Briefing Archive

The tiny desert town of Abeche, in eastern Chad, offers a curious sight: Sandwiched between the mud huts that most people call home and the compounds belonging to international aid workers is a humble Chinese restaurant catering to Chad’s growing population of Chinese engineers and managers. Significantly, no equivalent American-style restaurant is to be found. The same holds true across the resource-rich, institution-poor developing world, in countries as remote as East Timor and as dangerous as Somalia. While much of the military establishment in Washington continues to plan for a possible conventional war with China, Beijing is studiously avoiding a […]

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s bid for a second term has received an enormous boost after initial counting from last week’s legislative elections gave his Democratic Party a decisive edge over its rivals. His party was aided by its well-regarded handling of the economy in the face of the world economic crunch and collapsing oil prices, both of which have punished government coffers and will underpin the presidential campaign over the next three months. The country needs billions of dollars to create jobs, build infrastructure, overcome endemic graft and boost the pace of growth beyond the 3-4 percent forecast for […]

It’s no secret that the U.S.-Egyptian relationship is ailing. As his term went on, President George W. Bush seemed to go to Egypt principally to deliver stern lectures. After years of visiting Washington every spring, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stopped coming to Washington at all. Despite — or perhaps because of — $2 billion per year changing hands, the mutual resentment has become palpable. The hostility among the two leaders reflects a deeper divide between their governments and even among peoples. More than three decades after U.S. and Egyptian presidents together changed the landscape of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the U.S.-Egyptian […]

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) capped a week of tough negotiations yesterday over a response to North Korea’s April 5 launch of a multi-staged rocket. In a strongly worded statement, this month’s UNSC president, Mexican Ambassador Claude Heller, termed the launch a “contravention” of UNSC Resolution 1718, which forbids the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) from engaging in missile-related activities. The government of the DPRK claimed the launch was meant to place a communications satellite into orbit. However, no one outside North Korea has spotted the alleged satellite. Since the technologies used for space rockets and long-range ballistic […]

NEW DELHI, India — One of India’s biggest ever defense deals with Israel, worth $2 billion, hovered on the brink of collapse earlier this month after allegations of graft to the tune of $120 million surfaced. Indian Defense Minister A. K. Anthony was quick to deny the claims, while asserting that the government would take strict action against the Israeli company and the Indian middlemen involved should the charges be true. This was, however, the second blow to Indo-Israeli relations in a matter of days — the first being a controversial video produced by Israeli defense firm Rafael and shown […]

As if terrorists, drug cartels and rogue nuclear states weren’t enough to worry about, the United States is now under cyberattack. Spies from China, Russia and elsewhere have broken into the country’s electrical grid, gathering intelligence and perhaps even planning for an unprecedented blitz: buckling the country’s energy infrastructure. Worried, aghast and surprised? Of course. But in another sense, the report falls in line with the rapidly transforming nature of international threats: What yesterday seemed inconceivable is today commonplace. Some scoffed when former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld talked about the difference between “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns.” But from […]

Citing national security concerns and a need to crack down on drug trafficking, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez, with the support of leading lawmakers, dispatched federal agents and security forces to take over major seaports and airstrips in four Venezuelan states last week. Chávez opponents blasted the move as a bid to tighten political control amid plunging oil prices, which have softened the OPEC nation’s economy. Three of the ports are in states governed by opposition politicians, and Chávez has suggested that anyone who interferes could face prison. The true motives of the controversial Venezuelan leader may be as varied and […]

MADRID, Spain — FRIENDS AT LAST: Every Wednesday, a large crowd gathers at noon on the edge of the parade ground of the Royal Palace in Madrid to watch the ceremonial changing of the guard. Started a year or so ago, the ceremony involves all the traditional elements of military choreography — colorful uniforms, a band, cavalry, and even two horse-drawn field artillery pieces. Unlike at Buckingham Palace, where a similar drill has been carried out every day for centuries, the guard does not have the symbolic duty of protecting the Spanish monarch: Spain’s king and queen live some distance […]

A fight is brewing in the U.S. military between manpower and technology. With the economy cratering and defense budgets flattening, we can no longer afford both large armies meant to pacify hostile populations, and legions of high-end air and naval platforms that fulfill our technological dreams. Because of the powerful political backing those high-end platforms enjoy, this budget conflict might spark a broad backlash to our recent fascination with wars of occupation. Our fetish for counterinsurgency campaigns has now made us a land power. We reacted to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by expanding the ground services, even as […]

Anyone who hoped President Barack Obama would return to Washington with a suitcase full of gifts from his mostly European tour will find the souvenirs largely disappointing. While Obama managed to bring back some important achievements, most of them came in the form of warm feelings. Those are hard to gift-wrap. Following his maiden overseas voyage as U.S. president, Obama arrived home to find the same urgent crises he had left behind, compounded by new foreign policy challenges that had arisen during his absence. Making matters worse, the trip itself, while undeniable fruitful, produced few tangible results. When viewed through […]

Last November, in the restive tribal region on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, an American Predator drone circled several thousand feet above the village of Ali Khel. Firing one of its Hellfire missiles, the drone destroyed a compound that was reportedly occupied by two senior al-Qaida officials: Abu Zubair Al Masri, an explosives expert from Egypt, and Rashid Rauf, a Pakistani linked to a 2006 plot to bomb London Heathrow airport. Both Al Masri and Rauf died in the blast, according to intelligence officials quoted by press reports. The attack was just one of scores of air strikes conducted by robotic […]

Recurring efforts by Armenian-Americans to secure official U.S. condemnation of the Armenian genocide have often been portrayed by opponents as “counterproductive” to U.S.-Turkey, as well as Turkey-Armenia, relations. But the campaign to pass a non-binding congressional resolution has actually helped focus these relations by catalyzing Armenian-Turkish dialogue, advancing democratic debate inside Turkey and, perhaps most counterintuitively, helping navigate the U.S.-Turkish partnership through a troubled stretch. An Ancient Relationship Separated by religion and language, for almost a thousand years Armenians and Turks shared one homeland — a large area known alternately as Eastern Turkey and Western Armenia. It was never a […]

ISTANBUL, Turkey — President Barack Obama ended his recent European tour in Turkey with perhaps his most challenging mission: to repair and reinvigorate the frayed U.S.-Turkish strategic alliance. He left the country with what appears to be a solid new foundation on which to do so, but significant challenges remain ahead. The last eight years certainly have not been kind to the U.S.-Turkey relationship. The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 exposed a deep rift between the two countries. Ankara’s opposition to the war culminated in the Turkish Parliament voting down a motion that would have allowed American troops to […]

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Among heads of state who gathered in London last week for the G-20 summit, few are attempting to leverage the global financial crisis for personal survival as much as Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. With her presidency in turmoil and support as low as 29 percent, Fernandez de Kirchner recently made a last-minute proposal — rubber stamped by Argentina’s Congress — to move up this year’s legislative elections by four months. She claimed that the global financial crisis justified shortening the electoral process to give Argentines fewer distractions. But the move was widely viewed here […]

As part of hitting the “reset button,” the Obama administration has decided to focus its Russia policy for now on the urgent need to replace an expiring Russian-American nuclear arms control treaty. The approach represents a reversal of the Bush administration’s stated goal of collaborating with Moscow on a broad range of issues, and also contrasts with the posture the Obama White House has adopted toward China. Unresolved Russian-American differences concerning strategic offensive arms control could impede this focused effort. And past experience makes evident that unrelated issues might easily disrupt the strategic arms control dialogue. The two strategic arms […]

NEW DELHI, India — A series of brazen infiltration attempts by militant groups in Indian Kashmir have resulted in fierce gun battles with security forces, and threaten to exacerbate already tense relations between India and Pakistan. The skirmishes come amid fears of militant attacks on prominent political leaders as the campaign for India’s parliamentary elections gets under way. A five-day gun battle in north Kashmir’s Kupwara region left 17 militants as well as eight Indian Army commandos dead in the last week of March. The militants were part of an unusually large group of 25 Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) […]

Andrew Bast’s accompanying interview with Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the IMF and currently a professor atMIT and editor of the Baseline Scenario blog, can be found here. Low expectations preceded last Thursday’s G-20 summit in London, but by day’s end a curious consensus had emerged. Prior to the summit, a rift had emerged between the United States, which was pushing for more economic stimulus, and the Europeans, who urged stricter regulation reforms. French President Nicolas Sarkozy had even threatened to walk out were he not satisfied with the measures taken. (Asked about it upon landing in London, he […]