Column Archive

How much clout does the U.S. wield over African leaders? Over the past month, the Obama administration has turned up the heat on South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, pressuring him to commit to a deal to end his country’s 20-month-old civil war. Kiir did all he could to avoid signing the agreement, which involves a power-sharing arrangement with rebel leader and former Vice President Riek Machar. He backed out of a ceremony to sign it in the middle of last month and only gave in last week after the U.S. threatened him with United Nations sanctions. Last week, the Security […]

Editor’s Note: This is the first of a two-part column on the Islamic State’s use of extreme brutality as part of its strategy. Part I looks at the roots and intended effects of that brutality. Part II will examine whether extreme brutality is sustainable or will be the group’s downfall, and what that means for the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State. Brutality is a defining characteristic of the so-called Islamic State. While history is littered with violent organizations, few have made it so integral to their strategy and identity. The Islamic State has become “synonymous with viciousness,” as Fawaz […]

When three Venezuelan soldiers and one civilian were injured during anti-smuggling operations on the border with Colombia last week, Venezuela’s embattled president, Nicolas Maduro, launched an escalating series of measures that created a major crisis with its neighbor and raised questions about hidden political movies. By all appearances, Maduro has found a convenient scapegoat for the multiplying problems besetting Venezuela’s economy and its people, and has done so just in time to affect crucial legislative elections in December that could threaten his hold on power. Maduro is exploiting the situation to shift blame for the country’s deterioration under his watch. […]

Earlier this month, Jeb Bush gave a major foreign policy speech focusing on U.S strategy in the Middle East. It offered a compelling lesson in the pitfalls of a politician named Bush talking about Iraq. In the speech, Bush blamed the current instability in Iraq on the Obama administration and in particular former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He suggested the White House had squandered the hard-earned gains from the 2007 surge in Iraq, which he argued could be successfully replicated in Syria. Beyond a rather blatant effort to rewrite history, Bush’s speech was a stark reminder that many of […]

For months, the critical issue for Iraq has been its capacity to win back territory in its western provinces controlled by the so-called Islamic State (IS). The focus abroad has been on building an international coalition to support Iraqi forces; enabling various Kurdish militias to do their part in the war against IS; and strengthening Iraqi resolve, particularly among Sunnis, to see the IS threat in all its dimensions and reinvigorate Iraq’s national capacity and purpose. But in Baghdad, other dynamics are in play. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi followed through on pledges to take on corruption and […]

Peacemaking is a repetitive business. Mediators and diplomats handling protracted conflicts rarely come up with entirely new ways to end them. They frequently revise and repackage previous peace plans, hoping that they will gain more traction than they have in the past. The U.N. Security Council did just that last week, recycling old proposals to end the Syrian war and selling the initiative as a minor breakthrough. Last Monday, the Security Council’s members agreed on a statement calling for a “Syrian-led political process leading to a political transition,” potentially involving “the establishment of an inclusive transitional governing body with full […]

Of all the U.S. military services, the Army has the most expansive mission. Because the Air Force and Navy are built around platforms—aircraft, ships, submarines—their functions are determined, in part, by what those things can and can’t do. The foundation of the Marine Corps is the infantryman, but that service’s small size forces it to focus on a relatively limited mission set. Expeditionary operations are the centerpiece, shaping the Marines’ force development, acquisitions, doctrine, training and leadership. Ultimately the Air Force, Navy and Marines can do many things, but their “core competence” is clear. They know what to focus on. […]

The summer’s headlines—from how to verify the Iran deal to combating the self-declared Islamic State to, most recently, new revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA) and the telecom giant AT&T—all have something in common: the role of intelligence in keeping the United States safe. For better or worse, since the release of diplomatic cables from Wikileaks and classified NSA documents from former government contractor Edward Snowden, the American public has a deeper understanding of at least some of the ways that intelligence contributes to U.S. national security. The NSA documents were the source of The New York Times’ recent […]

A glance at the most popular sources of political news today—whether websites, television, radio or, for the old-fashioned consumers, print—provides a stark reminder that in the United States, politics and celebrity have merged. For superstar pundits, television and radio “infotainers,” and would-be office-holders, celebrity status equals political influence. This affects all aspects of American politics but is particularly powerful in the realm of security policy, where the public has little direct expertise and so must lean heavily on opinion-shapers. It wasn’t always this way. Once the public tended to defer to national security authorities who had earned their influence through […]

A new high-profile trial started last week in Buenos Aires, opening another act in the cloak-and-dagger drama surrounding a decades-old terrorist attack in the Argentine capital. Once again, charges and countercharges about Middle Eastern powers, shady characters and secret payments to local players are bound to come to light. Once again, the principal perpetrators will escape punishment in a case that has continued to claim victims as recently as this year, when the case’s special prosecutor, still leading an ongoing parallel investigation, was found dead in his apartment. When this court proceeding ends, the one thing that is certain is […]

Last week at American University, Barack Obama gave one of the most important foreign policy speeches of his presidency. In it, he laid out his detailed argument for supporting the Iran nuclear deal. The president offered a veritable legal brief on why the deal makes the most sense for U.S. national security interests, why it’s better than any alternative, why its critics are wrong and why the agreement builds on a “tradition of strong, principled diplomacy” in U.S. foreign policy. But beyond that, Obama’s speech did something with even greater implications. It highlighted the widening dividing line between Democrats and […]

Almost 70 years to the day after the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and four and a half years after suspending its entire nuclear energy program, Japan restarted a nuclear reactor today, the first to operate under new safety requirements adopted in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster. While the news is noteworthy in and of itself, Japan’s historical approach to its civil nuclear program, as well as to nuclear weapons in particular, is especially instructive in light of the Iran nuclear deal. Many observers have suggested over the years that Iran could well aspire to the so-called Japan […]

The United Nations was famously founded to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” It has a distinctly mixed track record on this front. Today, the U.N.’s goal often seems to be best described as making the scourge of war a little bit less dreadful. The Security Council demonstrated this tendency last Friday, when it endorsed an American-backed resolution launching a new panel to investigate the use of chemical weapons in Syria’s civil war. The panel, which will involve the U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), is empowered to identify those responsible for dropping […]

One of the hottest reads among Washington national security experts this summer is not the latest White House policy document or a big report from an influential think tank, but a novel by two of the national security community’s own: Peter Singer and August Cole. Their book, “Ghost Fleet,” is a riveting thriller in the Tom Clancy tradition. Much of the attention it is getting is due to its explanation of cutting-edge military technology, but it is also captivating—and important—because its core scenario is one that every policymaker and policy expert fears: a major war between the United States and […]

It is not every day that a population gets to experience the failings of government quite so pungently. Beirut, the cosmopolitan capital of Lebanon, has been choking in garbage. A brief respite due to a partial temporary solution will soon come to an end, and authorities are warning of grave health consequences if rotting refuse and garbage fires start choking the city again. But Beirut’s garbage crisis looms as much more than a health, welfare or infrastructure matter. More than anything, it is an unmistakable, asphyxiating metaphor for the country’s precarious political situation. And it may become the most unlikely […]

Editor’s note: Guest columnist Neil Bhatiya is filling in for Michael Cohen, who will return next week. On Monday, President Barack Obama unveiled the final version of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) rules. The new regulations, a tweak to initial rules that had been released in June 2014, are meant to provide the framework for individual U.S. states in meeting emissions-reduction goals in their electricity sectors. In forecasting a 32 percent reduction in emissions by 2030 from 2005 levels, the plan relies on incentivizing the adoption of low-carbon energy sources nationwide, especially solar and wind power. As […]

Editor’s note: This will be Richard Weitz’s final “Global Insights” column at World Politics Review. We’d like to take this opportunity to express our deep gratitude for all the support he has shown for WPR since its inception, and we look forward to working with him regularly in the future. One of the main goals of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s latest Middle East trip is to reassure U.S. partners there that the recent Iran nuclear deal will not jeopardize their security. The Obama administration is using several instruments to achieve this goal, including helping the Persian Gulf states […]