Column Archive

In what some experts are calling the third great wave of outsourcing — after manufacturing and services — cash-rich Arab and Asian governments are buying up arable farmland (read: water rights) all over the developing world. Naturally, the worst-case artists in my field of national security see only one possible outcome: a long, steady decline into a chaotic, Mad Max-like dystopia, characterized by that favorite of the alarmist set — resource wars. Get used to such predictions, as today’s still-stunning production inefficiencies are mechanically projected deep into the future, despite all indications of a biological revolution looming just over the […]

Here’s a radical proposition: Withdraw from Afghanistan. That’s just what stalwart nationally syndicated columnist George Will called for on Tuesday, setting off a week of stormy debate that culminated in the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff responding to his Washington Post op-ed, titled, “Time to Leave Afghanistan.” With deliberations in Washington set to begin in earnest about a newly delivered strategy by the new commander on the ground, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Will has opened up the most fundamental question the country faces in foreign affairs today: Should the U.S. be in Afghanistan in […]

Concerns in the Middle East about what exactly the United States has in mind for Iran have grown in recent months, partly because of statements from top administration officials about a possible new approach for dealing with Iran’s nuclear aspirations. If the administration intended word of the plan to act as a trial balloon in the Middle East, it is clear that regional players have popped the balloon and sent it hissing to the ground. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton heightened the worries during a recent visit to Thailand, when she again spoke of a concept she had raised […]

On the eve of his retirement on Aug. 26, Gen. Martin Luther Agwai, commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur, declared an end to the war in Sudan’s southern province. “As of today, I would not say there is a war going on in Darfur,” Agwai, a Nigerian, said at a press conference in Khartoum. Agwai’s joint U.N.-African Union force, deployed in 2007, numbers around 15,000 soldiers and police. “Militarily there is not much” going on in Darfur, Agwai said. “What you have is security issues more now. Banditry . . . people trying to resolve issues over water […]

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recently completed its most comprehensive assessment in months of Iran’s nuclear program and Tehran’s degree of cooperation with the agency and U.N. Security Council resolutions. Although the Aug. 28 report (.pdf) notes some new developments, its basic message is that Iran has not appreciably changed its main nuclear policies despite years of negotiations, U.N. sanctions, and its recent presidential elections. As a result, as in the past, both advocates and opponents of harsher sanctions on Tehran can cite some of the agency’s findings to support their positions. The report, which was promptly leaked to […]