Defense & Security Archive

In all likelihood, Gina Haspel will be confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It is also likely that she will perform her duties competently and will be respected by the CIA’s workforce and the larger national security community. Nonetheless, her nomination and her record on torture, which was addressed during her confirmation hearing last week, will linger in the minds of those who worry about the direction of U.S. national security under the Trump administration. Haspel’s long career in intelligence, along with her experience and reputation as a team player […]

The United States has found a new way to hurt the United Nations Security Council: Ignore it. Last week, I predicted that U.S. President Donald Trump was about to pull out of the Iranian nuclear bargain, setting the stage for a showdown in the council. This was half right. Trump quit the deal Tuesday. But his national security adviser, John Bolton, signaled that the U.S. does not plan to return to the U.N. to reimpose multilateral sanctions on Tehran. Instead, Washington will rely on unilateral secondary sanctions, which can cut non-American companies out of the U.S. market if they continue […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal. For the Report, Hilal Mir talks with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about the insurgency in the India-administered Kashmir Valley, where violence is surging again and al-Qaida and the Islamic State are believed to be making gains. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis delivered straight to your inbox. […]

In another move meant to break with his predecessor, President Donald Trump last month announced new export policies for U.S. drones. In presenting Trump’s policy shift, Peter Navarro, assistant to the president for trade and manufacturing policy, said it “will level the playing field by enabling U.S. firms to increase their direct sales to authorized allies and partners.” The media reaction was hyperbolic, with one outlet asking whether the policy now meant Trump could “sell deadly drones to dictators,” and another stating in its headline that “Trump offers deadly U.S. drones to more countries.” But does the move simply harken […]

On Tuesday, from the Diplomatic Room of the White House, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the Iran nuclear deal, which waived multinational sanctions on Iran in exchange for strict controls on Tehran’s nuclear program. Listing a litany of destabilizing actions by the Iranian regime, including sponsorship of terrorism, support to armed proxies, the development of ballistic missiles and “plundering the wealth of its own people,” Trump declared that no action is “more dangerous” than Iran’s “pursuit of nuclear weapons—and the means of delivering them.” The […]

For the first time in almost a decade, Lebanese voters went to the polls last weekend and delivered a subtle but important message with regional ramifications. The results will do nothing to ease tensions, instead sharpening enmity between Saudi Arabia and Iran while marginally increasing fears of an impending confrontation between Israel and Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah. From a regional perspective, the outcome of the Lebanese election is clear: Iran has grown more powerful inside Lebanon, adding to Tehran’s influence across the Middle East. The election strengthened the hand of Hezbollah, the militant Shiite organization and political party […]

In politics, as in marital disputes, being right is overrated. That lesson was learned the hard way by defenders of the Iran nuclear deal, which President Donald Trump formally pulled the United States out of yesterday. No one, even among the deal’s most ardent supporters, disputes the claim that the agreement is flawed and imperfect from an American perspective. After all, it required compromises and concessions that were necessary to reach a negotiated, rather than an imposed, final agreement. Whether or not those concessions were too generous is a valid subject of debate. It is possible, though unprovable, that Iran […]

ANANTNAG, Jammu and Kashmir, India—The Facebook status updates of people living in the Kashmir Valley are a lot like those posted anywhere else in the world. There are birthday wishes and engagement announcements, and photos of weddings and newborn children, all followed by seemingly endless strings of comments from well-wishers. The content can also skew toward the political, but the stakes are much higher than they tend to be for typical political debates on a Facebook feed. This is because of the decades-old military campaign waged by those seeking independence from Indian rule. Listen to Hilal Mir discuss this article […]

Despite a steady stream of denials from Kigali and Kampala, ties between Rwanda and Uganda appear to be deteriorating rapidly. The latest ebb in this historically volatile relationship stems from the Ugandan government’s pushback on what it perceives as Rwandan meddling in its domestic affairs. Though Ugandan officials have not gone public with any formal allegations, their dissatisfaction can be read in a recent string of increasingly high-profile incidents. Last year, the Ugandan government mounted a crackdown on suspected Rwandan spies operating in Uganda, including the arrest of a handful of Ugandan police officers accused of being part of a […]

Can the United Nations Security Council survive the coming crisis over Iran as a semi-functional diplomatic body? The council is already in rough shape. Debates over the Syrian war have deteriorated into a political farce. Trapped in a cycle of worsening distrust, the permanent members of the council are picking fights over what should be routine issues. Recent negotiations over the small U.N. missions in Haiti and Western Sahara became unexpectedly heated, as China and Russia accused the U.S. and its allies of trying to “railroad” resolutions through the council. There is always a lot of bickering in New York. […]

This week, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari was the first leader from sub-Saharan Africa to visit the White House, 15 months after President Donald Trump took office. Trump, by contrast, hosted leaders from every other major region of the world within the first few months of his presidency. The only other African leader he has welcomed to the White House is Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, more than a year ago. In his Rose Garden press conference with Buhari, Trump pointedly did not deny calling African nations “shithole countries” earlier this year, in widely reported comments made during a meeting in the […]

Last month, United States Africa Command organized the annual Flintlock military exercises in Niger, convening nearly 2,000 special forces troops from 20 countries, eight of them African. The exercises date back to 2005 and are intended to bolster African militaries’ ability to “counter violent extremist organizations, protect their borders and provide security for their people.” By serving as this year’s host, Niger reinforced its image as a crucial U.S. counterterrorism partner—an image the country has been cultivating for years as it has responded to security threats emanating from neighboring Mali, Nigeria and Libya. Niger’s military partnerships with the West have […]

The nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers has been polarizing since the day it was signed in 2015, both in Iran and the United States. Even so, Tehran has complied with the deal’s terms while continuing to support it, even as President Donald Trump, a loud critic, has pledged to withdraw the U.S. from the agreement. Ahead of a May 12 deadline for Trump to decide whether to stay in the deal, we’ve compiled 10 articles assessing its impact on Iran and the broader implications of Trump’s mission to terminate it. The following 10 articles are free for […]

What do the Iran nuclear deal, U.S. trade policy and North Korea summits all have in common? The answer is a persistent feature of U.S. foreign policy under President Donald Trump: uncertainty. Trump’s election in November 2016 brought more questions than answers about the future of American foreign policy. Would Trump follow through on his most provocative and incendiary campaign promises and threats, or use them as leverage to win concessions? Would he radically and durably reconfigure America’s global role, or find himself hemmed in by the inertial constraints of the international order? What is so striking, and what the […]

Last Friday’s historic meeting between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the first inter-Korean summit in over a decade and only the third since the nation was divided after World War II, was arguably long on symbolism and short on substance. But the symbolism was extraordinary. Kim came to the meeting across the heavily fortified boundary dividing the Korean Peninsula, the first North Korean leader to set foot in the South. He and Moon shook hands at the concrete curb that marked the boundary, and—in an apparently unscripted moment—Kim took Moon’s hand and the […]

WARSAW—On April 19, the Polish capital paused to remember the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, when Jews took up arms against the Nazi Germans. The 75th anniversary of the start of the uprising was observed in ceremonies led by Jewish leaders as well as officials from the highest levels of government. At one event held at the city’s Monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes, addressing a crowd that included Holocaust survivors, President Andrzej Duda hailed those who rose up to resist the Nazi occupiers. “We bow our heads low to their heroism, their bravery, their determination and courage,” he said. […]

In recent days, the war in Yemen has worsened, with Saudi-led coalition airstrikes that killed the political leader of the Houthi rebel movement, Saleh al-Sammad, on April 19, and over 50 Houthi militants, including two senior commanders, on April 27. How Yemen’s Houthis respond to the attacks will determine the course of the war in the coming months. But any hopes for movement toward a political solution appear to be dashed, despite quiet efforts by Oman to bring the parties together, and public admonitions by U.S. officials to their Saudi counterparts to focus on bringing this tragic war to an […]