Defense & Security Archive

Thirty-six years after the 1979 revolution that overthrew the entrenched Somoza dynasty, Nicaraguans still fill Plaza La Fe in Managua to celebrate Liberation Day festivities every July 19. While to some it may look like an exercise in grand nostalgia, supporters of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and President Daniel Ortega view the revolution as an ongoing process. Yet some question how far the current administration has drifted from the guiding principles of the revolution and claim he is building a dynasty of his own. Ortega’s Return and the Consolidation of Power After being voted out of power following […]

Since early July, when The Wall Street Journal and the Sarawak Report, an investigative website, reported that companies linked to the embattled, indebted Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB had allegedly transferred up to $700 million into the personal accounts of Prime Minister Najib Razak, Malaysia’s normally placid politics have exploded. The allegations came amid an ongoing battle within the ruling coalition between Najib and supporters of longtime former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. On Monday, Mahathir declared in a statement that democracy in Malaysia was dead, “because an elected leader chooses to subvert the institutions of government and make them his […]

On Tuesday, Denis Sassou-Nguesso, president of the Republic of Congo, removed two ministers who had recently opposed constitutional amendments he proposed to facilitate his candidacy for a third presidential term in 2016. Sassou, as he is referred to in Congo, is among Africa’s longest-serving dictators and has held power almost continuously since his military appointment in 1979. After losing power in the country’s first multiparty elections in 1992, he emerged victorious in 1997—backed by Angolan troops—following a bloody civil war. He has retained power since. His push, then, to amend the constitution to extend his rule came as no surprise. […]

Soon after the initial shock of Saudi Arabia’s military campaign in Yemen against Houthi rebels and military units loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh had subsided, an important question arose. Would Riyadh, reorienting itself as an aggressive regional military force to be reckoned with—and no longer willing to ride on the coattails of the United States—put boots on the ground in Yemen? The new Saudi monarch, King Salman, and his son Mohammed bin Salman, the young defense minister and deputy crown prince, signaled their willingness to send troops into Yemen—just not their own. But they had trouble enlisting help […]

Last week at American University, Barack Obama gave one of the most important foreign policy speeches of his presidency. In it, he laid out his detailed argument for supporting the Iran nuclear deal. The president offered a veritable legal brief on why the deal makes the most sense for U.S. national security interests, why it’s better than any alternative, why its critics are wrong and why the agreement builds on a “tradition of strong, principled diplomacy” in U.S. foreign policy. But beyond that, Obama’s speech did something with even greater implications. It highlighted the widening dividing line between Democrats and […]

Almost 70 years to the day after the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and four and a half years after suspending its entire nuclear energy program, Japan restarted a nuclear reactor today, the first to operate under new safety requirements adopted in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster. While the news is noteworthy in and of itself, Japan’s historical approach to its civil nuclear program, as well as to nuclear weapons in particular, is especially instructive in light of the Iran nuclear deal. Many observers have suggested over the years that Iran could well aspire to the so-called Japan […]

Last month, Australia gifted the Philippines navy two landing craft to help with the navy’s modernization and improve its ability to respond to natural disasters. In an email interview, Eric Wertheim, a defense consultant and author of “Combat Fleets of the World,” discussed the Philippines navy and its modernization plan. WPR: What are the current size, capabilities and preparedness of the Philippines navy? Eric Wertheim: Today, the navy of the Philippines includes approximately 24,000 personnel, including some 8,300 marines. The naval reserve forces are estimated to number an additional 15,000 people. The navy and marine corps have a strong tradition, […]

Last month, after years of hedging on the issue, India agreed to include Japan as a permanent participant in its annual Malabar naval exercises with the United States, set this year for October. Japan has participated in the Malabar exercises before, but only as an invited observer. The decision to expand the Malabar exercises is a significant turning point not just for India’s role in the region, but also for the development of the trilateral relationship among the U.S., Japan and India. This long-underperforming trilateral partnership brings together the U.S. and the two largest and most influential democracies in the […]

The United Nations was famously founded to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” It has a distinctly mixed track record on this front. Today, the U.N.’s goal often seems to be best described as making the scourge of war a little bit less dreadful. The Security Council demonstrated this tendency last Friday, when it endorsed an American-backed resolution launching a new panel to investigate the use of chemical weapons in Syria’s civil war. The panel, which will involve the U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), is empowered to identify those responsible for dropping […]

On July 30, Societe Generale, one of France’s biggest banks, was declared an “assisting witness”—somewhere between a suspect and a witness—in a money-laundering case against Teodorin Obiang, the son of Teodoro Obiang, Equatorial Guinea’s president who has been in power since 1979. Days later, Maixent Accrombessi, a close aide to Gabon’s president, Ali Bongo Ondimba, was held for questioning in a corruption probe in Paris hours before he was set to return to Libreville. His detention was part of an ongoing investigation into the French military-uniform company Marck—which signed a $7.6 million contract with Gabon in 2005—on suspicions of corruption […]

One of the hottest reads among Washington national security experts this summer is not the latest White House policy document or a big report from an influential think tank, but a novel by two of the national security community’s own: Peter Singer and August Cole. Their book, “Ghost Fleet,” is a riveting thriller in the Tom Clancy tradition. Much of the attention it is getting is due to its explanation of cutting-edge military technology, but it is also captivating—and important—because its core scenario is one that every policymaker and policy expert fears: a major war between the United States and […]

If Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos is successful in reaching an elusive peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), maintaining peace in the rural outposts of Colombia where the guerillas operate as a de-facto shadow government will prove exceedingly difficult. James Bargent explores this “other Colombia” in his World Politics Review feature this week. In the latest Global Dispatches podcast, Bargent, speaking from Medellin, and host Mark Goldberg discuss the challenges of implementing a potential peace deal in the remote areas of Colombia where the FARC has long held control and the Colombian government has a minimal […]

It is not every day that a population gets to experience the failings of government quite so pungently. Beirut, the cosmopolitan capital of Lebanon, has been choking in garbage. A brief respite due to a partial temporary solution will soon come to an end, and authorities are warning of grave health consequences if rotting refuse and garbage fires start choking the city again. But Beirut’s garbage crisis looms as much more than a health, welfare or infrastructure matter. More than anything, it is an unmistakable, asphyxiating metaphor for the country’s precarious political situation. And it may become the most unlikely […]

Billboards in New York’s Times Square advertise it as “Egypt’s gift to the world.” An expansion of the Suez Canal, completed in just a year—at President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s request—is set to formally open Thursday, with a party estimated to cost $30 million and full of foreign dignitaries. Those ads in Times Square, which have also appeared in London and, curiously, in a special cover wrap of some editions of The Economist, claim that “Egypt boosts the world economy.” How? By allowing two-way shipping traffic that, the Suez Canal Authority says, will cut transit time by seven hours. But plenty […]

On Tuesday, a prominent human rights activist and critic of Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza was shot and seriously injured by gunmen on motorbikes in the capital, Bujumbura. The attack comes days after a powerful general and close ally of Nkurunziza was shot and killed Sunday. These are just the latest events in what has been a tense and often violent several months following Nkurunziza’s decision to seek a third term in April. Many in Burundi deemed that move unconstitutional, and breakaway members of the military attempted a failed coup in May. As many observers predicted, Nkurunziza’s decision to seek a […]

Colombia’s conflict has always looked different from the vantage point of the jungles, mountains and plains of the country’s most forgotten corners. This is “the other Colombia”: a country of extreme poverty, underdevelopment and state neglect, where Marxist guerrillas have fought the military to a stalemate in over half a century of conflict—and where the peace agreement those rebels are currently negotiating will face its toughest tests. “The country still has these ‘black holes,’ where the state has no monopoly on arms, where there is no institutional presence, no authorities, not even a military presence,” said Orlando de Jesus Avila […]

Editor’s note: This will be Richard Weitz’s final “Global Insights” column at World Politics Review. We’d like to take this opportunity to express our deep gratitude for all the support he has shown for WPR since its inception, and we look forward to working with him regularly in the future. One of the main goals of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s latest Middle East trip is to reassure U.S. partners there that the recent Iran nuclear deal will not jeopardize their security. The Obama administration is using several instruments to achieve this goal, including helping the Persian Gulf states […]