Defense & Security Archive

Editor’s Note: Guest columnist Richard Gowan is filling in for Candace Rondeaux this week. When former United Nations Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar turned 100 last month, his current successor, Antonio Guterres, sent a congratulatory message stating that “I have often reflected on your example and experience for inspiration and guidance.” This sounds like a standard diplomatic pleasantry, but there may have been a more to it than that. As U.N. chief from 1982 to 1991, Perez de Cuellar, a former Peruvian diplomat, was intimately involved in ending Cold War conflicts from Afghanistan to Central America. Guterres, since his appointment […]

Over the past year, Moldova has seen perhaps its most unexpected series of political developments since it first emerged as an independent state from the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. It has been a case study in how post-communist countries mired in kleptocratic corruption can break free from the grip of politically influential oligarchs and help reorient their countries on a path of transparent government and reform. First, over the summer, the most surprising governing coalition in the country’s history took root. After a months-long political stalemate following inconclusive parliamentary elections last February, the pro-Western ACUM […]

MEXICO CITY—Mexico’s left-leaning president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, took office in December 2018 vowing to demilitarize his country’s war on drugs and tackle its wave of violent crime with a policy of “hugs, not bullets.” Yet his first full year in office saw 35,588 homicides committed nationwide, breaking the previous record for the third year in a row. In one of the more high-profile atrocities, nine members of a prominent Mexican-American Mormon family were massacred in November, including six children. The spiraling violence, along with AMLO’s failed promises to address it, has rekindled a long-running debate in Mexico over how […]

For the first time in Syria’s nine-year war, the Turkish military this week launched direct attacks on the Syrian army. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday that he ordered howitzers and F-16 fighter jets to hit President Bashar al-Assad’s forces near the Turkish border in response to the killing of eight Turkish soldiers in Idlib province in northwestern Syria. “We are determined to continue our operations to ensure the safety of our country, our nation and our brothers in Idlib,” Erdogan warned. Turkey’s defense minister, Gen. Hulusi Akar, later claimed 76 Syrian soldiers were “neutralized” in attacks on more than […]