Briefing Archive

When Barack Obama takes the oath of office today, he will become the person most empowered to protect Americans, and the world, from attacks of mass destruction. Although he assumes the presidency at a time of grave danger, real progress in curtailing the threat from weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is possible under his leadership. The threats, both real and potential, are significant. This past weekend, for instance, North Korean leaders claimed to have used the plutonium generated by the country’s nuclear energy program to make several atomic bombs. They insist that they will not relinquish these nuclear weapons even […]

MADRID, Spain — Barack Obama begins his presidency with an unprecedented level of goodwill among Europeans, who are hoping he will reverse many of the unpopular policies that embittered transatlantic relations under his predecessor. As the contours of Obama’s foreign policy come into focus, however, much of the onus for smoothing the frayed relationship will lie with Europe, not the United States. Obama faces a daunting list of domestic and foreign policy challenges, at a time when the United States’ historic levels of debt — combined with the faltering American economy — will force him to call on Europeans to […]

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ended 2008 on a roll. The party, which had ruled Mexico for 71 years until losing power in 2000, overwhelmingly swept local and legislative elections in five of the six states holding them last year. On the federal level, its federal lawmakers achieved legislative success in a divided Congress by brokering deals on such matters as reforms to the criminal justice system, public security and the petroleum industry. Public opinion polls now list the PRI as the most popular of Mexico’s three major parties, and no longer — as in the recent […]

ISRAEL MIGHT FIGHT FIRST, VOTE LATER — Even with the faint prospect of a ceasefire in the offing, there is talk of postponing Israel’s Feb. 10 national elections. For one thing, none of the parties has been campaigning; the public has been distracted (though not unduly dismayed: a recent poll showed only 10 percent of Israelis are against the Gaza incursion, and 82 percent believe Israel has not “gone too far”); and then there is the rather pious argument that a postponement would prevent resolution of the conflict from becoming a political issue. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is flying […]

Second of a three-part series. Part I can be found here. Part II: Border Antics JAIGON, India — In the Indian town of Jaigon on the border with Bhutan, a day’s journey from the refugee camp in Nepal that he now calls home, 47-year-old refugee N.B. Giri waits silently in a small hotel room for his old friend, Gopal. Like Giri, Gopal is an ethnic Nepalese who claims Bhutanese citizenship. But after the expulsions of 1991 that caused Giri to leave, Gopal was one of an estimated 100,000 ethnic Nepalese who remained in Bhutan. N.B. Giri stands outside his hut […]

The war between Israel and Hamas has sparked much hand-wringing, disagreement, and controversy. One aspect of the conflict, however, now appears beyond dispute: After almost three weeks of fighting in the Gaza Strip, Hamas militias have proven astonishingly unimpressive on the battleground. For Hamas’ allies and backers in places like Tehran and Damascus, and among like-minded militants such as Hezbollah, it’s difficult to imagine anything but disappointment at the performance of the Palestinian Islamist force that had so thoroughly routed Fatah, its Palestinian rivals, only 18 months ago. There was never any reasonable expectation that Hamas would defeat the much […]

During the U.S. presidential election, the Republican National Committee made headlines with a campaign flyer it mailed out to voters in Missouri and Virginia. A photo on the front showed a plane with its nose pressed against the exterior of an airport terminal, presumably filled with travelers. The text, beside a picture of the Democratic nominee on the inside, read, “Barack Obama thinks terrorists just need a good talking to.” The flyer was meant to be provocative in its partisan assessment of an Obama presidency. Equally intriguing, however, was what it reflected about the way Americans still think of terrorism. […]

KUDAT, Malaysia — A recent escalation in violence on the troubled Philippine island of Mindanao has led Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia to tighten international security across their maritime borders, and threatened to undermine U.S.-led peace efforts. From Kudat on the northern tip of Malaysian Borneo, south to Sulawesi in Indonesia and eastwards to the strife-torn southern Philippines, authorities have clamped down in response to mounting casualties, after a truce between the Philippine government and separatist Muslim rebels collapsed last year. Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur were to deploy battalion-force strength to their border areas, while Manila rolled out a plan […]

In recent weeks there has been a notable — and positive — political event in Africa that does not involve the disaster zones of Somalia, Sudan, or Zimbabwe. On Jan. 7th, John Atta Mills, the candidate from the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) party, was inaugurated as Ghana’s president. He won a Dec. 28 runoff with 50.23 percent of the vote, beating Nana Akufo-Addo, representing the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), who won 49.77 percent. This election was clear evidence that Ghana’s democracy continues to mature. Despite the razor-thin win by the opposition candidate, there was no eruption of political […]

Bad policies — and a bad attitude — need improvement to avoid endangering America’s nuclear arsenal, a senior-level U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) task force has concluded. The report (.pdf) warned that any further slippage could compromise the ability of the United States to deter potential threats as well as assure the security of friends and allies. It also offered many recommendations on how to improve DOD nuclear management. The incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama should consider how to address these proposals in the context of its broader nuclear weapons policies. The report was the second issued by the […]

Israel’s attack on Hamas continued through the weekend, despite Egyptian and French efforts to broker a ceasefire. With Israeli ground forces now poised on the outskirts of Gaza City, and with an expansion of the operation into the urban battlefields that represent Hamas’ greatest tactical opportunity for exacting losses on the IDF still a possibility, it is difficult to speak decisively about the military outcome of the ongoing fighting. But according to several American experts on Arab politics, while Israel might very well succeed — at least temporarily — in depleting Hamas’ military wing, so long as Hamas is still […]

CAMBODIA MARKS ANNIVERSARY, BUT NO CLOSURE — Cambodia marked the 30th anniversary of the demise of the Khmer Rouge regime Jan. 7 with memorials for the suffering of millions. But the country remains haunted by the knowledge that perpetrators of Cambodia’s greatest crime have yet to stand trial for their crimes. Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime held sway over Cambodia from 1975-1979, a period in which millions of Cambodians died from torture, overwork, starvation and executions. In early 1979, a joint Vietnamese-Cambodian force toppled the regime, bringing in a new government largely beholden to its Vietnamese allies. Some Cambodians object […]

First of a three-part series. Part I: Camp CrucibleDAMAK, Nepal — When Matimya Moktan, 41, saw her husband Manbahadur standing unannounced in their doorway after a nine-year absence in prison, her heart sank. “I was sad to see him back here again,” said Matimya, one of more than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees living in United Nations-administered camps in eastern Nepal. “I had hoped I would see him again in Bhutan, but his standing back in our doorway meant we may never get back there,” she adds, seated in the corner of the family’s dark wattle-and-daub hut in the Beldangi I refugee […]

The outcome of recent parliamentary elections in Bangladesh has not only paved the way for the return of parliamentary democracy, but has also demonstrated that the highly religious but moderate Muslim nation of 144 million is unwilling to embrace divisive Islamist political parties. The elections, initially scheduled for 2007 and the first since 2001, followed the lifting of a state of emergency last month. Led by Sheikh Hasina of Awami League, the secular Grand Alliance — or Mohajat — swept the elections, decimating former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh National Party (BNP) and its ally Jamaat-e-Islam, and sending a clear […]

Since the moment Israel decided to launch a major military campaign against Hamas to stop rocket attacks from Gaza, the experience of the 2006 war against Hezbollah has served as a template of all that could go wrong. Like this conflict, the 2006 war came after a serious provocation by a radical Islamic group whose stated aim is the destruction of Israel. As in this war, the 2006 war presented Israel with the moral and tactical challenge of fighting a force that targets Israeli civilians, yet hides among its own population and cries foul when non-combatants are killed. The war […]

The current dispute between Russia and Ukraine over 2009 gas prices marks the fourth time since the Orange Revolution that Moscow and Kiev have tried to sign a contract. Each time, the process has been trumped by a hydra of hidden agendas and political intrigues, with far-reaching implications for consumers. Gazprom prices, scaled to its customers, are pegged to a basket of oil prices with a six-month lag. Embedded in the price for Ukraine, however, are transit fees for downstream exports to Europe. When concessions are made for the transit rate, calculated per 100 km of 1,000 cubic meters of […]

War has evolved rapidly in the last 100 years, prompting historians and strategists to come up with new terms for new ways of fighting. They call mechanized warfare, which originated in the early 20th century, the third “generation” of war, and ideological warfare waged by guerilla groups the fourth. But what about guerilla-style warfare waged by non-ideological groups against traditional states — pirates, for instance, whose attacks can destabilize trade-dependent nations, but who don’t have strategic goals beyond just getting rich? Free-for-all violence, with indirect global effects, represents a fifth generation of war, according to some experts. And when it […]