Defense & Security Archive

Ahead of a potential meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, recent statements from Washington and Pyongyang have veered wildly in tone and substance, moving from conciliatory to combative and back again. Yet the latest head-spinning developments follow several months of seemingly steady progress toward a potential breakthrough on the Korean Peninsula. The following 10 WPR articles trace that remarkable shift and also describe the risks for both sides going forward. The following 10 articles are free for nonsubscribers until June 14. Making Nice Will the Spirit of Korean Reunification Linger After the Olympics? […]

Now that the tide in the Syrian civil war appears to have definitely turned in favor of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, one of the key factors that will shape Syria’s future is the precise nature and durability of the relationship between the two countries that saved Assad from collapse: Iran and Russia. Tehran and Moscow worked together to bolster Assad, but the character of their ad hoc alliance has always remained a bit of a mystery. They each, for their own purposes, wanted the regime in Damascus to survive. Beyond that, it has never been clear just how committed Russian […]

There’s little reason to believe that U.S. President Donald Trump will successfully achieve his foreign policy objectives. But as a thought experiment and for the sake of argument, what would America and the world look like if he did? Trump’s “America First” agenda is predicated on a number of notions, explicit and implicit, regarding how to promote strength at home and abroad. First, the U.S. should maintain balanced accounts, and where possible net surpluses, in its trade relationships. Second, America’s alliances and security partnerships should be as close to cost-neutral as possible. Third, the U.S. should not shrink from leveraging […]

Thieves mugged tourists in front of their swanky, beachfront hotels. Gang members traded gunfire with police, sending partygoers into a panic. A police officer was assaulted by multiple people right outside his home. This year’s celebrations for Carnival, which marks the beginning of Lent in the Christian calendar, brought global attention to mounting insecurity in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s iconic coastal city that boasts a population of around 6 million. Fogo Cruzado, or Cross Fire, an app created by Amnesty International Brazil to monitor crime in Rio, recorded 24 deaths by guns during the seven-day period, as well as a […]

SEOUL—Without knowing how many plot twists are left in U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempt to engage with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, it’s hard to know if the play will end up being a tragedy, a comedy or a satirical farce. The audacity of Trump’s belief that he can transform the Korean Peninsula into a denuclearized zone of peace in mere weeks is matched by his inability or unwillingness to master the historical issues and complex constraints that have so far kept the parties from achieving the breakthrough he seeks. One of the reasons the plot keeps changing is […]

Say you had just awoken from a long slumber and glanced at today’s headlines. You would conclude, no doubt, that Iran and North Korea are America’s greatest security threats. The attention those admittedly malign nations receive from the Trump administration surpasses all other adversaries or potential adversaries. In reality, though, Iran and North Korea are second-tier challenges, unlikely to strike directly at vital U.S. national interests. Russia is more worrisome, given its recent and continuing political meddling against the United States and President Donald Trump’s perplexing lack of concern with its attacks on American elections. Ultimately, though, Russia is devious […]

Two weeks after President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo outlined the parameters of the “new Iran strategy” that he believes would lead to a “better deal” with Iran. It is a laundry list of 12 demands Iran must meet if it is to avoid getting hit by what Pompeo called the “strongest sanctions in history.” But Iran won’t accept these sweeping demands. Would it actually return to the negotiating table? And how could this new strategy shape Iran’s domestic politics? The Trump administration’s move is a huge gamble […]

As global attention remains fixed on the desperate plight of Rohingya Muslims fleeing ethnic cleansing in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine, another violent military crackdown has flared almost unnoticed more than 400 miles to the northeast in the remote and mountainous state of Kachin, along the isolated land border with China. Since mid-January, battles between Myanmar’s armed forces, known as the Tatmadaw, and the ethnic rebels of the Kachin Independence Army, or KIA, have intensified in several areas of the resource-rich and historically conflict-wracked region, displacing thousands of civilians. The surge in violence, with military airstrikes and retaliatory insurgent attacks, […]

In his first major policy address since becoming secretary of state, Mike Pompeo on Monday outlined the Trump administration’s “Plan B” for dealing with Iran now that the U.S. has decided to no longer comply with the terms of the nuclear deal it negotiated with Tehran and five other world powers in 2015. At the heart of Pompeo’s approach is a list of 12 demands that Iran would have to meet in exchange for the U.S. concluding a formal Senate-ratified treaty guaranteeing Iran’s unfettered return to the global economy. As far as demands for international behavior go, Pompeo’s are reasonable: […]

A new attorney general took office in Guatemala last week amid sharp tensions over the role of a United Nations-backed anti-corruption commission that has helped bring high-profile charges against some of the country’s most powerful politicians. Maria Consuelo Porras, a former substitute judge for Guatemala’s Constitutional Court, will run the country’s Public Ministry and direct its criminal, human rights and anti-corruption investigations. The outgoing attorney general, Thelma Aldana, and her predecessor, Claudia Paz y Paz Bailey, showed impressive leadership and independence in investigating and prosecuting these sorts of cases. Now their enemies want those advances reversed. Across Central America, public […]

Egypt and Israel have a shared interest in the defeat of the self-proclaimed Islamic State’s Egyptian affiliate. But when that offshoot—which calls itself Wilayat Sinai, or Sinai Province—is snuffed out, what happens next in Egypt’s restive Sinai Peninsula is unclear, and the interests of these allies of convenience begin to diverge. Since 2011, jihadi militants in Egypt’s North Sinai governorate, who declared their allegiance to the Islamic State in November 2014, have threatened the security of both Egypt and Israel. Before joining the Islamic State, one of the jihadis’ goals was driving a wedge between the two neighboring states. Through […]

To judge by much of the expert commentary so far, last week’s parliamentary elections in Iraq were a setback for the United States. The winning coalition, led by the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, has been viewed as anti-American—but also not quite pro-Iranian, given Sadr’s reinvention as an Iraqi nationalist. The affable incumbent, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, came in third, behind an explicitly pro-Iranian coalition. It usually takes Iraq many months of bargaining to actually form a new government. In the 2014 elections, it took about four months; in 2010, it took nearly nine months. So it isn’t yet clear who will […]

Iraqis and outside observers alike are still making sense of the surprise results of last weekend’s elections, the country’s first since the violent rise and fall of the Islamic State. In the biggest shock, the populist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s political coalition—a nationalist, non-sectarian alliance between his political movement, secular activists and the Iraqi Communist Party, known as Sairoon—won the most seats in parliament. Trailing just a few seats behind were the pre-election favorite, the Nasr Alliance of incumbent Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, and the Fateh Alliance led by Hadi al-Ameri, whose list represents a majority of paramilitary groups associated […]

For many years, North Korea’s relationship with the outside world has endlessly cycled between belligerence and crisis, always backed by an endless chorus of hysterical hostility. Recently, though, things seemed to be heading in a very different direction. Since late March, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has held two cordial meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping. And during a landmark April summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Kim promised to work toward an official end to the Korean War and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The next big step for Kim was a planned June meeting with […]

Overturning seven decades of U.S. policy and international consensus, President Donald Trump’s decision to unilaterally recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital marked a turning point in the prospects of an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement based on the principle of two independent states. Trump once insisted that his decision should not translate into an official American position on any of the so-called final status issues for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Yet, contradicting his own statements, he also stressed that by “taking Jerusalem off the table,” Palestinians and Israelis would somehow get past Jerusalem and “don’t have to talk about it anymore,” even though the city’s […]

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Last week, in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, German Chancellor Angela Merkel solemnly declared that from now on Europe would have to take its destiny in its own hands. It’s hard to disagree with Merkel. But that was already true the first time she expressed the sentiment in May 2017, in the aftermath of Trump’s first visit to Europe as president. In the meantime, Europe has not done anything to fundamentally address the challenge of managing trans-Atlantic relations under Trump. As a result, […]

NAIROBI, Kenya—Epitace Nimbona spent 17 years in the Burundian army, climbing to the rank of captain. As an infantry soldier, he fought against rebels during the country’s civil war. He then advanced to a military university and underwent logistics training in the capital, Bujumbura, and in nearby Kenya. Later, he trained with American soldiers and deployed with two separate peacekeeping missions elsewhere in Africa. His career, however, ran aground following President Pierre Nkurunziza’s bid for a third term in 2015—a bid that many people inside and outside the country deemed to be unconstitutional. Protests against it, and Nkurunziza’s ensuing crackdown, […]