WPR Blog Archive

There’s been a lot of speculation about what a John McCain presidency would mean in terms of America’s military adventurism. But anyone worried about McCain’s hawkish declarations regarding a 100-year occupation of Iraq should find this video, courtesy of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry, reassuring. McCain, it seems, has accepted the limits of American military influence, and once President would focus more on “culture-building” and “velvet revolution” operations funded by his friend and co-conspirator, “Jewish tycoon” George Soros. I should note that the idea that America is trying to gather intelligence through recruiting a sympathetic network of influential and well-placed Iranian […]

Following up some more on Richard Weitz’ article on the Army’s new stability and reconstruction doctrine, Small Wars Journal points to this link for an academic review of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams operating in Iraq and Afghanistan. The authors studied the PRT model all the way down the line, from the countries of origin to in-theater operations, and came up with a mixed bag, predominantly favorable to the missions, but full of interesting and thought-provoking stuff. I’m going through it now and cherrypicking the highlights: Domestic political constraints and priorities in the capitals of PRT-contributing countries are often directly translated […]

A quick followup to John’s post about the deep divisions among EU member states regarding whether or not to recognize Kosovo’s independence. When you take a look at who’s opposed and why, it becomes clear that for Europeans much more than for Americans, the question of national sovereignty vs. ethno-linguistic-sectarian autonomy is not some far-off problem. Spain has got a delicate situation with Catalonia, and a violent Basque separatist movement to deal with. Greece and Cyprus are both keeping a wary eye on Turkish Cypriot claims to legitimacy. Romania and Bulgaria are in a corner of Europe where separatist claims […]

In today’s WPR top story, Richard Weitz points out that while the military’s doctrinal embrace of stability and reconstruction operations in counterinsurgency warfare is a welcome development, there’s no certainty that it will survive the Pentagon-Capitol Hill funding corridor. As Weitz points out, the Army that does the fighting is not the same Army that does the shopping, and Congress, for all its rhetoric about transformation, still has a penchant for funding the big ticket items that have little application to post-conflict reconstruction operations. There’s also the little problem of branch rivalry: speak the words “stability operations” to the Navy […]

“All but four of the 27 EU member states have backed Kosovo’s split from Serbia.” Thus spoke the AFP in a Feb. 22 report viewable here. By its own account an “independent” news service, the AFP — or Agence France Presse — is in fact for all intents and purposes an organ of the French state: having been created by law and being largely subsidized by “subscriptions” from other state agencies. Indeed, in keeping with its quasi-public status, the French prime minister, foreign minister, and minister of finance each appoint representatives to the AFP’s governing council. This might help to […]

Russia’s NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin backed off earlier statements, saying Russian would never use force to solve the problem of Kosovo.It’s always difficult to interpret a quotation taken out of context,even more so once it’s been translated. But my own feeling was thatRogozin had not been threatening the use of force in Kosovo, but ratherobserving that given how Kosovo was handled, Russia could reasonablydraw the conclusion that the only way to make itself respected moregenerally would be through the use of force. Either way, it’sreassuring to see that he was quickly called to order, signalling thatMoscow has no interest in […]

In non-PKK news out of Turkey this morning, FM Ali Babacan reportedly communicated Turkey’s willingness to involve Russia in the Nabucco pipeline project during his recent visit to Moscow. If it seems like the offer undermines the logic of the enterprise, that’s probably because it does. The Nabucco pipeline was initially conceived as a way to diversify Europe’s sources of natural gas, thereby diminishing its energy dependence on Russia. (See this WPR exclusive for more.) But the project has run into problems finding adequate supplies ever since Russia snagged Kazakhstan’s and Turkmenistan’s reserves. Iran has offered itself as an alternative […]

A couple items that caught my eye from the Turkish press this morning. First, if you’re wondering why Turkey would send ground troops into the Qandil Mountains despite receiving actionable American intelligence for its aerial campaign, here’s one reason: The Zap and Avasin camps had been subject to aerial attacks since Dec. 16 but many hideouts there remained unharmed after the aerial strikes because the camps are located in a deep valley. I’ll offer two more, although they’re admittedly speculation. The PKK traditionally launches its attacks in the spring, when the mountain passes into Turkey have thawed. By pre-emptively scattering […]

Via Laura Rozen at MoJo, who has an excellent post on the subject, comes this .pdf file of the IAEA’s Iran report. Laura has some analysis from Jacqueline Shire of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), and Arms Control Wonk has more worth reading here and here. A quick comparison of this report with the last one released just prior to the NIE indicates that while Iran has shed more light on various elements of the program, the sheer weight of the new allegations raised (thanks to American intelligence sharing) make the bottom line a net loss for […]

There are conflicting reports about just how many troops Turkey has sent into northern Iraq, with the general trend being bearish. Initial Turkish TV reports (passed on by the press) put the number at 10,000, citing unnamed military sources. Reuters put the number at 8,000, or two Turkish brigades. Later television reports lowered it further to 3,000, which the Iraqi government today bid down to 1,000, only to be undersold by the American military command in Iraq which claimed that only a few hundred Turkish troops took part. The Turkish military, meanwhile, closed the bidding by warning that “media reports […]

There’s been a lot of speculation about just how far the latest IAEA report on the Iranian nuclear program would go towards letting Tehran off the hook. The fact that in the past few weeks the U.S. turned over longheld intelligence to the IAEA and that France ratcheted up the rhetoric significantly is a measure of just how anxious Washington and Paris were about the possibility. Well, the report was just distributed to the IAEA Board of Governors yesterday and bits and pieces are starting to leak out, including portions that confirm increased Iranian cooperation with various outstanding issues, some […]

Alan Dowd has got a pretty eye-opening article on the WPR frontpage about the quantum leaps in American missile defense technology that culminated in Thursday’s intercept of the failing US-193 satellite. Dowd argues that America has just ushered in the Missile Defense Age: Like the Rocket Age, which terrified Americans when Sputnik orbited the globe and then transfixed the world when Armstrong took his giant leap on the lunar surface; like the Jet Age, which turned the skies over Korea into a killing field and then opened the way to inexpensive, high-speed global travel; like the Nuclear Age, which ended […]

What stood out most about George Bush’s farewell tour of Africa — besides the development funds he handed out like “Santa Claus” — was his admission that American plans for another military base in that continent are dead. The question remains: Was an AFRICOM headquarters in Africa doomed by the increasing opposition to the plan among Africans and their governments, or was it done in by mission creep? AFRICOM began in February 2007 as simply a separate command to oversee all U.S. military operations in Africa (except Egypt). But it also stood for more than streamlining responsibilities. Enmeshed in its […]

More than a week has passed since the assassination of Hezbollah’s terror mastermind Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus, and the question of who did it remains as much a subject of speculation as the question of potential repercussions. Unsurprisingly, Israel is the prime suspect, and while Israeli officials have protested innocence, nobody pretended to be sorry. After all, Mughniyeh was not only one of the founders of Hezbollah, but also one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, accused by the West of killing hundreds in suicide bombings and hijackings in Lebanon and around the world. And it was not just Mughniyeh’s […]

Below is the Pentagon’s video of last night’s apparently successful shoot down of a failing spy satellite: If the embedded video won’t play, click here. For more, see “Spy Satellite’s Scheduled Destruction Raises Concerns About Diplomatic Fallout“

Tomorrow, German President Horst Köhler turns 65. In the Tuesday edition (Feb. 19) of the German daily the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Thomas Urban reported on the Polish town of Skierbieszow where Köhler was born. Köhler’s parents were “ethnic Germans” from Bessarabia in the current Republic of Moldova. They moved to German-occupied Poland in late 1942 as part of the massive “resettlement” program organized by Heinrich Himmler and his Reich Commissariat for the Strengthening of the German People. As Urban reports, the entire district of Zamosc, where Skierbieszow is located, was supposed to be transformed into a “model” German settlement. Largely as […]

The U.S. Coast Guard Feb. 18 captured a surface-skimming submarine called “Big Foot” off the coast of the Florida Keys. According to this Pentagon video report, the sub was carrying four tons of cocaine and had unidentified “new technology” that allowed it to elude drug enforcement radar and sonar. The Pentagon Channel news reader calls the sub “one-of-a-kind.” Judging by a number of recent news reports, however, the clean-cut former drug smuggler quoted in the video appears to be more on target when he says that subs are “in vogue” for the international drug smuggling crowd. Back in August 2006, […]