Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Andrew Exum of the Center for a New American Security appeared on Washington Journal Aug. 11 to talk about thestate of the Afghanistan war. Related from WPR: Abu Muqawama on Afghanistan: An Interview with Andrew ExumSpecial Report: Afghanistan

The American defense community has properly reacted with nonchalance to the appearance of two Russian nuclear-powered submarines off the U.S. East Coast. Neither the submarines nor the rest of the Russian Navy presently represent a major threat to the United States. In a formal statement, the U.S. Northern Command confirmed the subs’ unusual presence, but pointed out they remained outside U.S. territorial waters and engaged in legally permissible transit and other non-threatening activities. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell later explained that, “So long as they are operating in international waters, as, frankly, we do around the world, and are behaving in […]

U.S. plans to expand its military presence in Colombia have elicited predictable condemnations from anti-American elements in South America, but also concern from friends who see them as encroachment from our ongoing “war on drugs.” Similarly, in another part of the world, Africa Command boss Gen. “Kip” Ward’s repeated assurances that the United States isn’t interested in setting up bases on the continent remains a tough sell, given the new regional combatant command’s explicit mission to expand U.S. military cooperation there. Critics are quick to call every new American boot on the ground “imperial overstretch,” or “empire.” But as often […]

Recently, U.S. policy in Somalia hit a new low, with the shipment of 40 tons of arms to a government on the verge of overthrow, if not nervous collapse. Worse still, last Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with the president of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG), Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, and promised to expand U.S. support. This perpetuates a long history of unsuccessful meddling in the affairs of Somalia, from Black Hawk Down to air strikes against al-Qaida suspects to support for the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006. Somalia would be better off without our spasmodic interference. That’s […]

CANBERRA, Australia — Almost 1,000 asylum seekers have arrived in Australian waters so far this year, often risking their lives to make the trip in old and decrepit boats. Their sheer numbers — four times more than for all of 2008 — have left authorities worried, almost to the point of panic. The spike in arrivals follows the election of Kevin Rudd as Australian prime minister 18 months ago. Upon taking office, Rudd and his Australian Labor Party immediately canceled the immigration policy of his conservative predecessor, John Howard. Known as the Pacific Solution, Howard’s policy diverted asylum seekers arriving […]

If July represents the first results of the Afghanistan surge, the portrait is sobering. With 75 troops killed, it was the deadliest month for the coalition since the war began. The British, who have about 9,000 soldiers in the country, were hit particularly hard, with eight soldiers killed in less than 24 hours recently. The painful news sounded political echoes in London. The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee announced last week that “avoidable mistakes” have been part of a deficient strategy, leading to mission creep. It singled out the U.K.’s anti-poppy campaign, in particular, as a “poisoned chalice.” All […]

NEW DELHI — Two weeks after issuing a joint statement in Egypt that was welcomed around the world as a much-needed step towards narrowing their differences through dialogue, India and Pakistan have returned to their previously stated, belligerent positions. The two neighbours, whose history of conflict goes back over six decades, have backed off from the eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation witnessed after the Mumbai terror attacks last November. But fresh questions are being raised here about Pakistan’s resolve in acting against terror groups active against India. The U.S. has helped keep the peace between the two countries in the past. After the […]

Speaking in Accra, Ghana, last month, President Barack Obama declared, “The 21st century will be shaped by what happens not just in Rome or Moscow or Washington, but by what happens in Accra, as well.” His speech was designed to highlight America’s commitment to Africa and the opportunity for closer relations. On the heels of Obama’s trip to Ghana, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Africa this week. Her seven-nation tour — with stops in Kenya, South Africa, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Liberia, and Cape Verde — will take her to hot spots and powerful […]

Half a century ago, Latin America experienced golpes, or military coups, on a regular basis. In a pattern that varied little across the continent, citizens would simply wake up one morning to the sound of gunfire near the presidential palace. Before long, a military man would head a new regime. Always, he had acted “for the good of the country.” Through varying degrees of repression, he would quickly push aside the opposition, install his cronies in positions of influence and personal enrichment, shut down opposition media, and take control of all the country’s levers of power. Today that style of […]

KAMPALA, Uganda — The bus destined for Gulu in northern Uganda hums and vibrates, its black exhaust pouring into Kampala’s deserted downtown streets, as a woman draped in a green dress stands up in front and calls for a prayer. Years ago, when Joseph Kony and his band of abducted child soldiers were still looting, maiming and terrorizing the north, prayer for this journey was essential. Yet three years after Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) were routed from northern Uganda — chased into isolated stretches of jungle in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Central African […]

There was a time in the 1960s and 1970s when Somali clans across East Africa imagined a “pan-Somalia” encompassing former British, Italian and French colonies, in addition to portions of eastern Ethiopia and northern Kenya. The former British and Italian colonies — Somaliland in the north, and the southern U.N. Trust Territory of Somalia, respectively — had taken a tentative first step towards realizing this greater Somali state, when they merged in 1960 to form the Republic of Somalia. But the greater union was not to be. The former French colony declared independence, as Djibouti, and Ethiopia and Kenya each […]

Driven by food security concerns, governments around the world have begun purchasing land in developing nations for agricultural purposes. Foreign land acquisition — known by critics as “land grab” — responds to worries over global problems that include growing water scarcity, teeming populations, increasing demand for food and bio-fuels, and climate change impacting arable land and its productivity. This trend necessitates an international framework or code of conduct that can protect small local farmers as well as the economy and the ecology of the host country from potentially negative impacts. Such a code would seek to resolve the question of […]

While headlines focus increasingly on President Barack Obama’s responses to the nuclear programs of North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan, the new administration has been quietly investing a substantial amount of diplomatic time and capital in a somewhat obscure meeting that nevertheless could have significant implications for Obama’s nonproliferation agenda. The meeting, which will take place at the United Nations nearly a year from now, is the latest in a regularly scheduled series of gatherings of signatory states to review the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. To a significant degree, the Obama administration’s posture to date on a variety of nonproliferation issues has […]

U.S.-Russian Nuclear Arms Control under Obama and Medvedev Since assuming office in late January 2009, President Barack Obama and his senior foreign policy advisers have resurrected the traditional approach toward Russian-American strategic arms control negotiations pursued by U.S. administrations during the 1990s. After an initial internal review and successful talks between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva on March 6, the Obama administration decided to attempt to negotiate a new strategic arms control agreement before the existing START accord expires on Dec. 5, 2009. At their July 6-7 summit in Moscow, Obama and […]

An Alternative to Arms Control Every Washington wonk dreams that a new president will pick up his or her agenda. When it comes to advocates for nuclear arms control, that dream seems to be coming true. On the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal in January 2007, George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn voiced a clarion call for the “road to zero,” urging other former high-level officials from countries around the world to join them in pushing for the global abolition of nuclear weapons. The following year, only months before the presidential election, George Perkovich and […]

To get a sense of what “complex operations” are, one need look no further than the kind of wars the U.S. fights when it intervenes overseas today. Unlike the total wars of the past, in which the U.S. military battled the national army of an enemy state, today’s struggles for security, stabilization, peace-building, reconstruction, and development in the most fragile states around the world are engaged by several different departments of the U.S. government. That’s it in a nutshell. But clearly, describing it is far easier than doing it. When you listen to how the best minds that are thinking […]

The Spanish government has accused the Basque terrorist group ETA of responsibility for back-to-back bombings last week that killed two people and injured more than 50 others. The bloody attacks came as ETA — short for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, or Basque Fatherland and Freedom — marked the 50th anniversary of its founding. Analysts say ETA, which has been considerably weakened in recent years by aggressive counterterrorist police sweeps in Spain and France, hopes the bombings will not only boost sinking morale among its followers, but also force the Spanish government back to the negotiating table. The latest attack, which killed […]