WPR Blog Archive

The UN Security Council is among the multi-lateral institutions thatjust about everyone agrees needs to be reformed to better reflect theemerging influence of various “Second World” powers (e.g. Brazil,India, South Africa). There’s been talk of expanding its permanentmembers for the past ten years, but so far very little progress hasbeen made on articulating a solution that everyone finds acceptable. Onthe other hand, tons of progress has been made articulating thesolutions that everyone finds unacceptable, and today another draft proposal joined the reject pile. In their Century Foundation monograph (.pdf), Rising Powers and Global Institutions,G. John Ikenberry and Thomas Wright identify […]

While Iran’s political system is notoriously opaque, we often hear that its final arbiter is the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. And as often as not, that’s where things rest. That’s what makes Karim Sadjadpour’s Carnegie Foundation report, Reading Khamenei, a must read. Sadjadpour gives a rundown of Khamenei’s origins, his structural hold on power, and through a reading of thirty years’ worth of speeches, re-constructs his worldview. I highly recommend the full report for anyone interested in the challenges of a forward-looking Iran policy, but here’s a quick “cut & paste” job of some highlights that seemed noteworthy: As Supreme […]

The Times had an article over the weekend on the various ways Iraqi militias and insurgents skim and scam the country’s oil revenues for funding. This morning, in a delayed reaction to the piece, it occurred to me that it might explain why we don’t hear much about insurgents targetting the oil infrastructure anymore. The only dedicated reporting I could come up with was this pretty extensive listing, called Iraq Pipeline Watch, which anecdotally confirms that attacks against infrastructure seemed to taper off in the middle of last year, replaced largely by attacks against infrastructure security forces. There’s a caveat […]

There have been foreshadowings for the past few weeks at least, but the NY Times now reports that Egypt is serving as an intermediary to mediate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, with the approval of Washington. So for now we’ve managed to maintain the legal fiction that we’re not speaking to Hamas, but the question becomes for how long? Bush administration officials are “not yet admitting to themselves that talking to Hamas is the inevitable path that they are walking on,” Daniel Levy, a former Israeli negotiator, said. “What has changed is that there is now an appreciation that […]

There’s a lot going on in terms of European defense vis à vis NATO these days. France is considering integrating the alliance’s command structure while at the same time pushing hard for EU defense, an effort for which America NATO ambassador Victoria Nuland recently expressed support. Russia is offering historic contributions on both fronts. Now via DefenseNews comes this, from NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, regarding EU defense: “I would like to see much more pooling of our capabilities, especially in areas such as vital enablers – transport, helicopters, or in research and development, or in harmonizing force structures […]

Continuing on this week’s U.S.-France-Russia theme, it looks like there’s some more anecdotal evidence for a working arrangement taking shape. I’ve argued before that Nicolas Sarkozy is a valuable asset for the U.S., because he’s got a knack for identifying the doable deals and then getting them done. He’s never going to roll over for Washington, mind you. But where there are interests that overlap, he’s very effective at bringing people together. I get the feeling that he’s identified Putin and Bush as two guys he can reason with who have had trouble reasoning with each other recently. And that’s […]

Just when I was getting set to declare that we’ve now entered into the “Case by Case Era” of global geopolitics, where strategic grand bargains will be set aside in favor of short memories, coalitions of the willing, and an atomized approach to crisis management, the IHT reports that Condoleeza Rice and Bob Gates are in Moscow to “dot the i’s” on a private letter sent to Vladimir Putin by President Bush laying out his vision for a new strategic framework between the U.S. and Russia. Now, that’s not just an 86-word, five-clause opening sentence. It’s also pretty good news. […]

One of the significant differences between terrorist attacks and previous national security threats is the inability to deter them. So the thinking went, anyway, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. But the NY Times reports that American strategic planners are not only now questioning that assumption, they’re well into the effort of implementing some intitiatives with the goal of proving it wrong. Some of the initiatives mentioned in the article don’t seem to qualify as pure deterrence. Getting Islamic clerics to condemn suicide attacks on civilians, for instance, will certainly help dry up the pool of potential recruits, but it’s […]

To get a sense of just how badly things are going for NATO in Afghanistan, consider the following. Just over two weeks from now at the alliance’s summit in Budapest, about the only pieces of good news likely to be announced are that the French will deploy more boots on the ground to ease the strain on Canadian forces, and the Russians will allow logistical supplies to transit its air and ground space. You got that right: France and Russia are coming to NATO’s rescue. Of course, it’s not the threat of a military defeat, but that of a political […]

A few weeks ago I linked to a NYRB article by William Pickering, Jim Walsh and William Luers proposing a multi-national enrichment consortium, operated in Iran, as a solution to the nuclear standoff. Today, the Council on Foreign Relations has an interview with William Luers that’s worth a read. According to Luers, the Iranians have plenty of mistrust of their own, especially as regards suspension of their uranium enrichment program, which they tried before for 18 months while negotiating with the EU, with disappointing (for Iran) results. Luers claims the Iranians are waiting for the U.S. to make the first […]

Arms Control Wonk’s James Acton gives us a glimpse of a Jane’s International Defense Review article that’s otherwise locked behind a paywall: Documents shown exclusively to Jane’s indicate that Iran is continuingits pursuit of the advanced technologies necessary to develop a nuclearweapon, regardless of Tehran’s claims that its nuclear programme ispurely peaceful. Jane’s was shown the information by a source connectedto a Western intelligence service, and the documents were verified by anumber of reliable independent sources in Vienna. As Acton points out, it’s necessary to attach some caveats, such asthe need for skepticism when dealing with anonymous reports, as well […]

On Friday, the Pentagon announced that Mohammed Rahim, who had been captured last summer in Pakistan and held in the CIA black hole detention program since then, was transferred to GITMO’s high-value detainee wing. According to reports, Rahim was a high-level al Qaeda operative, part of Osama bin Laden’s inner circle, and personally responsible for bin Laden’s escape from Tora Bora into Pakistan. The announcement confirms that the CIA detention program remains in operation, and adds some context to President Bush’s recent veto of Congress’ ban on the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques. It also suggests, if […]

What do you get when you take a Finnish rock group that calls itself Leningrad Cowboys, back them up with the Red Army Choir, and put them in front of a stadium full of screaming Russian teenagers to sing Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama? Thanks to this YouTube clip (via Russia Blog), the answer to that burning question is now just a click away. To proponents of globalization, I have just one question: Does your conscience bother you? Now tell the truth. . .

This is the best rundown of the demise of Nicolas Sarkozy’s Mediterranean Union that I’ve read so far. A Fistful of Euro’s Alex Harrowell argues that the announcement of a Brussels-centric Union for the Mediterranean is good news for Angela Merkel (demonstrating the degree of her EU influence), good news for the Mediterranean (which gains a more solid footing in future EU relations), and good news for the EU (which avoids the complications of potentially competing institutional agendas). The big loser is Nicolas Sarkozy, who had proposed the M.U. during last year’s presidential campaign in part as a way to […]

The other day, I flagged what seemed to be significant developments in Russia-EU and Russia-NATO relations. Specifically, Russia’s offer of material support (six to eight desperately needed helicopters) to the EUFOR Chad mission, as well as logistical support (relaxed supply transport restrictions) for the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Today, M K Bhadrakumar has an Asia Times Online article that provides some context to the NATO angle. Basically, Russia is taking advantage of the desperate situation in Afghanistan to float a comprehensive proposal that would essentially break NATO’s (read: America’s) monopoly on stabilization efforts in Afghanistan in particular, but in the […]

It looks like the Nabucco gas pipeline project just took another hit. Russia just announced an agreement with the ‘Stans (Khazak-, Turkmeni-, and Uzbeki-) raising its purchase price of their gas to European market rates, thereby appropriating one of the major attractions of the U.S.-EU offer. As this analysis points out, though, the deal is something of a trade-off for Russia, since it complicates their South Stream pipeline project by reducing marginal profits that pipeline would have offered its southern European partners. That, more than the dissolution of the Serbian parliament, might be what motivated remarks by Serbia’s parliamentary speaker […]

In other election news, Iranians voted for parliament yesterday, although how many actually voted seems to be the first spin battle over the election’s significance. Here’s how the AP saw it: Only a handful of voters showed up at many polling stations in Tehran on Friday in Iran’s parliament elections, a sign of frustration with a vote that hard-liners allied with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are expected to dominate. . . Iran’s reformist movement, which seeks democratic changes at home and better ties with the West, was largely sidelined in the race after most of its candidates were barred from running […]