War & Conflict Archive

The past two weeks have brought major political and strategic changes to the Middle East, particularly in Israel, which saw a military confrontation with Hamas-ruled Gaza as well as a feverish pace of political activity in advance of upcoming parliamentary elections. Developments in Israel on both the military and political front have implications for the prospects of a much-discussed war with Iran. The question is whether the changes on the ground make a war with Iran more or less likely. The war with Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza pitted Israel against groups linked and partly armed by the […]

In 2006, after Israeli forces performed poorly in combat against Hezbollah’s hybrid asymmetric-conventional tactics, some observers wondered whether Israel had lost its deterrent power against its enemy in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s subsequent tacit apology to the Lebanese people for the destructiveness of the month-long conflict should have offered a clue that such a conclusion was erroneous. “Had we known that the kidnapping of the soldiers would have led to this, we would definitely not have done it,” he said in a television interview following the fighting. The initial proof of Israel’s renewed deterrent came two years later, […]

A series of major political developments on the Afghan front this month all point toward new cooperative efforts by Pakistan, Afghanistan and the U.S. to bring the Taliban leadership into the negotiation process. The renewed push for a negotiated settlement to the conflict comes against the backdrop of the looming withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2014. Though major questions remain as to whether the effort will bear fruit, it represents what many fear is the last chance to avert a bloody fight for control of Kabul once foreign troops have left the country. On Nov. 14, during the […]

After a successful appeal at a United Nations tribunal, Croatian national hero Gen. Ante Gotovina, who led a 1995 offensive to retake a region of Croatia from Serbian militant control, was acquitted of war crimes last week. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia reversed the convictions of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Gotovina and Mladen Markac, a more junior general. Gotovina’s conviction in 2011 had dealt a blow to the image of Croatians as victims, rather than perpetrators, of the atrocities committed during the breakup of Yugoslavia. The successful appeal now provides Serbs with another example […]

At a summit meeting earlier this month, leaders from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) extended the mandate of a small peacekeeping force in Guinea-Bissau that was put in place after a coup in the West African state in April. In an email interview, Lars Rudebeck, a professor emeritus of political science at Uppsala University in Sweden, discussed ECOWAS’ mission in Guinea-Bissau.* WPR: What is the composition of the ECOWAS force in Guinea-Bissau, and what are its goals? Lars Rudebeck: The force is made up of around 600 soldiers from Burkina Faso, Senegal and Togo, according to ECOWAS. […]

For a man who regularly receives disturbing reports from war zones, last week was a particularly bad one for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. As fighting escalated in Gaza and rebel forces launched new offensives in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo — where U.N. peacekeepers are on the front line — Ban also had to manage the fallout from an internal report (.pdf) on the U.N.’s performance during the final phase of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009. The report tells an appalling story. U.N. officials in Sri Lanka, the report shows, avoided confronting the government over the fierce […]

When assigning homework exercises for a survey course that I teach on American foreign policy, I tell my students that no matter how strong the arguments they use to defend their positions, if they neglect to examine how demographic trends will affect their proposals, they will get an F. What is true for my students is true for global policymakers: Demographic trends will shape our future in a much more profound sense than most of the developments we see on the front page of the New York Times. Four major demographic trends in particular will shape the global security landscape […]

Following days of rocket attacks into southern Israel, Israel launched a series of deadly airstrikes in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing Hamas military leader Ahmed Jabari amid a broader military campaign. Coming against the backdrop of warming relations between Hamas and other regional powers, the offensive is testing Israel’s relations with key U.S. allies such as Egypt, which promptly recalled its ambassador to Israel. Mouin Rabbani, an independent Middle East analyst based in Jordan, and Nathan Thrall, an analyst with the Middle East program of the International Crisis Group based in Israel, both told Trend Lines in email interviews […]

Over the past 20 months, the world has watched the conflict in Syria with concern, even horror, but without taking meaningful action to intervene in the continuing carnage. Now, however, as the Syrian civil war draws exchanges of fire across the borders with Israel, Turkey and other neighboring countries, the conflict is approaching a crucial line. This tipping point, once reached, is likely to spur a much more urgent and determined international effort to push the crisis toward a resolution that brings an end to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Western nations have condemned the bloodshed, provided humanitarian […]

In one of the largest single-day movements of refugees since the Syrian crisis began, 11,000 Syrians fled into neighboring countries Friday, with 9,000 of them entering Turkey, according to the United Nations. The number of registered refugees who have fled from Syria to Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq now totals 408,000, as reported by the New York Times, and many of them remain within the border areas, where links and tensions among Sunnis, Shiites and other groups are driving security concerns. Jeffrey White, a defense fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Trend Lines that the influx […]

The White House has reportedly ordered the Pentagon to reposition drones for possible retaliatory strikes in Libya — the latest evidence that drones are dislodging manned aircraft from the central role they have played in U.S. warfighting since World War II. After a decade of wars that have cost billions of dollars and claimed thousands of American lives, the American people overwhelmingly support this transition to an unmanned air force. After all, unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) deliver a lethal punch at low economic cost, with zero risk to American personnel. That explains why 83 percent of the country approves […]