Defense & Security Archive

Geo-economics dominated the agenda of two critical meetings this week: a trilateral economic summit in Baku between Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev and Iran’s Hassan Rouhani, followed by a bilateral summit in St. Petersburg between Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. While matters of war and peace were also on the agenda—the stalemated conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh and the ongoing fighting in Syria—both summits’ main focus was on ensuring connectivity to the global economy. Let’s start with Iran. In the year since Iran acceded to the terms of the nuclear agreement it signed with the group of world […]

When the next U.S. president takes office in 2017, he or she will move into the White House with a long national security to-do list. One of the most pressing items will be to assess America’s security partnerships, particularly the problematic ones, to decide which can be repaired, which must be tolerated as is, and which should be abandoned. Four partnerships will top the reassessment list: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey. Each has a longstanding relationship with the United States harkening back to the Cold War. All four became even more important after the Sept. 11 attacks on the […]

An armed standoff and the eruption of protests in July may be Armenia’s most serious political crisis since 2008, when thousands took to the streets against alleged voter fraud in the presidential election that year. Last month’s unrest, which marked the country’s fourth summer in a row of turmoil, has exposed the cross-cutting, often contradictory fissures within Armenian politics and society. But this time, it also potentially represents a turning point for Armenia’s frustrated population. With internal crises looming over both state legitimacy and settlement talks with Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia is as divided as ever […]

Throughout the month of July, a series of violent clashes in Kashmir between protesters and Indian security forces left more than 50 Kashmiris dead and more than 5,000 injured. In an email interview, Anit Mukherjee, an assistant professor in the South Asia Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), NTU, Singapore, discusses the Indian military’s domestic security role and civil-military relations. WPR: What role does the Indian military play in domestic security, including the Kashmir conflict and the Naxalite insurgency? Anit Mukherjee: The Indian military has historically played an important role in countering domestic insurgencies and separatist […]

Fierce urban fighting alongside Machiavellian political maneuvering is nothing new to the Syrian conflict. But the past few days have brought a new twist in the upheaval with lasting, if opaque, repercussions for Syria’s civil war and the many actors involved in it directly or by proxy. The key center of the new convoluted and deadly developments is Aleppo, Syria’s prewar commercial capital, now a rubble-strewn ruin at the heart of the five-year-old conflict. After several days of intensified battles and curious political moves, a new crop of winners and losers is emerging. But identifying who they are, or who […]

Zambia goes to the polls tomorrow, Aug. 11, in an increasingly tense climate marked by protests, violence and the government’s targeted attacks on the opposition. The crackdown launched by President Edgar Lungu is a worrying trend toward further democratic backsliding in the long-stable country. Lungu was elected in January 2015 following the death of his predecessor, Michael Sata. For many Zambians, Lungu’s admittedly short time in office has left much to be desired, particularly on the the economy. Lungu and his party, the Patriotic Front, are facing mounting criticism from the country’s main opposition movement, the United Party for National […]

On Monday, 50 Republicans signed a letter denouncing the party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump, as a “risk” to America’s “national security and well-being.” These aren’t any ordinary Republicans. They are some of the party’s leading national security and foreign policy voices, people like Michael Chertoff and Tom Ridge, who both served as secretary of homeland security under former President George W. Bush; Michael Hayden, who previously headed both the CIA and National Security Agency; Eric Edelman, who worked for former Vice President Dick Cheney; and Richard Fontaine, who was a foreign policy adviser to Sen. John McCain. They were merciless […]

Last week, the United States significantly expanded airstrikes in Libya against the self-proclaimed Islamic State, upping its military involvement in a country mired in civil war since a NATO-led intervention helped topple dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. Libya’s United Nations-backed government in Tripoli, known as the Government of National Accord, or GNA, requested the airstrikes. They have centered on the coastal city of Sirte, where Libyan forces aligned with the unity government have been engaged in fierce street battles with the Islamic State. The strikes have reportedly come from jets launched from a U.S. amphibious assault ship in the Mediterranean […]

During a June 30 campaign stop in New Hampshire, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump pointed to a plane flying overhead and quipped that it could be a Mexican aircraft “getting ready to attack.” It’s not a small thing for the potential future U.S. president to casually suggest that neighboring Mexico is planning to launch an assault, given the close historical, security and commercial ties between the two countries. A third of U.S. territory used to belong to Mexico. Americans travel to Mexico more than any other foreign destination, and over twice as much as they do to Canada. Bilateral trade […]

In what could be described as a self-inflicted wound, Thais voted Sunday to accept an undemocratic constitution in a nationwide referendum. According to the preliminary count collected by the Election Commission, based on 94 percent of the votes cast, 61.4 percent of Thais were in favor of the constitution, while 38.6 percent rejected it. A significant shift in the results isn’t expected with the final, official tally on Aug. 10. When it is enacted, whether in weeks or months, the constitution will be Thailand’s 20th in 84 years—the last was dissolved in May 2014 following the military coup that ousted […]

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has punctuated his campaign with foolish and frankly dangerous comments on foreign affairs. He has made recurrent gaffes about nuclear weapons and U.S. alliances. But just occasionally he says something almost sensible. Last month, a journalist asked Trump how he would persuade Turkey to focus on fighting the so-called Islamic State rather than armed Kurdish groups in the country’s southeastern region. “Meetings,” he replied. “If I ever have the opportunity to do it, meaning if we win, we will have meetings, we will have meetings very early on.” Foreign policy experts wrote this off as […]

T.X. Hammes, of the National Defense University in Washington, is one of America’s most visionary strategic thinkers. Anything he writes deserves a careful reading, but a recent essay of his for War on the Rocks is particularly noteworthy. In it Hammes argues that globalization, which has profoundly shaped world events for the past few decades and laid the foundation for America’s grand strategy, seems to be reversing. If so, he argues, “the increasing regionalization of economies and differences in rates of growth will create instability and challenge international security arrangements.” Hammes believes that just as technology fueled the rise of […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and host Peter Dörrie discuss Cuba’s economic downturn and the future of economic reforms, Lebanon’s policy toward Syrian refugees, and coup rumors and the state of civil-military relations in Pakistan. For the Report, Simone Schlindwein joins us to talk about politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo as President Joseph Kabila angles for a third term. Listen:Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant Articles on WPR: Venezuelan Contagion Hits Cuba’s Economy, Putting Reforms in Jeopardy Terror Attacks Test Lebanon’s Welcome for Syrian Refugees Corruption Scandal and Coup Rumors Put Pakistan’s Sharif […]

Last month, Albania’s parliament approved a judicial reform package meant to curb corruption and patronage that was prepared with the assistance of experts from the United States and the European Union. In an email interview, Agron Alibali, a special counsel for Frost and Fire Consulting in Tirana, discusses the judicial reforms. WPR: What are the problems facing Albania’s judiciary? Agron Alibali: Albania’s judicial system today is inefficient and corrupt. The belief is that cases, especially property disputes, are decided in favor of the highest bidder. A lot of judges have amassed wealth that cannot be justified by their salaries alone. […]

BELGRADE, Serbia—July’s NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland, brought the alliance’s leaders to a country where the perceived threat of Russian aggression is particularly acute. It was appropriate, then, that they agreed to beef up NATO’s presence in Central and Eastern Europe, something that Poland and some of its regional partners have been calling for since Russia’s incursion into Ukraine and annexation of Crimea in 2014. Four battalion-sized battlegroups—fully armed and equipped, with troops from leading NATO members, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and, most importantly, the United States—will deploy on a rotational basis to Poland and the three Baltic […]

On June 18, Mexico officially completed an eight-year transition toward a new justice system, replacing an outdated inquisitorial system, in which the court acts as investigator, with an adversarial one, in which the court is mainly an impartial referee between the prosecution and the defense. Under the old system, court cases were mostly conducted on paper, rather than in oral arguments, and convictions were often based on confessions and little else. Now, oral trials will be open to the public, and they will be based on testimony, cross-examinations and a greater reliance on evidence. Expectations for the new system vary […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the status of women’s rights and gender equality in various countries around the globe. The Colombian government and rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) agreed during peace negotiations last month to promote women’s access to property and to deny amnesty to perpetrators of sexual violence. In an email interview, Felipe Jaramillo Ruiz, a founding member of Colombian Network of International Relations and doctoral student at the Graduate Institute of Geneva, discusses women’s rights in Colombia. WPR: What is the current status of women’s rights and […]