Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Sometime after 2009 the U.S. government, concerned about the number of suspicious flights that were landing in Honduras, expanded its intelligence-sharing with the government of the Central American country to include aerial interdiction efforts. On two occasions in July 2012, however, the Honduran air force shot down planes suspected of drug trafficking. In neither case did the suspect planes’ occupants threaten Honduran air force aircraft, but all aboard died in both incidents. As a result, in mid-August 2012, the U.S. Southern Command suspended its intelligence-sharing with the Hondurans on aerial interdiction until the following November, when strict procedures had been […]

The autonomous districts recently declared by many of Syria’s Kurds—who with some 2.2 million persons make up about 10 percent of Syria’s population—have potentially important implications for the deadlocked Syrian civil war that has been raging for almost three years. This struggle has increasingly drawn in the United States and Russia, as well as various regional parties, such as Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, among others. In addition, Syria itself has degenerated into a Hobbesian war of all against all as the various opposition factions—increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadists from abroad—have begun fighting among themselves as well as […]

What do you see when you look at the Central African Republic (CAR)? The crisis in the previously largely unknown former French colony is becoming a Rorschach test for international policymakers. Few would deny that the CAR has endured a hellish breakdown of basic order that has claimed at least 2,000 lives and forced a quarter of the country’s 4 million citizens from their homes. But is this simply a humanitarian disaster that needs to be stopped through rapid military action? Or is it a case of a failed state that demands a long-term effort to rebuild the government’s capacity […]