War & Conflict Archive

When Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni took a surprise mid-September trip to Khartoum to meet his Sudanese counterpart, Omar al-Bashir, it solidified the unexpected rapprochement in what had been one of Africa’s thorniest relationships. Two of the continent’s longest-serving leaders, Museveni and Bashir have spent much of the past two decades sniping at one another publicly as each secretly worked to destabilize the other’s government. What is bringing them together, curiously, is one of the issues most responsible for this enduring animosity: South Sudan. Uganda provided consistent support to the southern Sudanese rebellion, which ended with South Sudan’s official secession in […]

In the aftermath of last weekend’s horrific bombings in Ankara, the Turkish people and international observers are trying to understand what went wrong with Turkey, a country that until very recently embodied the hopes of a more peaceful and interconnected Middle East. The answer inevitably leads to one man: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The evidence in the twin suicide attack that killed almost 100 people, making it the deadliest in Turkey’s modern history, points to the self-declared Islamic State. And yet, many people, searching for the bigger picture in Turkey’s crisis, have turned angrily in Erdogan’s direction. Turkey’s president, until […]

President Barack Obama’s interview Sunday evening with Steve Kroft of the CBS News program “60 Minutes” offered a revealing insight into the foreign policy mindset of the Washington Beltway—not due to anything that Obama said, but rather due to the questions posed to him by Kroft. When asking about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military interventions in Ukraine and Syria, Kroft directly challenged Obama. “You said a year ago,” said Kroft, “that the United States . . . leads. We’re the indispensable nation. Mr. Putin seems to be challenging that leadership.” Obama tried, in vain, to point out that Putin’s moves […]

While Iran’s nuclear program has topped the headlines in recent years, its missile program has mostly remained off the radar, with the exception of discussions of a potential Iranian intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which could be used against the continental United States. Iran’s missile program, however, is relatively transparent, so it is remarkable that notable improvements in the range, accuracy and lethality of its arsenal have received far less attention than its nuclear ambitions, especially as these developments signal the missions Iran has in mind for its missiles. In particular, they suggest that unlike North Korea, Iran is in no […]

The sight of Syrian rebels blowing up Russian-made Syrian army tanks with advanced American missiles, captured in videos uploaded last week to YouTube, has brought a nominally covert CIA program into the spotlight. For all the attention on the Pentagon suspending its failed program to train and equip a Syrian rebel force to fight the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the CIA’s two-year-old program to supply a handful of vetted rebel groups with TOW missiles, with Saudi Arabia and Turkey’s help, has been a surprising success, blunting a recent joint offensive by the Syrian army and newly arrived Russian forces near Hama […]

In the traumatic months after the Sept. 11 attacks, American policymakers decided that the conflict with transnational extremism demanded an aggressive response. This made perfect sense: To go on the offensive as soon as possible is the American way. In the new conflict with al-Qaida and other extremists, the United Stated intended to fight them over there to avoid having to fight them here, as then-President George W. Bush put it. However appealing this might have been to the angry American public, there were challenges putting it into practice. To undertake a global offensive against extremists, the United States needed […]

In commenting on an article by Josh Marshall about Russia’s military intervention in Syria, I wrote that the best thing the United States has going for it in formulating a response is time. Russia simply does not have the hardware or logistical capacity to project force decisively over the long haul. That doesn’t mean that the intervention won’t have an initial impact. In fact, the introduction of Russian airpower and advisers, combined with Iranian and possibly Russian ground forces, has already shifted the momentum on the battlefield. This should not come as a surprise. After all, the initial American and […]

In the final countdown to the announcement of the winner of the world’s most prestigious award, the Nobel Peace Prize, the buzz is growing around two Latin American men. One is Argentine-born Pope Francis, whose unconventional style has made waves across the globe. The other is Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, whose efforts to forge a peace deal with Marxist rebels are already winning him accolades around the world, but remain controversial at home. On Sept. 23, while the world was enthralled by the papal visit to the U.S., Colombians who follow Santos on Twitter found an unexpected message from […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the impact of corruption and various countries’ efforts to combat it. Last month, the mayor of Colombia’s main port city, Buenaventura, was arrested on corruption charges. In an email interview, Elisabeth Ungar Bleier, the executive director of Transparencia Por Colombia, the Colombian chapter of Transparency International, discussed Colombia’s progress in the fight against corruption. WPR: How big an issue is corruption in Colombia, and in what areas is its impact most felt? Elisabeth Ungar Bleier: Corruption is a very big structural problem in Colombia. It permeates all levels […]

In the wake of the U.S. bombing of a hospital in Kunduz, there is a natural inclination to be critical of the entire U.S. military endeavor in Afghanistan. There is an even more natural inclination to want the United States to pull back from the fight there. But we should also interrogate such impulses: Is that policy best for the United States or even best for Afghanistan? Coming from me that might surprise some people. I have often harshly criticized the apparent reflex among some Washington pundits and policymakers to embrace the use of military force as a panacea to […]

The Taliban’s insurgency in Afghanistan scored one of its biggest battlefield upsets last week when the group seized control of the northern city of Kunduz, in a sudden offensive that began on Sept. 28. The attack, coming just a day prior to the one-year anniversary of the formation of the embattled Afghan national unity government, was the first time a massed force of Taliban fighters has been able to seize control of a city of this size since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban from power in Kabul 14 years ago. While Afghan national security forces have since […]

The United Nations was stuffed to the gills with world leaders last week, but the real action was elsewhere. While presidents and prime ministers addressed the U.N. General Assembly, three crises escalated dramatically. In Syria, Russian warplanes launched their first strikes on rebel positions. In Afghanistan, the Taliban temporarily seized the northern city of Kunduz, the first major urban center to fall under their control since 2001. In the Central African Republic (CAR), U.N. peacekeepers fought with militias in the capital, Bangui, in an outbreak of violence that forced 40,000 civilians to flee. Each of these crises has the potential […]

On Monday, as U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders spoke loftily about diplomacy and international cooperation at the United Nations General Assembly, a picture of chaos and destruction materialized thousands of miles away, in Afghanistan, a country whose future depends to a large degree on decisions taken by the people giving speeches this week in New York. As the U.N. gathering got underway, Taliban fighters rolled into Kunduz, one of Afghanistan’s largest cities, and, in a manner reminiscent of last year’s fall of Mosul, Iraq, to the self-declared Islamic State, they took control without much resistance. It was […]

This week saw big news for foreign military engagement in the Syrian civil war: On Sunday, France launched its first round of air strikes against Islamic State targets, after years of reticence toward any military involvement in Syria. And on Wednesday, Russian aircraft dropped bombs against Syrian opposition fighters—after asserting it would target the Islamic State. That same day, France announced the opening of an unprecedented inquiry into crimes against humanity under Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. France began an air-strike campaign against Islamic State targets in Iraq last year but refused to engage in Syria, arguing that strikes there could […]

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to use military force in pursuit of national interests in Ukraine and Syria has led some U.S. observers to warn that Russia is now the primary threat to U.S. national security. But Russia’s high-profile, decade-long military modernization program has so far shown mixed results, even as its involvement in Ukraine and Syria has created serious challenges, but no decisive outcome as yet. In the meantime, U.S.-Russia relations have been largely deadlocked as a result. All of the articles linked below are free for non-subscribers until Oct. 15. Russia’s Military Modernization In the past few years, […]