Global Archive

The coming end of the Afghanistan operation that has defined NATO for the past decade marks the end of an era for the alliance. Its mission in the next decade will look drastically different. Gone is the political and public appetite for costly overseas state-building missions. To maintain its relevance, the alliance will have to refocus its commitments, partnerships and missions to make them more dynamic and more responsive to the evolving security landscape. One way to do so involves widening the definition of Atlanticism to include the South Atlantic and the Arctic, areas traditionally ignored by NATO but critical […]

In early September, the U.S. executed a stunning volte-face in its declared policy on dealing with the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war. Backing away from enforcing a self-imposed presidential “red line” with an already announced military intervention, Washington instead embraced a Russian-developed diplomatic plan that turns Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from a military target into an essential partner in ridding Syria of its WMD stockpiles. The reversal may not have marked “the worst day for U.S. and wider Western diplomacy since records began,” as one retired British diplomat saw it, but the shift definitely raised questions […]

In diplomacy, it is easier to pull off a stunt than sustain a long-term strategy. Last week Saudi Arabia managed some multilateral acrobatics at the United Nations by winning a seat on the Security Council unopposed and then almost immediately renouncing it. Most states lobby for a council seat for years and cling desperately to the kudos that it offers. But the Saudi Foreign Ministry declared that the U.N.’s failures to resolve the Palestinian issue and intervene effectively in the Syrian civil war add up to “irrefutable evidence and proof of the inability of the Security Council to carry out […]

The first round of talks between Iran and the P5+1—China, France, Germany, Russia, the U.S. and the U.K.—in Geneva earlier this week ended on an upbeat note, with the concluding joint statement noting that the meeting had been conducted in a “positive atmosphere. A U.S. official was quoted as saying, “We really are beginning that type of negotiation where one could imagine that you could possibly have an agreement.” Having received the Iranian proposals, the negotiators are returning to consult with their respective governments and will reassemble in early November to assess the proposals submitted by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed […]

The Nobel Committee’s decision to award this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is welcome news. The organization is struggling with difficult missions in Syria and elsewhere, with a frozen budget and obsolete equipment, and the prize will provide a needed boost to the organization’s profile. Unfortunately, the peace prize will not make the many challenges the OPCW faces any easier. Even with the elimination of the Syrian, Libyan and eventually Russian and U.S. chemical weapons arsenals, the threat of chemical weapons use is likely to persist. The OPCW lacks the authority […]

Amid the diplomatic breakthrough at the Security Council and arrival of the United Nations chemical weapons inspection team in Damascus, many observers have lost sight of two key questions about Syria: How did the regime get its chemical weapons, and how might tragedies like the Aug. 21 chemical attack on Syrian civilians be prevented in the future? While Syria has had the technological means to manufacture chemical weapons for decades, it does not currently produce the precursors for the sarin nerve agent we now know was used outside of Damascus. Outside sources were necessary. Some have suggested Iran and North […]

If you had to make a reckoning of the United Nations’ failures in recent years, the Central African Republic (CAR) and Syria would both rank high on the list. The U.N.’s setbacks over Syria have been extensively chronicled. The trouble in CAR is less well-known, but equally depressing. In March this year, U.N. political officers in the persistently unstable country were caught off-guard as rebels advanced on its capital, Bangui. Their reports to New York were delayed and got no serious response—U.N. personnel were evacuated just in time, as the rebels triumphed and launched a reign of chaos that still […]

Last weekend’s dispatch of U.S. special operations units on missions into Tripoli, Libya, and Barawe, Somalia, to capture leading terrorist figures, building on earlier operations such as the 2011 mission that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, reflects an ongoing shift in the Obama administration’s willingness to risk U.S. casualties as well as deal with possible diplomatic incidents in order to go after high-value targets in the war on terror. It is a marked contrast to the unwillingness during the Clinton administration, prior to 9/11, to countenance possible losses or to insert American operatives on the ground in […]

Post-conflict states have to deal with many difficult issues. Drafting a constitution that maximizes the prospects of political stability is just one. Recently, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia have found this element of the transition process particularly problematic. Other countries, too, have had varying degrees of success. In 2012, Nepal’s constituent assembly collapsed before a constitution could be agreed on, whereas Fiji has just promulgated a new constitution. One of the issues that is always hotly debated is the best form of executive-legislative relations. Is political stability more likely under a presidential system, a parliamentary system or some mix of the […]

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and the Pentagon have conducted a series of ballistic missile defense (BMD) tests in recent weeks that confirm the growing capabilities of the Navy’s premier at-sea interceptor.* Even better, the tested system will soon deploy in Europe to bolster NATO’s front-line defenses against Iranian missile threats. The remaining challenges are to induce European allies to contribute more resources to NATO’s collective missile defense efforts and for the United States to make better use of its proven sea-based defenses by incorporating them into a homeland defense role. On Sept. 9, the MDA detected, tracked and intercepted […]

The past decade has seen an explosion of creative institutional design in new democracies. From Indonesia to Iraq, scholars and policymakers interested in the management of ethnic conflict have engaged in overt “political engineering” with the aim of promoting stable democracies in deeply divided societies. Among advocates, several contrasting approaches to political engineering for the management of social cleavages have been evident. One is the scholarly orthodoxy of consociationalism, which relies on elite cooperation between leaders of different communities, as in Switzerland. Under this model, specific democratic institutions—grand coalition cabinets, proportional representation elections, minority veto powers and communal autonomy—collectively maximize […]

The United Nations Security Council’s management of the Syrian conflict since 2011 has frequently been a source of disappointment and disgust. The council has now put in place a framework for the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons and unanimously called for humanitarian access to war-torn towns and cities. Yet these gestures cannot erase memories of its earlier deadlocks and prevarications over the crisis, and the council members still seem unable to compel the Syrian government and its foes to make a peace deal. Could the Syrian war nonetheless precipitate changes in the way the Security Council handles future atrocities? Last […]