Column Archive

Russian President Vladimir Putin has a busy schedule next week in the Belarusian capital of Minsk. On Aug. 26, along with the heads of Belarus and Kazakhstan, the other states that make up the Eurasian Customs Union, Putin will have a face-to-face trilateral summit with Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko and a European Union delegation headed by its foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger. The summit has an ambitious agenda on the table to try and defuse the Ukraine crisis: ending Russia’s not-so-covert support for rebels in eastern Ukraine; brokering a political settlement between the separatists and […]

The life story of Brazil’s Marina Silva is so unlikely that she explains key moments as the result of divine intervention. Among the most dramatic and potentially life-changing of all the unlikely turns came last week, when a private plane in which she was supposed to be traveling crashed, killing Socialist Party presidential candidate Eduardo Campos and suddenly turning her into a formidable contender for the presidency of Brazil. Silva, a charismatic environmental activist and former environment minister with an ideology that does not fit neatly into any single current, was Campos’ running mate on the Socialist Party ticket for […]

The United States is at a transitional point in its national security strategy at least as important as the one after Vietnam and perhaps as crucial as the opening years of the Cold War. Although debate today about America’s future role in the world is limited to think tanks, academia and the media, during the 2016 presidential campaign, this will change. National security will move into the limelight as differing visions within and between the Democratic and Republican parties clarify policy options and choices. For both U.S. and global security, much will be at stake. It is, of course, too […]

When asked recently by New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman whether China, as the “biggest energy investor in Iraq,” should behave more like a stakeholder there, U.S. President Barack Obama had a pointed reply. The Chinese, he said, “have been free riders for the last 30 years and it’s worked really well for them,” while the United States has had to bear the burdens of maintaining international security and prosperity for the good of the world. Those comments triggered a sharply negative reaction in the Chinese press. Although Obama might not have intended to be so blunt, his remarks […]

“The System Worked.” That is the title of a new book by Daniel W. Drezner reviewing the role of institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization in the global financial crisis. Although the world economy tanked in 2008, Drezner argues, multilateral organizations helped save it from collapse. It is unlikely that anyone will write a book about the current wars in the Middle East and Ukraine with a similar title. A pithy summary of the United Nations’ rifts over Syria or NATO’s inability to halt Russia from seizing Crimea could be “the system flopped.” While the […]

It is the misfortune of the Obama administration to preside over the unraveling of several long-term U.S. strategies in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The tactics used by previous administrations to delay making hard choices in the hope that problems would resolve themselves over time without Washington being required to make sacrifices are no longer available, as the crises in both regions make abundantly clear. For the past 20 years, successive U.S. administrations have held open the door for Ukraine’s full integration into the Euro-Atlantic world, with the expectation that either Russia would at long last accept the move […]

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan fulfilled practically everyone’s predictions by winning the country’s first direct presidential election Sunday. But rather than putting an end to the divisive political battles that have roiled the country and the inflammatory stance that has strained Turkey’s relations with neighbors, Erdogan’s victory promises to usher in yet another era of contentious domestic and international politics. The newly elected, soon-to-be President Erdogan will start a new phase of his plan to become an even more dominant figure in Turkey’s political landscape for many more years to come. As Ian Bremmer put it on Twitter following […]

For Islamic extremists, particularly the most angry and violent ones, al-Qaida is yesterday’s news. From Yemen to Africa, fighters are leaving al-Qaida-affiliated groups and joining the ultra-radical and violent movement now known as the Islamic State. This gives some worrisome hints about the future of extremism in the Islamic world. The ascendance of the Islamic State, initially known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), is due in part to al-Qaida’s failures. Over the years much of the funding al-Qaida used to energize and stoke militant movements was cut off or dried up. Pummeled by the United States […]

Next month’s NATO summit needs to make greater progress on so-called Smart Defense, the alliance-wide effort to get more collective benefits out of individual members’ defense budgets. The initiative aims to induce NATO governments to acquire military capabilities collectively that they cannot afford individually, so that even members with limited resources can contribute to expensive joint projects. The May 2012 Chicago summit launched almost two dozen Smart Defense projects in such areas as logistics and sustainment; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; and force protection. One country leads each project. For example, Germany is in charge of pooling maritime patrol aircraft; France […]

There has been a lot of talk about humanitarian interventions over the past week, but much of it has been muddled, misleading or both. Russia has pressed for a “humanitarian mission” to the war zone in eastern Ukraine. The U.S. and its allies argue that Moscow is just using this as a pretext to invade the region. While telling Russia to back off, the Obama administration has stumbled into a new intervention of its own, launching air strikes in northern Iraq against the forces of the Islamic State, previously known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The […]

The United States and Iran held snap bilateral talks on Thursday in Geneva as part of an effort to overcome differences that have prevented the conclusion of a final, lasting agreement on the status of Tehran’s nuclear program. Curiously, two of the three senior U.S. government representatives that participated according to the sparse State Department announcement—Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns and the vice president’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan—are both expected to depart the Obama administration in a matter of months. This raised questions as to whether the Obama national security team was seeking to give the president some […]

Last June, when Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, abruptly fell to a militia of ultra-radical Islamists barreling in from Syria, the consensus among international observers was that the stunning collapse of Iraqi forces was the result of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s disastrous policies. Maliki’s sectarian regime had undermined the Iraqi military’s unity, preparedness and willingness to fight. To be sure, Maliki’s governing approach has proved devastating for Iraq, but events of the past few days point to a much more ominous explanation. The new evidence coming from the Kurdish regions of northern Iraq suggests that Baghdad’s dismal response to the […]

Conventional militaries normally avoid fighting in cities, instead seeking open ground where generals can see what is happening and control their forces as much as possible. Certainly there have been large urban battles like Stalingrad, Manila and Berlin during World War II, but they were the exception rather than the rule, an act of desperation by a commander with no other options. Militias and insurgents, though, see things differently. Usually weaker than state security forces, they often choose to fight, as British Gen. Rupert Smith put it, “amongst the people,” in the hope that state security forces will not bring […]

A recently released paper of the Defense Committee of the U.K. House of Commons on Russia’s seizure of Crimea and the implications for Western security concludes that “events in Crimea and Ukraine represent a ‘game changer’ [that] will have significant implications for resources, force structures, equipment and training.” In addition to their excellent analysis of Russian strategy and tactics, the authors offered useful recommendations meant to inform both the next U.K. Defense and Security Review and the upcoming NATO summit. The alliance will need to adapt its capabilities and approach to collective defense if it is to avoid being caught […]

As U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry bustles around the world attempting to staunch conflict after conflict, one question arises with increasing frequency: Why bother? Kerry has certainly had a rough year. Major peace initiatives he had personally pursued, ranging from January’s Syrian peace conference in Geneva to the Israeli-Palestinian talks, have collapsed. His early efforts to defuse the Ukrainian crisis through direct talks with Russia also failed, while Israeli officials have poured scorn on his recent push for a cease-fire in Gaza. At a time when a majority of U.S. voters favor less engagement with foreign problems, Kerry’s ill-fated […]

During the years of George W. Bush’s presidency, members of the Democratic Party’s foreign policy brain trust mocked his administration’s invocation of “coalitions of the willing” as a way to legitimize U.S. action in the international arena. They even derided Bush’s efforts to find other states to endorse U.S. policy as “coalitions of the billing.” Once back in control of the Oval Office, they maintained, Democrats would be able to utilize the United Nations and leading regional organizations, starting with NATO, to generate genuine support on the part of other major countries to back U.S. initiatives. Indeed, the first years […]