Defense & Security Archive

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki recently concluded his first trip in years to Irbil, capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq, without having made any tangible progress toward resolving the feud between the central Iraqi government and the Iraqi Kurds, who are developing their own energy industry and exporting oil to Turkey. Discussing the position of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) amid regional turmoil, the experts who spoke with Trend Lines emphasized the Kurds’ interest in normalizing relations with Iraq’s central government in Baghdad. “By seeking a future with Turkey instead of Iraq, some Kurdish leaders may think they do […]

The unexpected victory of centrist candidate Hasan Rowhani in Iran’s presidential election last week signals a significant shift in Iranian politics. Rowhani began his campaign as a moderate who was unlikely to cause trouble for Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or the conservative ruling elite. After the disqualification of former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the decision by reformist candidate Mohammad Reza Aref to drop out of the race, however, the reformists and supporters of Rafsanjani rallied around Rowhani. As a result, large segments of the electorate came to see him as an alternative to the conservative candidates favored […]

Will the Syrian government and its opponents ever sit down for negotiations in Geneva? It has been more than a month since U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced plans for a peace conference in the Swiss city. There were suggestions that the meeting could happen in May or June. But it has been pushed back repeatedly, while Russia and the U.S. appear to be edging closer to a full-scale proxy war in Syria. The promise of talks in Geneva may even have made the conflict worse. When Kerry met Lavrov in Moscow in […]

Since Mali’s current crisis began in 2012, West Africa’s terrorist movements have generated sustained and intense international concern. On June 3, the U.S. State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program announced its “first reward offers for terrorists in West Africa.” Bounties ranged from $3 million to $5 million for commanders in al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA), and $7 million for Abubakar Shekau, the formal leader of the Nigerian Muslim sect Boko Haram. Rewards for Justice, its website explains, exists to incentivize the release of information that helps prevent “international […]

The Obama administration yesterday announced that it would provide military assistance to Syrian rebels, after having concluded that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons against opposition fighters in the ongoing civil war. The move comes after months of criticism of the administration, from both left and right, for its apparent fecklessness with regard to the ongoing civil war in Syria. Washington ought to have been doing more to protect the Syrian populace from the repressions of the Baathist dictatorship, cry the liberal interventionists. The president’s “inaction” has strengthened America’s foes and disheartens its allies, argue […]

There was heavy fighting last week between the Malian army and separatists belonging to the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), a Tuareg separatist group fighting for autonomy in northern Mali from a stronghold in the city of Kidal. This week, a Malian government delegation reached an agreement with the Tuareg rebels. The cease-fire deal “in principle” would allow the elections scheduled for July 28 to take place in the disputed region. But the experts who spoke with Trend Lines do not expect that any lasting solutions to the demands of the Tuaregs, rebels who have refused to […]

The day after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and Washington, I wrote in my notebook, “The big question of the next few years will be whether an 18th-century Constitution is adequate for security in the 21st century. The nation will have a huge debate on this.” As it turned out, I was correct on the first assertion. When drafting the Constitution, America’s Founding Fathers could not have anticipated the intense connectivity of the modern world, where catastrophes of any kind have cascading effects both tangible and psychological. They could not anticipate the existence of small cells […]

Following World War II, the United States hoped that global security could be managed collaboratively by the victorious allies using a network of international organizations, particularly the newly created United Nations. But it quickly became clear that the Soviet Union would be an adversary, not a partner. Initially, U.S. policymakers disagreed on how to respond to the mounting Soviet threat. Great power strategy was new to Americans, something they had to learn on the fly. Neither placating nor threatening Moscow seemed to work. In 1946, Department of State official George Kennan, an astute student of statecraft and history, offered a […]

National security policy can resemble the fashion industry. A defense strategy that is in vogue in one era can fall out of fashion, only to come back into style, perhaps in slightly different form, at a later date. So it is with deterrence. This strategy was central during the Cold War, but 9/11 convinced many people that deterrence was no longer useful. In the years after, however, interest in deterrence revived as scholars and government officials sought ways to adapt it to meet contemporary threats. This deterrence revival is a mixed blessing. Just as it was during the Cold War, […]

Collective defense is a coordinated response to a common security problem by two or more countries. The core of collective defense is political: a commitment by different nations to come to each other’s aid if attacked. Existing collective security arrangements for the U.S. and its allies were designed for one kind of threat. Now they must deal with others, including new threats, if they are to remain relevant to national security. In particular, the U.S. and its allies agree that it would be useful to extend collective defense arrangements against potential cyberattacks, but implementation has proven difficult because of the […]

French President Francois Hollande’s three-day visit to Tokyo, where he met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, resulted in major agreements on nuclear cooperation and joint development of military hardware. The summit, which also covered a range of other topics, reflected the noticeable improvement in recent years of the two countries’ already solid bilateral ties. Despite often being rivals for foreign contracts, Japan and France remain closely bound through cooperation on advanced technologies. Indeed, the agreement to increase nuclear cooperation was not a total surprise considering that a French-Japanese consortium just won a lucrative $22 billion joint bid to develop […]

This weekend’s informal U.S.-China summit in California had several key objectives: personal trust building between U.S. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping; halting the negative momentum in bilateral relations; reducing tensions regarding disputed issues; and signaling to domestic and international audiences that the United States and China can work together. But the main objective—and outcome—of the meeting was mutual reassurance. The summit resulted in only general statements and did not achieve specific policy commitments. But it came at a very early date in China’s domestic political cycle, just three months after the completion of Beijing’s power transition. […]

U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent speech on America’s use of drones in the conflict with al-Qaida and its affiliates marked his administration’s first real attempt to explain a program that has generated much domestic criticism and international outcry. By contrast, few have taken notice of Brazil’s increasing use of surveillance drones, which it has been dispatching over its vast borderlands in an effort to control illegal immigration, contraband and smuggling. So far, Brazil’s drone initiative has not generated as much political controversy as Obama’s program. Nevertheless, President Dilma Rousseff’s administration must tread lightly lest it offend bordering nations that carefully […]

In a May 23 speech at the National Defense University, President Barack Obama announced a shift in U.S. national security strategy. Following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and Washington, he noted, the United States “went to war.” After 12 years, al-Qaida has been decimated. Those of its leaders still alive spend more effort hiding than plotting new attacks. The American homeland “is more secure,” the president said. And the United States had ended or is ending large-scale military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Terrorism still threatens, Obama argued, but the nature of the threat has changed […]

More than two years after a wave of protests swept through much of the Arab world, the countries of the Arab Spring are on sharply divergent paths. This WPR special report examines the internal political and security issues facing those countries, as well as attempts to manage them from the outside, with an extended focus on Syria. Politics of Reform The Five Models of Arab RevolutionBy Frida GhitisJune 21, 2012 Joining the Fray: Salafi Politics After the Arab SpringBy Will McCantsJanuary 22, 2013 Embassy Attacks in Egypt, Tunisia Could Marginalize ExtremistsBy Nader HabibiSeptember 17, 2012 Suddenly, Hard Times for the […]

At this weekend’s Shangri-La Dialogue, the annual International Institute of Strategic Studies Asia Security Summit in Singapore, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel delivered a well-crafted speech that reaffirmed the core tenets of the Obama administration’s Asia Pivot and showed how the Pentagon was still executing the strategy despite budgetary constraints and the departure from the administration of some of the strategy’s key architects. Yet the reactions to the speech from the senior Asian defense officials present made clear that the pivot continues to face serious obstacles. Hagel underscored the United States’ enduring security ties with the Asia-Pacific region in […]

Is the United Nations on the verge of a disastrous summer? The organization is always vulnerable to political shocks as it juggles its peacekeeping duties, humanitarian aid and crisis diplomacy. It now faces an especially perilous period as it tries to navigate the wreckage of peacemaking in Syria while launching a potentially flawed peace operation in Mali. U.N. troops are also preparing to mount risky offensives against militias in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). If the U.N. survives these challenges entirely unscathed, it will be more than just a masterpiece of multilateral crisis management. It will be a miracle. […]