Defense & Security Archive

The Trump administration created yet another stir in Washington last fall when it mysteriously froze $105 million in military aid to Lebanon for several months. While the hold was quietly lifted on Dec. 2 after pressure from members of Congress, it ignited a debate over how the United States should engage with Lebanon amid an ongoing revolutionary protest movement that has already forced one prime minister in Beirut to resign. There are also signs that Lebanon views the U.S. as an increasingly unreliable security partner, allowing Russia to gain influence in this small but strategically important country in the Middle […]

In this week’s editors’ discussion on Trend Lines, WPR’s Judah Grunstein and Freddy Deknatel talk about the latest developments in the standoff between the U.S. and Iran, following the U.S. assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani and Iran’s retaliatory ballistic missile strike against two military bases in Iraq where U.S. troops are stationed. Did the U.S. reestablish deterrence, as the Trump administration claims? Or will Iran take further covert action to avenge Soleimani’s death? And what impact will the U.S. political calendar have on how both sides manage tensions moving forward? Judah and Freddy discuss those topics and more […]

Though President Donald Trump appears to have backed away from further military conflict with Iran, the Middle East is still on edge. Amid fears of heightened conflict, what is really driving Iran’s behavior? This escalation did not begin with the killing of Soleimani, but in May 2018, when Trump unilaterally took the United States out of the international agreement curbing Iran’s nuclear program, known as the JCPOA, and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran’s economy.

The assassination of Iran’s top military commander, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, raises a lot of questions about what an all-out war between the United States and Iran might look like. The simple answer is that it will be bad, but how bad may depend as much on Russia as it does on the U.S. and Iran. If there is one player in the dangerous drama unfolding in the Middle East with the ability to flip the script, it’s Russian President Vladimir Putin. Five years ago, Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, dismissed Russia as a “regional power” capable at most of menacing […]

It was supposed to be a landmark year for the Balkans. In 2019, the European Union was due to give the green light to accession talks with Albania and what is now called North Macedonia. In Serbia, meanwhile, President Aleksandar Vucic saw a rare window for a lasting peace deal with Kosovo, 20 years after the war that led to Kosovo’s independence. Yet because of a de facto veto by French President Emmanuel Macron at an EU summit back in October, the Balkans now looks as far from a European embrace as it has for years. At that summit in […]

Investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia spent her career cataloguing what she believed to be endemic corruption among the political elite in Malta, the European Union’s smallest member state. When she was murdered in a car bomb in October 2017, it was, in the words of one of her three sons, “an assassination to match the scale of the crimes on which she was reporting.” Now, more than two years later, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat is set to resign amid growing concerns over his handling of Caruana Galizia’s murder investigation. Partly due to a long delay by Maltese authorities, evidence has […]

Nearly a week after the United States military assassinated Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian general who headed the elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in Baghdad, a huge rift has opened up in the U.S. relationship with Iraq. A high-ranking Iraqi militia commander, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was also killed in the U.S. strike, angering many Iraqis. And on Sunday, the Iraqi parliament passed a nonbinding resolution urging the government to expel U.S. troops from Iraq, although the Trump administration insists it plans to stay. For this week’s interview on Trend Lines, WPR’s Elliot Waldman is joined by […]

When President Donald Trump signed the latest National Defense Authorization Act last month, he brought into existence the United States Space Force, the sixth branch of the country’s military. The name likely appeals to Trump for the same reasons that it appalls others: It is attention-grabbing and frames the issue of space in terms of American military dominance. At least initially, the new Space Force represents only a modest organizational change, one that is essentially neutral in terms of personnel and budgetary impact. A skeptical Congress appropriated only $40 million of its $738 billion military budget for the new endeavor. […]

Reactions in the United States to the killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani have tended to fall into three broad categories. Those who support the strike argue that it eliminated a uniquely irreplaceable figure advancing Iran’s regional influence, while also reestablishing deterrence against Tehran. Those who oppose it fall into two groups. Some warn that by killing Soleimani, the U.S. took a step up the escalation ladder that will inevitably lead to open conflict with Iran. Others say that even short of causing all-out war, the strike was ill-advised because its strategic costs outweigh its benefits. The first argument […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. As tensions rise between the United States and Iran, China is urging both countries to exercise restraint while it carefully avoids words or actions that could be construed as taking sides. Beijing’s measured response to this escalating confrontation is a sign of its delicate diplomatic balancing act in a region where it has considerable economic interests. After Iran launched a missile strike early Wednesday against two military bases in Iraq hosting U.S. troops, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson called […]

The 25th anniversary of the landmark peace treaty between Jordan and Israel came and went without celebration among Jordanians last fall. They did cheer, however, when the Jordanian government refused to renew annexes to the treaty that allowed Israel to lease and farm fertile lands in the Jordan Valley. While Israelis were disappointed by the move, which followed through on a previous announcement, Jordanians welcomed the return of their country’s flag and sovereignty to the territories of Baqura and al-Ghamr. A cold peace, as King Abdullah II has often put it, is getting colder. Relations between Jordan and Israel have […]

Hailed as the model for resolving long-running separatist insurgencies in Southeast Asia, the 2005 agreement that ended a nearly 30-year civil war in Indonesia’s Aceh province, on the northwestern tip of Sumatra, is showing its cracks. Under the peace deal, Aceh was granted more political autonomy as the separatist rebels of the Free Aceh Movement, known in Indonesian as the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, or GAM, laid down their arms. Since then, the province has held several democratic elections, while its economy has grown at an annual clip of 5 percent over the past decade. But while the deal has provided […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. With Turkey’s parliament approving a bill this week to greenlight a military deployment in Libya, the chaos that followed the 2011 ouster of long-time Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi threatens to deepen further. Turkish legislators voted overwhelmingly to make good on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s promise to intervene in Libya on behalf of the internationally recognized government in Tripoli, known as the Government of National Accord, or GNA. Although Erdogan must still determine the exact size and scope of the Turkish military mission, […]

In this week’s editors’ discussion on Trend Lines, WPR’s Judah Grunstein and Freddy Deknatel talk about the U.S. assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the powerful head of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and its impact on Iran’s regional influence operations. They also discuss the potential for escalation in the U.S.-Iran conflict and the implications for U.S. ties with Iraq. 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. The newsletter […]

PRAGUE—With its foggily lit Gothic alleyways, Prague has long had the image of a hotbed of international espionage. A recent report by the Czech Republic’s national intelligence agency, the Security Information Service, or BIS, does little to dispel that narrative. It cautions that Russia and China are steadily increasing their efforts to sow division and win influence in this small country in the heart of Eastern Europe, which is a member of the European Union and NATO. Both Moscow and Beijing are widely suspected of seeking to provoke instability across the West, but in few countries are these tussles playing […]

The most serious problems facing the world have been making headlines for years or even decades now, from climate change to nuclear proliferation. They defy easy solutions, and like it or not, they’ll still be hanging around in 2020. Will this finally be the year that things start to turn around? Or will the world just keep kicking the apocalypse can down the road? And what about other issues that have been pushed to the forefront as a result of Donald Trump’s chaotic presidency, like trade wars that threaten the global economy? For this week’s interview on Trend Lines, WPR’s […]

Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis will return next week with her weekly Thursday column. Since the end of the Cold War, American relations with Africa have been characterized by a single, powerful trend: disengagement. Its direction has been so constant that it is tempting to think of it as a fixed given, but that would be a mistake. In reality, over the past three decades, this troubling trend has only accelerated. As the civilian bureaucracies that are supposed to lead American foreign policy have steadily disengaged from Africa, they have been eclipsed by the Pentagon. Of course, every few years Washington […]