Briefing Archive

What a difference a year makes. On March 14, provisional results announced by Niger’s electoral commissioner gave veteran opposition leader Mahamadou Issoufou the edge in a presidential poll widely hailed as free and fair and accepted gracefully by his defeated opponent, former Prime Minister Seini Oumarou. The election fulfilled the hopes and anticipations for a strong democratic showing from Niger, which had flirted with chaos after a military coup ousted President Mamadou Tandja in February 2010. Tandja’s desire to remain in office beyond his term was opposed by the armed forces, which had helped him assume power in the first […]

Editor’s note: This is the third of a five-part series examining security and development aid in East Africa. Part I provided an overview of the challenges facing East Africa. Part II examined the overlap between public health and security challenges. Part III examines the overlap between small arms trafficking and WMD nonproliferation. Part IV will examine the overlap between counterterrorism and efforts to contain criminal violence. Part V will provide success stories for the security-development model and discuss next steps. Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan famously called small arms and light weapons (SALW) “the weapons of choice for the killers […]

On Jan. 27, Raymond Davis killed two armed Pakistanis in a crowded part of Lahore, firing his Glock pistol nine times through the windshield of his car at the two motorcycle-borne men and landing every shot. He then exited his car to photograph and film the men, who he alleged were trying to rob him. According to autopsy findings, one was still alive when Davis photographed them. A third Pakistani was killed when he was hit by a vehicle responding to Davis’ subsequent call for backup. Both Davis and the backup car fled the scene. The police successfully intercepted Davis […]

Editor’s note: This is the second of a five-part series examining security and development aid and capacity-building in East Africa. Part I provided an overview of the challenges facing East Africa. Part II examines the overlap between public health and security challenges. Part III will examine the overlap between small arms trafficking and WMD nonproliferation. Part IV will examine the overlap between counterterrorism and efforts to contain criminal violence. Part V will provide success stories for the security-development model and discuss next steps. As the burden of disease declines in much of the world, urbanization and changing lifestyles in Africa, […]

Editor’s note: This is the first of a five-part series examining security and development aid and capacity-building in East Africa. Part I provides an overview of the challenges facing East Africa. Part II will examine the overlap between public health and security challenges. Part III will examine the overlap between small arms trafficking and WMD nonproliferation. Part IV will examine the overlap between counterterrorism and efforts to contain criminal violence. Part V will provide success stories for the security-development model and discuss next steps. According to the World Bank, more than half of the people in sub-Saharan Africa live in […]

India has vehemently opposed the imposition of a no-fly zone in strife-torn Libya. Though New Delhi supported U.N. Security Council Resolution 1970, authorizing ecomonic sanctions against Col. Moammar Gadhafi and referring Libya to the International Criminal Court, India has made it clear that it stands against any kind of military intervention in the troubled state. However, New Delhi’s aversion to intervention is far from consistent: When it comes to South Asia, in particular, intervention in the internal matters of other states has long been part and parcel of India’s foreign policy. In 1971, India fought a war with Pakistan and […]

The story reads like a spy novel. The setting is Kyrgyzstan. The U.S. government pays billions of dollars to a mysterious American businessman known to the public only as the owner of a burger-and-beer joint. His mission: grease the right wheels in order to purchase and transport large volumes of fuel for the U.S. military. Accusations that the Kyrgyz government took kickbacks from these shady deals lead to the toppling of its leader. The Russians, as top fuel suppliers in the region, get involved, followed by the Chinese. Relations among governments grow strained. Meanwhile, dogged journalists find that the mysterious […]

Who is ready to talk to Moammar Gadhafi? Last week, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela announced that his Libyan counterpart and longtime ally would accept an international “Committee of Peace” to end the rebellion that threatens to destroy him. Rebel leaders in Benghazi dismissed the proposal out of hand. Yet there is a good chance that outside mediators — if not necessarily Chávez — will eventually play a part in ending the Libyan civil war. A negotiated end could in fact come quite soon if the rebels regain their early momentum and push on to Tripoli. Although Gadhafi says he […]

With Indian newspapers still carrying obituaries of the country’s strategic doyen, K. Subhramanyam, who passed away in February after almost a half-century at the forefront of New Delhi’s strategic debates, it is worth considering the object of Subhramanyam’s concern during his final days: the implications for India of a proposed U.S.-China grand strategy agreement hammered out by a group of policy experts in Washington and Beijing. The document proposed a series of strategic compromises between China and the U.S., including a massive Chinese investment in the U.S. economy in return for an informal nonaggression pact, particularly with regard to the […]

Last month, the Philippines deported 14 Taiwanese citizens suspected of fraud to China, a move largely seen in the international community as legally justified but diplomatically tone-deaf. The Philippines justified the decision by claiming that the 14 were Chinese, not Taiwanese, in a de facto denial of Taiwan’s separate sovereignty from the mainland. Manila’s snub of Taipei, its longtime friend and partner, speaks to an Asian region increasingly willing to accede to Beijing on issues touching on Taiwan’s sovereignty. Legal issues aside, the row has exposed how much the self-ruled island’s already minimal global leverage has dwindled beside that of […]

History demonstrates that revolutions often result in new or renewed forms of despotism. One reason for caution regarding the future of the Arab Uprising is that few Middle Eastern countries have political pasts not dominated by monarchy, theocracy or the military. So previous rebellions ultimately enhanced rather than mitigated socio-political intolerance. After all, Iran’s activist mullahs and al-Qaida’s founders were the products of rebellions against monarchist totalitarianism, too. It remains to be seen whether Egypt will become more democratic or return to military rule, or if the turbulence of the post-Mubarak period will open the door for the Muslim Brotherhood […]

Unlike the successful uprisings in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt, characterized by largely unarmed protests and government crackdowns with tear gas and bullets, Libya is now in the midst of a full-bore violent civil war. Refusing to stand down, Col. Moammar Gadhafi has vowed “to fight until the last man and last woman to defend Libya from east to west, north to south.” While rebel forces have taken control of many town and cities, forces loyal to Gadhafi firmly control Tripoli, the country’s capital, and have started to contest the rebels’ control of strategic town and cities over the past week. […]

BEIJING — An emerging consensus holds that domestic price bubbles and the high degree of nonperforming loans littered throughout China’s financial system represent imminent threats to China’s continued economic rise. However, doomsday evocations of a Chinese crash ignore the fact that, if and when a day of reckoning arrives, China may be able to use its sovereign wealth to engineer a soft landing, thereby avoiding the more-apocalyptic scenarios often predicted. Indeed, a controlled bust may even yield benefits by moderating subsequent growth, and many analysts remain bullish on China’s long-term fundamentals. This market sentiment has been buoyed by recent evidence […]

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq — Just a quick tour of the markets in any Kurdish city in northern Iraq is all that is needed to illustrate how far relations with Turkey, the once-hostile neighbor to the north, have come. Supermarket shelves are packed with Turkish goods, while new malls are flooded with Turkish brands. And many of the major business contracts, from airports to roads, go to Turkish companies. Turkey threatened Iraqi Kurdistan with an extensive military offensive just a couple of years ago, but the invasion that did occur was of a completely different nature. “I have to say that the […]

At a time of serious budgetary restrictions and painful austerity measures, Europe must reassess its political ambitions and ratchet up its efforts to reverse negative trends in its global influence. With this in mind, Warsaw has increasingly sought to revitalize close coordination between Poland, France and Germany in what is known as the Weimar Triangle. That initiative has taken on greater urgency in anticipation of Poland assuming the rotating European Union presidency in July 2011. However, the most recent Weimar Triangle Summit, held in Poland in early February, confirmed that when it comes to Europe, Warsaw, Berlin and Paris have […]

Great powers are sometimes molded by events as much as, if not more than, by grand strategy. In 1898, the United States — at the time an isolationist and anti-colonial power — entered onto the world stage after Spain allegedly sank the USS Maine in Havana Harbor. The commercial adventures of the East India Company compelled the British state to intervene in China, sparking the Opium Wars, while in 1850, the British foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston, ordered the British navy into the Aegean in order to protect a British subject, Don Pacifico, and reclaim his lost property. All were defining […]

It has become conventional wisdom among U.S. and European policymakers that the Muslim Brotherhood, with its superior organizational structure, will dominate any quickly held election in a post-Mubarak Egypt. Invariably, observations to this effect are followed by warnings about the movement’s beliefs and its questionable commitment to democracy. Those warnings took on ominous overtones when the Brotherhood announced Feb. 21 that it will establish the Freedom and Justice Party to participate in future elections. Many of the Muslim Brotherhood’s policy positions are indeed odious to Western sensibilities. In a democratic Egypt, however, the Brotherhood’s ideas may garner popular appeal. The […]