Defense & Security Archive

Sudan and South Sudan have signed a border security agreement taking a step towards improving ties. Tensions between the two countries have built up in recent weeks over the sharing of oil revenues and increased frontier violence.

The Turkish navy recently increased its patrols in the Mediterranean, against the backdrop of rising tension with Israel. In an email interview, Bill Park, a senior lecturer in the department of defense studies at King’s College London, discussed the Turkish navy. WPR: What is the current state of the Turkish navy? Bill Park: The manpower strength of the Turkish navy stands at around 55,000, about half of whom are conscripts. At root it is configured as a coastal defense navy, and as such possesses 14 submarines and numerous fast-attack vessels, mine-warfare craft and coastal-patrol vessels. It also has in excess […]

Thanks to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the wars they spawned, many people around the world think they’re living through the most dangerous, violent and strategically uncertain period in human history. Well, that simply isn’t true, as the most recent Human Security Report from Canada’s Simon Fraser University makes clear. Entitled, “The Causes of Peace and the Shrinking Costs of War,” the 2009-2010 edition of the annual report marshals a ton of solid data that proves our world is less violent than ever and that it has “become far less insecure over the past 20 years.” The major failing […]

It looks like North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s August meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was a productive one. This week has seen the announcement of a number of modest but significant initiatives with the potential to create lasting ties between the two countries. Most important is the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between Gazprom and the North Korean Oil Ministry for the construction of a gas pipeline linking Russian supplies to South Korea. (Separate but coordinated discussions were held with the head of South Korea’s state-run gas company as well.) Also, a rail link between a Russian […]

In the aftermath of the Libya operation, my Naval War College colleague Tom Nichols concluded bluntly, “Humanitarian interventions are here to stay and are going to be driven more by moral calculation and military opportunity than by ‘national interest.’” This, it seems, is the new American foreign policy consensus; despite the costly U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the anti-interventionist coalition has lost the policy debate. The current fiscal crisis may trim back the scale and scope of future interventions, but will not eliminate them altogether from the U.S. policy toolbox. Even with its fiscal constraints, the United States will […]

British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy are the first leaders of Nato countries to make a trip to Libya since Colonel Gaddafi was overthrown.

The multilateral South American organization UNASUR announced Friday that its members planned to begin pulling troops from the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti, known by its acronym Minustah. “There’s consensus for a gradual withdrawal of troops, consistent with Haiti’s needs,” Brazilian Defense Minister Celso Amorim told the press after the body met in Montevideo, Uruguay. Amorim’s words carry weight. South America contributes the most peacekeepers to Minustah’s 12,000-strong mission, and Brazil leads its forces. But while the announcement may seem to mark the beginning of Minustah’s withdrawal, the mission is far from over. In fact, the Minustah mission is not […]

It wasn’t very long ago when American interest in the Middle East focused with piercing intensity on the minutest of developments in Iraq. Over time, however, the gradual drawdown of U.S. forces, the uprisings in the Middle East and public exhaustion with the draining American misadventure in Mesopotamia conspired to take Baghdad out of the headlines. That is about to change. The coming months will bring Iraq back to the foreground. A number of crucial events and opposing forces are now converging, and they will determine whether Iraq, the country Americans spent so much blood and treasure to turn into […]

This report by the U.S. government-funded Voice of America explores the hunt by Nigerian security services for those behind last month’s bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Abuja that killed 23 people.

The visit to Paris this week of Rwandan President Paul Kagame coincided with coverage in the French press of allegations accusing former French President Jacques Chirac of accepting suitcases full of cash as kickbacks from African heads of state. Combined, the two stories highlight the ways in which France under President Nicolas Sarkozy is turning a page in its relations with Africa, but also the ways in which the legacy of the past has proven hard to escape. In this, Sarkozy’s presidency, like that of U.S. President Barack Obama in its own way, is likely to be a transitional one, […]

Over the past two weeks, Israel has seen two critical strategic relationships with key regional allies nearly collapse. In Cairo, protesters stormed the Israeli Embassy, causing property damage but no injuries. This came on the heels of a border incident in Sinai, in which Israeli soldiers in pursuit of Palestinian militants accidentally killed several Egyptian soldiers. The Israeli government has taken steps to reduce tensions with Egypt, but the ability of the latter’s transitional military government to mend fences is unclear. As for the willingness of any new Egyptian government to spend political capital on maintaining a good relationship with […]

Former Guatemalan Army Gen. Otto Perez Molina has emerged as the victor in the first round of the country’s presidential election. He will now go into a November runoff election against business leader and populist Manuel Baldizon, who won 23 percent of the vote Sunday. But the fact that Perez carried 36 percent in the initial round may be a better indicator than any of how eager Guatemalan voters are to begin using the military to combat rampant drug crime in the country. “The No. 1 concern in public opinion going into this election is the security situation,” says Cynthia […]

Turkey’s prime minister has addressed a meeting of the Arab League’s foreign ministers in Cairo, saying recognition of a Palestinian state is an “obligation, and not an option.”

In France, around 25 media rights campaigners were arrested on Tuesday outside the Paris hotel of Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

A United Nations vote on statehood for Palestine will not determine whether and how a Palestinian state is established and recognized. That will be determined predominantly by the political realities dividing and linking Israel and Palestine. However, regional and global factors may influence the timing and shape of the forthcoming Palestinian state, the extent to which its prospects for peace and prosperity are enhanced and the basis on which its relations with surrounding states are put in place. Since one important area in which exogenous factors may be as important as internal factors in Palestine and Israel is refugee return, […]

Since I was at the Pentagon on Sept. 11 and saw Flight 77 hit the building, the 10th anniversary of the attack naturally causes me to reflect on how much progress we have made in preventing another such cataclysm during the past decade as well as on the challenges that remain for preventing one in the future. Two issues immediately come to mind: further strengthening the Department of Homeland Security and considering how the United States might reduce the high level of anti-Americanism that persists in much of the world. The mere creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) […]

In February 2002, U.S. Special Forces arrived in southern Philippines, hot on the trail of various Islamic organizations that had taken sanctuary in Mindanao — including some that had allegedly relocated there from Afghanistan after the 2001 U.S. invasion. The 2002 deployment marked the opening of the so-called Second Front in the Global War on Terror, which would go on to include Indonesia. A decade later, assessing the results of America’s post-Sept. 11 involvement in the region depends on which perspective one examines it through. The U.S. response, though multifaceted, has been largely characterized by its support for the Philippine […]