DENPASAR, Indonesia — Washington’s decision to partially lift the ban on contact with Indonesia’s Kopassus special forces command has angered human rights organizations within the country and beyond. The decision, which had been rumored for some time, was announced by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates at a meeting last Thursday with Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Jakarta. The ban on Kopassus was part of a U.S. military embargo imposed more than a decade ago in response to repeated human rights abuses committed by Kopassus units and by Indonesia’s military, the TNI, in Papua, Aceh and East Timor. The […]

Obama So Far: Iran, Russia and China

There have been a couple of “confirmed” inflection points in the Obama administration’s approach to Iran, Russia and China in the past few weeks, and the contrast between the outcomes is revealing, both about the relative challenges of the three portfolios, but also about the relative development of the three countries. With regard to Iran, although there are not yet any concrete outcomes, the Obama administration’s strategy of open-ended engagement accompanied by staged sanctions has clearly isolated Tehran, to an extent that many critics of the Obama approach — myself included — did not anticipate. In the past week, Iran […]

At the 2008 summer Olympic Games in Beijing, the New York Times columnist Tom Friedman observed something intriguing about the powerful American team, which won the overall medal count for the games. After wandering through the athletes’ village, he noted, “The Russian team all looks Russian; the African teams all look African; the Chinese team all looks Chinese; and the American team looks like all of them.” The United States, Friedman said, is the clearest example of a nation whose “strength comes from diversity.” The most powerful nations in history have all followed a similar formula. In “Day of Empire,” […]

Global Insider: India-Sri Lanka Relations

India’s chief of naval staff called for increased bilateral cooperation with Sri Lanka during a visit to the country late last month. In an e-mail interview, Eurasia Group’s Asia analyst, Maria Kuusisto, discusses evolving relations between India and Sri Lanka. WPR: What is the historical context of India-Sri Lanka relations? Maria Kuusisto: India-Sri Lanka relations have been marked by both tension and cooperation. The relationship has been historically driven by the shared Tamil ethnic community: India has a Tamil community of 60 million and Sri Lanka has a Tamil community of three million. When the Tamil ethnic insurgency in Sri […]

There’s no question that globalization, in its modern American form of expanding free trade, just went through its worst crisis to date. But while economists debate whether or not we in the West are collectively heading toward a 1938-like “second dip,” it’s important to realize just how myopic our fears are about the future of a world economy that America went out of its way to create, defend, and grow these past seven decades. First, no matter how severe any second dip becomes, comparing our current plight to the Great Depression of the 1930s is an exercise in profound hyperbole, […]

With his recent selections of Gens. David Petraeus and James Mattis for command in Afghanistan and Central Command respectively, President Barack Obama signals his understanding that his previously established deadline of mid-2011 to begin drawing down combat troops in the “good war” cannot be met. The two were co-architects of the military’s renewed embrace of both counterinsurgency operations and the associated nation-building project that by necessity goes along with it. Neither flag officer can be expected to preside over a Vietnam-like exit that once again puts troubled and untrustworthy Pakistan in charge of Afghanistan’s fate. And so, despite the conventional […]

Indian National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon had plenty on his diplomatic plate during his three-day visit to China earlier this month. Apart from exploring new avenues of cooperation, the trip also focused on broadening existing bilateral ties and charting out a roadmap for future engagements. With the trip coming after a year of renewed strains between the two countries, including reports of incursions by Chinese troops into disputed border areas as well as a spate of trade quarrels, Menon’s task was by no means an easy one. Moreover, the trajectory of Sino-Indian relations has historically been unpredictable since the […]

BEIJING — In addition to now holding three of Iraq’s 11 major oil concessions, China has also been investing heavily in Afghanistan, and recently signed a high-profile nuclear deal with Pakistan. These significant strategic developments in all the major geographic theaters of the U.S. War on Terror further demonstrate the efficacy of Beijing’s economy-first diplomacy and reflect China’s growing influence in Central Asia as a whole. These gains have been facilitated by more than a decade of aggressive diplomacy throughout Central Asia, both through multilateral mechanisms such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), as well as through strengthening bilateral ties […]

Reports of the imminent death of U.S. hegemony in world affairs go at least as far back as the Nixon administration, and to date, they have all disappointed. While challengers have risen and fallen, none have managed to make themselves full-spectrum superpowers capable of both diplomatic leadership and global military reach, in combination with indisputable economic heft and soft-power appeal. Now, with the “rise of the rest” — concentrated in, but not limited to, the so-called BRIC package of Brazil, Russia, India and China — we are presented with the argument of a collective challenge to American world leadership. Let […]

The debate over whether or not we have entered a “post-American world” has, at least in U.S. circles, become predictably stale. In one corner are those sneeringly referred to by their opponents as the “declinists” — a more neutral label might be “post-primacists” — who trot out all sorts of facts and figures demonstrating the debilitating costs of America’s imperial overstretch, and argue that the torch of global leadership is passing to new aspirants hungry for the job. In the other corner are the perennial optimists, who have their own statistics to show that even if the U.S. is facing […]

In the 1960s, University of Michigan scholar AFK Organski predicted that a populous, industrious China would rise in the East to challenge America as the world’s paramount power, and that the U.S. and Soviet Union would ally against China despite the communist allegiance shared by the PRC and USSR. Fifty years later, we can be increasingly certain that Organski was impressively ahead of his time with this prediction. Of course, the Soviet Union no longer exists and China is an authoritarian capitalist rather than communist state. But Organski calculated how China would eventually dwarf Russia in demographic and economic might, […]

A growing population had long been considered a prime determinant of national strength — at least until the “population bomb” crowd commandeered the dialogue almost a half-century ago and declared such growth to be a threat to human existence. But since then, with globalization’s rapid expansion encompassing the bulk of the developing world — and specifically demographic behemoths India and China — we’ve seen industrialization and urbanization work their usual magic on female fertility. As a result, humanity is now projected to top out as a species sometime mid-century and likely decline thereafter. To the amazement of many from my […]

Global Insider: China-Pakistan Military Relations

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is on a week-long trip to China where he is strengthening military ties between the two countries. His trip follows that of Pakistani Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who was in Beijing a week ago with the mission of strengthening counterterrorism cooperation. In an e-mail interview, Harsh V. Pant, lecturer in the Department of Defense Studies at King’s College of London, explains the context for China-Pakistan military relations. WPR: Historically, what have been the driving priorities in China-Pakistan defense ties? Harsh V. Pant: Based on their convergent interests vis-à-vis India, China and Pakistan […]

On Sunday near Okinawa, the Japanese navy spotted two Chinese warships sailing south into the Pacific. The Chinese vessels were in international waters, but their proximity to Okinawa, which hosts a preponderance of U.S. and Japanese military forces, alarmed Tokyo. As a courtesy, navies traditionally announce their routine cruises in advance, particularly when one nation’s ships might pass close to another’s territory. Sunday’s infraction of that protocol was not the first for China. Just three months prior, two Japanese warships patrolling around Okinawa had discovered an unannounced flotilla of at least 10 Chinese vessels, including two submarines. During the encounter, […]

Global Insider: SCO Expansion

Last month, members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) met to discuss new rules for admission to the regional security group. In an e-mail interview, head of the Asia practice group at Eurasia Group and adjunct senior fellow for Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, Evan A. Feigenbaum, discusses the evolution of the SCO. WPR: What is the significance of the SCO’s newly articulated membership procedure, and what does it reflect about the organization’s approach to future expansion? Evan Feigenbaum: At their June 11 summit in Tashkent, the six SCO heads of state approved new rules for applications and […]

The goal of global partnership between the United States and China, the cornerstone of my strategic vision for the past half-decade, has taken a beating lately. The Great Recession has led too many Americans to doubt in our own economic system and political institutions, while encouraging undue appreciation of China’s. Similar trends can be seen on the Chinese side, with our system unduly discredited and theirs fantastically exalted. Is the world better-served by this growing Chinese hubris than it was by America’s recent bout of the same vice? Hardly. Zero-sum calculations have no place in this age of globalization’s rapid […]

Anti-Access and Power Projection

When it comes to military doctrine and strategic thinking, the high-profile debate getting all the attention these days is COIN vs. conventional. But if you want to get a head start on the next big brouhaha, start paying attention to the conversation currently picking up steam around the strategic implications of anti-access and area denial (A2AD) capabilities. Simply put, they refer to conventional and/or asymmetric tactics meant to prevent or deter a superior force from deploying into a theater of operations. The “usual suspects” are Iran in the Persian Gulf, with its swarming naval tactics, Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, with […]