Gates himself put it, we’re going to have […]