When the International Criminal Court issued its ground-breaking warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on March 4, human rights activists celebrated the move as a major milestone. The action would not only boost hope in Darfur — Bashir is alleged to have played a key role in the tragic conflict — but it would also help prevent atrocities everywhere. For the first time, a sitting president faced the threat of arrest, forcing other perpetrators and would-be perpetrators of crimes against humanity to consider the trials awaiting them should they follow in Bashir’s footsteps. Less than a month [...]
The Obama administration’s emphasis on “smart power” is by now well known. To most observers, that has meant the need to “balance and integrate all elements of our national power” in order to deter and defeat emerging threats, as President Barack Obama himself put it in a speech at National Defense University in Washington on March 12. Many have focused on Obama’s insistence, in the same speech, that “we cannot continue to push the burden on to our military alone” and his commitment to “comprehensive engagement with the world.” What has gotten less attention is the central role Obama foresees [...]
On March 25, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) released its annual Military Power of the People’s Republic of China (.pdf) report. Despite the recent change in White House occupants, the text resembles the department’s previous Chinese military power reports, suggesting that holdovers from the Bush administration supervised its composition. As required by the 2000 National Defense Authorization Act, the annual report assesses the current and likely future military capabilities, doctrine, strategies, and operational concepts of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The U.S. and other foreign officials have repeatedly complained about the severe constraints on transparency that the Chinese [...]
