War & Conflict Archive

In the summer of 2014, the Obama administration found itself between a rock and a hard place. The Islamic State had just swept through northern Iraq, decimating the American-trained Iraqi army left to keep the peace after the U.S. withdrawal. Islamic State foot soldiers executed Iraqi troops and commandeered their American weapons, growing stronger and better equipped as they passed through each town. The U.S. had few options to counter the Islamic State’s rise. Having just vacated Iraq in 2010, any thoughts of a massive military deployment returning to the Middle East to win back Sunni “hearts and minds” would […]

Last week, President Barack Obama announced his intention to slow the final stages of the drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Combined with new rules of engagement that allow U.S. forces to engage more easily with the Taliban, the move ensures that the longest war in American history will continue after his presidency comes to an end in 6 months. Obama’s announcement that the U.S. would leave 8,400 troops stationed in Afghanistan through the end of his presidency, rather than the previously planned 5,500, was hardly unexpected. The military has been pushing to extend the mission for several months now, […]

The tenor of NATO’s summit in Warsaw late last week focused overwhelmingly on deterring Russia’s military adventurism. While it was a positive turn for members of the alliance’s eastern flank, such as Poland and the Baltic states, longstanding NATO aspirants like Georgia are unlikely to see any genuine relief from their extended membership limbo. This is largely a consequence of NATO’s increasingly fraught internal politics, but Tbilisi itself cannot escape some blame. NATO’s shift from retrenchment and reassurance to deterrence in response to Russian aggression in Eastern Europe was evident in its plans, announced in Warsaw, to deploy four multinational […]

In late June, Israel and Turkey struck a long-awaited deal to normalize diplomatic ties, ending the six-year chill sparked by Israel’s raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla that killed eight Turks and an American citizen of Turkish origin. Under the deal, Israel will allocate $20 million for compensation of the victims’ families. As ties are restored, each country will return its ambassador, and the two sides could even enter talks on a natural gas pipeline. Turkey, for its part, will halt all criminal or civil claims against Israeli military personnel involved in the raid. Shortly after the deal was signed, a […]

The result of the United Kingdom’s referendum on its membership in the European Union was a shock, even to leaders of the “leave” campaign, exposing a lack of planning for the new British relationship with Europe. Amid the turbulence of Brexit, less attention has been paid to its geopolitical effects. But on the key issues of Russia, Syria, China and trade, Brexit will have direct and significant impacts. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s purported desire for Britain to leave the EU was a debating point during the referendum campaign. While Putin’s public statements on the outcome suggest mild approval, private sources […]

Can anyone save South Sudan? The country, which collapsed into civil war in 2013, is stumbling into a new cycle of violence. Clashes in the capital, Juba, have claimed hundreds of lives in recent days. The United Nations Security Council has called for calm, and the U.S., which played a leading role in ushering in South Sudan’s independence five years ago, has condemned the violence. Yet the outbreak of fighting poses an especially serious dilemma for another power with significant economic and political interests at stake: China. Beijing is playing an increasing military and diplomatic role across Africa, as I […]

NATO leaders meet for their summit in Warsaw today buffeted by crises and conflicts on all sides. Many of them could have been averted. From the global refugee crisis to conflicts across the world, much of the current instability stems from world leaders’ failure to adequately respond to human rights violations, especially if other political or economic interests are at stake. Instead, when a crisis breaks out, when the bodies start piling up, and when refugees flee by the thousands, leaders say they didn’t see it coming, and start yet another discussion about the necessity of new, more advanced early […]

When facing an adversary, the U.S. military always searches for what Carl von Clausewitz, the great 19th-century Prussian theorist of war, called the “center of gravity.” Clausewitz used the term to refer to the primary source of a combatant’s power and strength, which can take many forms, including control over a strategically valuable territory or key command-and-control center, like a capital city; or something more amorphous, like public support for the government or alliance cohesion. Today’s military strategists believe that the most effective way to defeat any enemy is to identify its center of gravity, and then destroy or control […]

World powers and Middle East regional players continue to strain without success to find a formula for winding down the war in Syria and contain its expanding terrorist spillover. But political leaders in one corner of the country are moving ahead with state-building plans of their own, undeterred by the skepticism and resistance of their critics. Syria’s Kurds are sharply focused and achieving measurable success on a two-track campaign. On one track, their military forces, working in conjunction with the U.S. and other local minorities, are pushing hard against the self-declared Islamic State, making territorial gains and now pressuring the […]

On June 12, an uneasy peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea that had lasted 16 years came to a dramatic end, as border clashes claimed 200 Ethiopian lives and an unknown number of Eritrean casualties. While both countries blamed each other for escalating hostilities, the causes of current tensions differ markedly from those underpinning past wars between them, with implications for efforts by international partners seeking to mediate between the two sides. Historically, conflicts between Ethiopia and Eritrea have been triggered by territorial disputes and national security concerns. The 30-year war that lasted from 1961 to 1991 was a struggle for […]

June 20 marked the one-year anniversary of the landmark peace deal struck in Algiers between the government of Mali and separatist Tuareg rebel fighters. In 2012, the fighters, joined by Islamist militias allied with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), led an uprising against the central government, claiming an independent northern state called Azawad. The Algerian-brokered deal was a bid to put an end to the cycle of rebellions that have tormented northern Mali since the 1960s. The agreement also sought to bring sustainable peace more generally to Mali, a former beacon of democracy. This, according to the agreement, known […]

There has been a resurgence of violence in the chronically unstable and impoverished Central African Republic (CAR), as regional and international efforts to push back against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) continue to fall short, and ongoing tensions between Muslim and Christian militia groups rage. CAR has experienced episodic violence for decades, but instability deepened in March 2013, when a predominantly Muslim rebel coalition known as the Seleka seized power, overthrowing former President Francois Bozize. That precipitated a bloody war between Seleka fighters and the mainly Christian “anti-balaka” militias, fought along religious and intercommunal lines. Since then, approximately 6,000 people […]

At the foundations of the major crises that have rocked Europe over the past three years can be found questions of geo-economics. Whether in the Russian intervention in Ukraine in 2014, the migration crisis that began in earnest in 2015, or last week’s decision of British voters to approve an exit from the European Union, governments and peoples are making choices as to what sources of human capital, raw material and manufacturing potential, as well as which larger economic groupings, they wish to be associated with. The neat division of the world into largely self-sufficient Westphalian states defined by clear […]

Among his many mangled yet astute observations, the legendary New York Yankees baseball catcher Yogi Berra once noted, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” This is a dilemma that the architects of American security policy often face. Prediction is hard. But the time it takes to develop new military concepts, organizations and technology, added to the potentially catastrophic consequences of being unprepared, makes it imperative nonetheless. Exploring ways to identify possible futures demands creativity, but that is often rare in large, bureaucratic organizations, particularly inherently conservative ones like the military. To get around this, the Department of […]