Defense & Security Archive

UN observers suspended their mission to Syria on Saturday, blaming intensifying violence as troops rained shells down on rebel bastions including Homs, where the opposition warned a massacre was imminent. World News Videos by NewsLook

The European Union decided earlier this month to reduce the size of the EU Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) by 25-30 percent, while extending its mandate. In an email interview, Vedran Dzihic, a fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, discussed the future of EULEX. WPR: What was the original size and scope of EULEX? Vedran Dzihic: According to the EU Council’s decision of Feb. 4, 2008, EULEX was originally designed to “monitor, mentor and advise” Kosovar institutions on all areas related to the wider rule of law. […]

China has taken an atypically strong stand in opposing efforts to force the Syrian government to end its brutal repression of anti-regime protesters. But China, unlike Russia, with which it has joined to block measures seeking to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from office, is motivated primarily by principles rather than concrete strategic and economic interests in Syria. And China, unlike Russia, seems more open to changing its position. For the past two decades, Chinese leaders have typically opposed foreign military interventions seeking regime change. The Chinese government has traditionally sought to keep United Nations resolutions precisely worded to tightly […]

Since April, when two Tuareg rebel groups drove government forces out of northern Mali, the situation in the sparsely populated region has steadily worsened. The lightning advance of the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad (MNLA), which seeks independence for the Tuareg homeland, and Ansar Dine, which has an Islamist agenda, triggered a coup of disgruntled junior officers against President Amadou Toumai Touré, with the resulting political instability in Bamako leaving the army incapacitated and the rebels the effective rulers of roughly half the country’s territory. Though the two groups worked together to launch the rebellion, Ansar Dine […]

Refugees fleeing sectarian violence in Myanmar trying to enter Bangladesh by boat are turned away. World News Videos by NewsLook

Yemens Defense Minister made a visit to Zinjibar a day after the Yemeni army retakes the city from al Qaeda-linked militants. World News Videos by NewsLook

Fighting between Muslim and Buddhist mobs broke out in Myanmar’s coastal state of Rakhine over the weekend, with the violence between minority Rohingya Muslims and majority Rakhine Buddhists set off by the rape and murder of an ethnic Rakhine woman and the revenge attacks that followed. The unrest, which included arson, rioting and the killing of about 25 people, reveals some of the deep-rooted ethnic and religious tensions in the country, which has only recently begun to open up after decades of isolation and military rule. Jason Abbott, Aung San Suu Kyi Endowed Chair at the University of Louisville’s Center […]

A few weeks ago, when I started this series of columns on the perils of the special operationalization of U.S. national security policy, I briefly argued that U.S. special operations forces are often not as good as they or their commanders believe them to be. I worried about a young Special Forces officer with six months of Arabic convincing himself he was “Sir Richard Burton in a green beret.” Some of my friends in the U.S. Army Special Forces demanded to know why I was picking on them, while others suggested my own service in the 75th Ranger Regiment explained […]

With U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on a tour of the South Caucasus last week, hopes that Washington’s top diplomat could use the visit as an opportunity to push for regional peacemaking and democracy support were quickly overcome by events on the ground, underscoring the region’s volatility. Though Clinton’s meetings in Georgia were mostly low key, the brittle cease-fire between arch-nemeses Azerbaijan and Armenia was sorely tested by a series of clashes, fueling fears that another Caucasus war was in the offing. Relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia have been rocky since the two former Soviet republics fought a war […]

U.S. and South Korean troops have conducted a joint military exercise simulating an attack from North Korea. World News Videos by NewsLook

Following the death of four French soldiers in Afghanistan on Saturday, French President François Hollande reaffirmed his decision to withdraw French combat forces from the country by the end of 2012, with the drawdown to begin in July. Hollande had already defended the move at last month’s NATO summit in Chicago, where it met with little public opposition from alliance members. Militarily, the withdrawal of French troops will have little impact on the war effort. The transition of security operations to Afghan security forces in France’s area of responsibility, Kapisa province, had already begun in March, and the roughly the […]

Friday brought a fresh barrage of shelling in the Syrian city of Homs. Also, U.N. monitors saw evidence of multiple killings in a small town where activists reported a massacre. They said they found flesh, blood and piles of ash, but no bodies.

The debate over whether or not to intervene militarily in Syria is hardly a new one. In fact, it is one that resurfaces every time a humanitarian crisis pushes the boundaries of our collective moral conscience. And because we have yet to decisively resolve the question of when to use American military force in such cases, the outcome of each recurring instance of this debate hinges on an ad hoc combination of factors, including the public’s mood, media coverage of the crisis and, at times, elements as haphazard as the vocal support of a celebrity spokesperson. In the case of […]

As international negotiators prepare for the next round of talks with Iran over its nuclear program, scheduled in Moscow for June 18-19, the United States faces a 21st century version of a “Stevenson moment.” In 1962, in a forceful presentation backed by compelling photographic evidence at the United Nations, Ambassador Adlai Stevenson made the case that the Soviet Union was installing nuclear weapons in Cuba. In addressing Soviet Ambassador Valentin Zorin in the chamber of the Security Council, Stevenson pointedly declared, “Let me say something to you, Mr. Ambassador. We do have the evidence. We have it, and it is […]

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which concluded its annual summit in Beijing, China, today, announced that it had granted observer status to Afghanistan as part of the group’s effort to play a larger role in the stabilization of the war-torn country after the U.S. military leaves in 2014. The organization, which is made up of six nations — China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan — was founded in 2001 to promote regional economic integration and security cooperation. But the two experts who spoke with Trend Lines said the organization has traditionally been better at ceremony than substance, and closer coordination […]

One of the obvious dangers of a possible war with Iran over its controversial nuclear program is that it could push oil prices sharply higher and, in turn, send the global economy into a tailspin. But a number of developments, some very deliberately set in motion by Iran’s adversaries, have recently converged to erode the effectiveness of Iran’s powerful oil weapon. The sharp edge of Iran’s oil power has been dulled through painstaking tactical moves by Washington and its allies, but the most significant change came not by design, but by misfortune. Ironically, the fear that a conflict with Iran […]

COMBAT OUTPOST SABARI, Afghanistan — “Incoming! Incoming! Incoming!” droned the cold, mechanical voice of the warning system as the combat outpost’s radar detected another Taliban rocket launch. Soldiers ran for cover in the shelters that dot this little American army camp near the Pakistani border. Then three deep booms shook the ground as the rounds hit the hill behind the outpost. The Taliban almost always miss, but they try and try again almost every day, only to disappear afterward among the dusty Afghan hills. With the United States and its NATO allies looking ahead to 2014 as the date when […]