Afghanistan Archive

What are the two most pressing issues on the U.S. foreign policy agenda? Ask that question of 10 foreign policy mavens and nine will say Afghanistan and Iran. The other one will say Iran and Afghanistan. If the Obama administration manages to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan and find a (lasting) solution to the vexing problem of Iran’s nuclear ambitions over the next four years, it’s hard to imagine his first term won’t be deemed a smashing foreign policy success. It is against this background that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s meeting today in Geneva with Russian Foreign Minister […]

ADVOCATES CHEER AL-BASHIR WARRANT — Human rights groups from around the world cheered the issue of an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir by the Intenational Criminal Court to face charges of crimes against humanity. “The ICC represents the best hope for justice for the victims of Darfur,” Dismas Nkunda of the International Refugee Rights Initiative said in a statement released by the Justice for Darfur coalition. “The international community must ensure that Sudan complies with its obligation to cooperate with the ICC, including by handing over anyone subject to an arrest warrant.” Bashir has long been a […]

Setting aside the thorny question of legal sovereignty, here’s a thought that’s been percolating in my head over the past couple days: Does the lack of any local opposition, whether armed or otherwise, to the Russian military presence in Abkhazia and South Ossetia lend any legitimacy to the de facto disaggregation of the two breakawy provinces? Granted, Russian forces had already been there for over a decade as peacekeepers, and the “invasion” was not accompanied by regime change. But at a time when both American counterinsurgency doctrine and American diplomacy is increasingly engaging on the local level in Iraq and […]

Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper (ret.) weighs in on a discussion of “hybrid war” over at Small Wars Journal with a good point. Maybe it’s time to get back to the basics and just start calling armed conflicts between enemies “war” again. That reminds me of something French Gen. Vincent Desportes said (.pdf) about “asymmetric war,” namely that all war is asymmetric, because victory depends on playing to your strengths while capitalizing on your enemy’s weaknesses. More important at this point is to get a consensus on a good working definition of peace. That’s what will ultimately determine when we […]