Briefing Archive

KINSHASA, Congo — The local residents had been waiting for hours, and there was no guarantee they’d get in to the poorly lit room where administrators from the Forces Armées de la République Democratique du Congo (FARDC) were busy filling out paperwork. The U.S. Army and the FARDC were trying to register the Congolese civilians for a free health clinic that would take place the following week. The clinic, administered by military medical personnel from both countries, would be one of the culminating events of a two-week, U.S.-led exercise meant to improve the FARDC’s medical capabilities — all part of […]

Critics of the New START treaty charge that, if ratified, it would constrain U.S. missile defense plans. Whether or not the treaty’s non-binding preamble supports their argument, the broader question regarding the future of missile defense is an important one. Missile defenses bolster deterrence and strengthen the security of U.S. allies, giving them a significant role to play in a fluid and dynamic contemporary security environment. But regardless of the New START treaty, the Obama administration will have to limit U.S. missile defense plans if it wishes to remain credibly committed to future arms reduction agreements with Russia, as well […]

When Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov meets with U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at the Pentagon tomorrow, they will have a lot to discuss. Although Serdyukov has been defense minister since 2007, this will be his first official visit to the Pentagon. That’s primarily because he has focused his attention back home, implementing the most comprehensive reform of the Russian military in almost a century. Indeed, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell noted last week that Gates and Serdyukov “are both taking on very bold, very ambitious reform initiatives within their respective militaries, and I think they want to talk about […]

When George Osborne, Britain’s new chancellor of the exchequer, recentlyannounced that the Ministry of Defense (MoD) must now pay for the modernization of the Trident submarine-based nuclear deterrent out of its own day-to-day budget, it marked a stark change from previous policy, by which the Treasury has traditionally footed the bill for nuclear weapons development. Though the plans are not new, the announcement caused a public row between Defense Secretary Liam Fox and Osborne. Fox has warned that with the MoD’s budget already in tatters, it will be impossible to maintain the MoD’s other capabilities if it has to meet […]

Agence France Presse reported last week that Russia signed a five-year military cooperation agreement with Israel. Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov announced the agreement, which includes joint defense education and medical training, on Sept. 6, after meeting with his Israeli counterpart, Ehud Barak, in Moscow. Fifty Russian crewmembers are already in Israel training to operate the 36 drones Moscow that ordered after its 2008 war with Georgia, and the Russians are now proposing a joint production line to manufacture Israeli-designed UAVs in Russia. The defense agreement comes just weeks after former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens wrote an op-ed in […]

If America could be magically granted its ideal Muslim strategic partner, what would we ask for? Would we want a country that fell in line with every U.S. foreign policy stance? Not if the regime was to have any credibility with the Islamic world. No, ideally, the government would be just Islamist enough to be seen as preserving the nation’s religious and cultural identity, even as it aggressively modernized its society and connected its economy to the larger world. It would have an activist foreign policy that emphasized diplomacy, multilateralism and regional stability, while also maintaining sufficient independence from America […]

In U.S. domestic politics, which demands that presidential administrations pursue policies with near-instantaneous results, the biblical adage, “One sows, another reaps,” is anathema. As a result, President Barack Obama is not only under growing pressure to demonstrate results to a skeptical American electorate months before the 2010 midterm elections, he also needs to chalk up a series of successes to buoy his 2012 re-election campaign. Fortunately, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pithily noted during her last visit to Georgia, the United States is able to walk and chew gum at the same time. This logic also applies to the […]

In early August, at the fourth trilateral summit between Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan held in Tehran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged the leaders of the other two countries to join in an alliance to counterbalance NATO’s growing presence in Central Asia. Though any such formal alliance is unlikely, the declaration reflects Tehran’s desire to play a larger role in Central Asia’s regional dynamics. If Iran has always been geographically part of the regional context of Central Asia and the Caucasus, Tehran’s geopolitical orientation has historically been focused southward, on the Persian Gulf. For more than a century, Iranian interests in […]

VAVUNIYA, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka’s tourism authorities would like the world to think of their country as an idyllic retreat, or as the writer Anton Chekhov described it during his 1890 visit, a “Paradise on Earth — an exotic fairy tale setting.” That’s why the ever-present military checkpoints and machine-gun-toting soldiers that dot the capital never make it into the television commercials urging Europeans to visit this beautiful Indian Ocean island. The advertisements also steer clear of the island’s northern region and this town, Vavuniya. It is the gateway to the area formerly controlled by the separatist Liberation Tigers […]

In his April 2009 Prague speech, President Barack Obama ambitiously pledged to “secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years.” The goal is driven by the need to ensure that terrorists never obtain a nuclear weapon or materials usable for a nuclear device, and its urgency cannot be overstated. Twenty countries are believed to possess bomb-grade nuclear material that is not secure. While fissile material security is usually associated with developing countries, developed countries such as the U.S. must also take additional steps to safeguard their own nuclear materials. What’s more, despite a myriad of national laws […]

I just got a chance to go through the just-leaked IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program now, but one thing I’d already noticed is that despite the write-ups of the findings being characteristically damning, no one really paid any attention. Either everyone has been too busy to take a close look, which is possible, since I certainly was. Or else there’s a “violation fatigue” that has set in, whereby the consensus understanding is shifting toward accepting that Iran simply won’t stop its enrichment efforts, whether in LEU or 20 percent enriched uranium. If that’s true, it will probably take something […]

Combat operations in Iraq have figured prominently in World Politics Review’s coverage since the publication’s founding in 2006. In that time, Iraq has seen an uptick in violence, followed by the implementation of a new counterinsurgency strategy and troop “surge,” a subsequent reduction in violence, and finally a national parliamentary election in 2010. As the United States declares the official end to combat operations in Iraq, and Iraqis continue to wrangle over forming a government, the strategic landscape is again evolving. This provides an opportunity to look back at four pivotal years in the life of Iraq through the lens […]

Earlier this summer, as U.S. Army helicopters began evacuating stranded people from Pakistan’s flood-ravaged northwest, one Pakistani newspaper chose to focus on a more sinister dimension of American military activity in the country. According to sources cited in an article in the Pakistani daily, the Nation, Washington is constructing a “huge base” in Islamabad to “control” South Asia. American soldiers and “personnel of Blackwater” will soon arrive, with a Guantanamo Bay-style detention camp to follow. The article noted that the base lies near Pakistani nuclear sites, offering “all kinds of opportunities” for Washington. While many Pakistanis reject such talk, many […]

The Iraqi insurgents moved fast. Piling into the back of a civilian pick-up truck, they weaved through the western Iraqi city of Ramadi until they were within a few miles of the local American base. The truck halted, and the insurgents spilled out. In just seconds, they set up a mortar and fired at least one shell toward the base. Seconds later they were speeding to safety, their vehicle hidden in the city’s traffic. The round arced over the earthen wall surrounding the U.S. base and struck Capt. Eric Allton, a 34-year-old from Idaho. Allton died instantly. Hundreds of Americans […]

Indian Defense Minister A.K. Anthony visited South Korea last week at the invitation of his South Korean counterpart to boost defense cooperation between the two states. His visit came just two months after the Indian external affairs minister visited Seoul and at a time of great turbulence in the strategic environment of the Asia-Pacific region. After having long ignored each other, India and South Korea are now beginning to recognize the importance of tighter ties. The resulting courtship was highlighted by South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak’s state visit to New Delhi in January, when he was the chief guest at […]

Strategic encirclement is a term that haunts Indian analysts quite a bit these days. So when noted Subcontinent watcher Selig S. Harrison reported in late August that 7,000-11,000 Chinese troops had poured into the northern part of Pakistani-administered Kashmir known as the Gilgit-Baltistan region, the feeling that India was being systematically “surrounded” by Beijing was loudly echoed in the Indian media. The revelations follow a recent controversy triggered by China’s refusal to issue a visa to an Indian general on the grounds that his area of responsibility falls in the disputed Kashmir region; Beijing will only issue “stapled visas” to […]

Over the weekend, the Washington Post published a report that noted strong divisions between British and American military advisers over how best to prosecute the coalition’s counterinsurgency campaign in the northern part of Afghanistan’s Helmand province. The dispute highlights continuing disagreements on Afghan War strategy even among the closest NATO allies. Helmand province is the heartland of the Taliban insurgency (.pdf) in southern Afghanistan. Bordering Pakistan, where the Taliban has its base of operations, it has a population of over 1.4 million extremely poor Pashtuns, most of whom live in small towns and villages along the Helmand River. The economy […]