Defense & Security Archive

Events in Libya are a further reminder for Americans that we stand at a crossroads in our continuing evolution as the world’s sole full-service superpower. Unfortunately, we are increasingly seeking change without cost, and shirking from risk because we are tired of the responsibility. We don’t know who we are anymore, and our president is a big part of that problem. Instead of leading us, he explains to us. Barack Obama would have us believe that he is practicing strategic patience. But many experts and ordinary citizens alike have concluded that he is actually beset by strategic incoherence — in […]

Unlike the successful uprisings in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt, characterized by largely unarmed protests and government crackdowns with tear gas and bullets, Libya is now in the midst of a full-bore violent civil war. Refusing to stand down, Col. Moammar Gadhafi has vowed “to fight until the last man and last woman to defend Libya from east to west, north to south.” While rebel forces have taken control of many town and cities, forces loyal to Gadhafi firmly control Tripoli, the country’s capital, and have started to contest the rebels’ control of strategic town and cities over the past week. […]

At a time of serious budgetary restrictions and painful austerity measures, Europe must reassess its political ambitions and ratchet up its efforts to reverse negative trends in its global influence. With this in mind, Warsaw has increasingly sought to revitalize close coordination between Poland, France and Germany in what is known as the Weimar Triangle. That initiative has taken on greater urgency in anticipation of Poland assuming the rotating European Union presidency in July 2011. However, the most recent Weimar Triangle Summit, held in Poland in early February, confirmed that when it comes to Europe, Warsaw, Berlin and Paris have […]

A peace plan for Libya, proposed by Venezuela’s President Chavez, is being considered by the Arab League. The idea, outlined by Chavez earlier this week, involves sending representatives from several countries to Libya to help negotiate an end to the fighting.

Nine children have been killed in a NATO air raid in Afghanistan’s Kunar province. They were out collecting firewood on Tuesday when a they were hit. General David Petraeus, the international forces commander, has personally apologised to Afghan President Hamid Karzai for the deaths.

Great powers are sometimes molded by events as much as, if not more than, by grand strategy. In 1898, the United States — at the time an isolationist and anti-colonial power — entered onto the world stage after Spain allegedly sank the USS Maine in Havana Harbor. The commercial adventures of the East India Company compelled the British state to intervene in China, sparking the Opium Wars, while in 1850, the British foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston, ordered the British navy into the Aegean in order to protect a British subject, Don Pacifico, and reclaim his lost property. All were defining […]

In Islamabad gunmen have shot dead Pakistan’s Minister for Minorities. Shabaz Bhatti, the only Christian in the government cabinet, was murdered on Wednesday in the gun attack on his car. The Pakistani Taliban have claimed responsibility for the killing, calling Bhatti a blasphemer. He had been calling for changes to the country’s blasphemy law under which anyone who speaks ill of Islam can face the death penalty.

While the full story of the Arab uprisings — and in particular the Libya chapter — has yet to be written, sea power has thus far seemed curiously absent from the events of the Arab Spring. Although one Libyan warship apparently bombarded rebel positions in Tripoli and another may have defected, maritime power has not been central to the course of that country’s revolution. Similarly, the Egyptian navy played no meaningful role in overthrowing Hosni Mubarak, and now remains at dock for lack of funding. And what of NATO? In theory, the effort to relieve Libya and manage the chaos […]

There’s so much to love about Charlie Sheen’s diatribes that about the only improvement I can think of would be to have Jean-Claude Van Damme be the one interviewing him. Obscured by the spectacle of Sheen’s crash-and-burn party are some very serious critiques of the consensus drug treatment paradigm in the U.S. But there are also some very important insights into U.S. foreign policy and national security. In particular, Sheen’s remarks, which I’m tempted to refer to as the Sheen Doctrine, illustrate one tendency prevalent on the left and another prevalent on the right, while succinctly articulating a major tenet […]

Fighter jets, aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean, a no-fly zone over Libya and arming the rebels are all options being weighed up by the United States and its allies in the European Union, as a defiant Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is continuing to cling onto power and is ordering airstrikes on towns and arms depots.

The Middle East Institute recently presented a lecture and discussion with Andrew Exum, Fellow at the Center for A New American Security, assessing the possibility of a new Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan and its ramifications for U.S. strategy there. The below video is the first of several parts of Exum’s talk. Additional parts can be found at the Middle East Institute. A related World Politics Review interview with Exum conducted as part of WPR’s special report on the Afghanistan war can be found here.

With the Russian government having assumed an increasingly aggressive posture regarding the country’s territorial dispute with Japan in recent months, the question naturally arises, Why? Senior Russian leaders including President Dmitry Medvedev and Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov have broken with precedent and visited what the Russians call the Southern Kurils and what the Japanese label their Northern Territories. The Russian government has also announced plans to enhance the islands’ socio-economic development and defenses. The escalating crisis led the counselor for European Affairs at the Japanese Foreign Ministry to characterize the Russian-Japanese relationship last week as being at its lowest point […]

With the Russian government having assumed an increasingly aggressive posture regarding the country’s territorial dispute with Japan in recent months, the question naturally arises, Why? Senior Russian leaders, including President Dmitry Medvedev and Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, have broken with precedent and visited what the Russians call the Southern Kurils and what the Japanese label their Northern Territories. The Russian government has also announced plans to enhance the islands’ socio-economic development and defenses. The escalating crisis led the counselor for European Affairs at the Japanese Foreign Ministry to characterize the Russian-Japanese relationship last week as being at its lowest point […]