Defense & Security Archive

In what appeared to have all the makings of a coup, Zimbabwe’s military took control of the capital, Harare, early Wednesday and was said to be holding 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe in custody. The move comes one week after Mugabe fired Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who had previously been seen as a potential successor, in what was widely viewed as an attempt to ease the path to power for his wife, Grace. To help put the takeover in context, WPR has collected eight articles tracing the recent evolution of power dynamics in Zimbabwe. The following eight articles are free to […]

I suspect I speak for many close observers of international affairs when I express my frustration with the sheer repetitiveness of trying to decipher signal from noise amid the chaos and uncertainty that surrounds U.S. President Donald Trump. Trump’s lengthy jaunt through Asia is the latest case in point. On the one hand, he managed to reassure many observers by staying “on-script” through much of the trip, although defining success as avoiding any public displays of pique—rather than securing any concrete deliverables—is a sign of how low the bar has now been set for Trump. On the other, he did […]

In late September, the Kurds of Iraq seemed to have moved one step closer to realizing their historic goal of gaining independence, when nearly 93 percent of voters backed a referendum to formally secede from Baghdad. Masoud Barzani, the former guerrilla leader who had served as president of the semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, or KRG, since 2005, went ahead with the poll despite fierce opposition from the governments of Iraq, Iran and Turkey, and mild opposition from the United States. When the results came in, Kurds took to the streets of Irbil, the regional capital, in celebration. It soon became […]

Three recent stories about U.S. intelligence offer insights into how the massive effort to collect and interpret data about threats to the United States has performed over the past few years, and how that effort must increasingly deal with challenges from technology, bad actors and even from political leaders. The first story is about the planned release of old U.S. intelligence documents, which are straightforward enough. The second is the publicly acknowledged damage done to American signals intelligence from hacking or leaking. The third, and perhaps most troubling, is President Donald Trump’s startling statement while overseas in Asia that he […]

On Nov. 15, the United Nations Security Council will meet to decide on the fate of the U.N. mission in Central African Republic, known by its acronym MINUSCA. In stark contrast to the debate over the U.N. mission in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, which the U.S. pushed to reduce last April after citing its ineffectiveness and cost, few in New York expect cuts to the Central African Republic (CAR) mission. To the contrary, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visited CAR at the end of October and called for increasing the mission’s authorized troop ceiling, currently just over 12,000, by […]

United Nations peacekeepers have a branding problem. The blue helmets, once much-admired symbols of international cooperation, are now routinely associated with venality and incompetence. Regular allegations of sexual abuse have tarnished their reputation, and U.N. forces have struggled to manage surges of violence in trouble spots such as South Sudan. The U.N. has not yet properly come to terms with well-attested claims that Nepali peacekeepers introduced cholera to Haiti, killing thousands. As a result, media reports about peacekeepers now start from the presumption that U.N. personnel are a problem rather than a solution to major crises. U.N. officials wearily note […]

Late last month, in an unexpected political maneuver after Iraqi Kurdish officials went ahead with their controversial referendum on independence, Iraq’s central government restored its dominance over most of the so-called disputed territories in the north of the country. Even though they fall outside the jurisdiction of the semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, these areas had effectively been controlled by the KRG for the past three years, amid the chaos created by the self-proclaimed Islamic State and the retreat of Iraqi forces. Iraqi forces swept through the key, oil-rich city of Kirkuk, as well as Sinjar and much of the Nineveh […]

When World War II ended in 1945, the United States hoped that wartime cooperation with the Soviet Union would continue. The dream of then-President Franklin Roosevelt was for an enduring partnership of the victorious great powers acting together to prevent future world wars. But this was not to be. Whether ideological differences between the Soviet Union and the United States doomed postwar cooperation from the start, or the idea was deliberately sabotaged by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, Washington and Moscow were soon locked in the Cold War. The United States—new to great power statecraft and global leadership—did not know initially […]

Now that the self-described Islamic State has all but lost its caliphate in Iraq and Syria, leaving the term “state” as a relic in its name, many people may be breathing a sigh of relief, anticipating a reduction in the gruesome violence that inundated social media and occupied global strategists in recent years. But those hopes could be dashed. There is a high probability that even more violence is ahead. The drums of war are pounding in the Middle East and beyond, and the chance that a new war will start in the near future is far from negligible. For […]

Since Nawaz Sharif’s ouster as prime minister in August, Pakistan has been abuzz with talk of strained civil-military relations. The situation materially worsened when Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, the army’s chief of staff, publicly lectured the government last month on expanding tax collection to improve the economy. A very public war of words between the government and military ensued, with the interior minister even suggesting on Facebook that Pakistan was on the cusp of another coup d’état, before walking back his comments. While ties between the elected civilian government and the armed forces have frayed recently, Sharif’s removal itself did […]

North Korea looms large on U.S. President Donald Trump’s agenda during his nearly two weeks in Asia. Compared to discussions on trade and economics, and Trump’s handling of his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and a now-likely one with Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats have the gravest consequence for regional and global security. With Trump, the North Korea crisis appears to be playing out on several, sometimes-contradictory levels. His national security officials hold out proposals for diplomatic contact, or military options short of full-scale war, while the president opts for brash messages to intimidate […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, senior editor, Frederick Deknatel, and associate editor, Omar H. Rahman, discuss the threat and evolution of transnational terrorism in the wake of the latest attack in New York City. As the self-proclaimed Islamic State loses more territory in Syria and Iraq, will it lash out elsewhere, and what about al-Qaida? How are nations responding to the prospect of Islamic State recruits returning from Syria and Iraq, and how permanent are new security measures designed to protect against lone-wolf terrorism and domestic radicalization? If you like what you hear on Trend […]

America's wars will change as the enemies of tomorrow, whether extremist networks or hostile nations, acquire the ability to strike more directly at the United States. The way Americans think about armed conflict must evolve to incorporate this profound change to the nature of security. After the devastating Thirty Years War of the 17th century, the great powers of Europe narrowed their notion of what was acceptable in war. While seldom applying their new standards during often-brutal colonial conquests, the European powers—at least in wars among themselves—deemed it acceptable to kill enemy combatants but not civilians, to destroy enemy war […]

In mid-October, U.S. President Donald Trump declared that he would not recertify the Iran nuclear agreement, disavowing it but kicking to Congress the decision of whether the United States should reimpose sanctions on Iran and essentially scrap the deal. In doing so, Trump singled out Iran’s continued development of ballistic missiles, and the deal’s near-total silence on Iran’s missile programs, as one of the agreement’s “flaws.” The wisdom of linking the nuclear deal to Iran’s ballistic missile program is debatable. But a series of recent tests and public unveilings indicate that Iran is indeed making significant progress toward meeting its […]

U.S. President Donald Trump will embark on his first presidential tour of Asia on Friday, where he will visit Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. The trip kicks off just 10 days after Chinese President Xi Jinping emerged triumphantly from the Communist Party of China’s 19th Party Congress, having solidified his rule over the party and articulated a strategic vision for China’s emergence as a global power. All eyes will be on the U.S. president to see whether he is able to reassure America’s anxious allies and partners, as well as the nonaligned countries of the region, of […]

Last week, Mozambique’s president, Filipe Nyusi, made several high-profile personnel changes in the state’s intelligence service and security sector. The reshuffle followed a strong endorsement of Nyusi’s leadership at the latest congress of the ruling Frelimo party, as well as a wave of violent attacks on police and politicians. In August, Nyusi met face-to-face with Afonso Dhlakama, leader of the Renamo opposition party, for the first time since 2015. Frelimo and Renamo fought against each other in a civil war that killed an estimated 1 million people from 1976 to 1992, and a flare-up in violence since 2013 has sparked […]