WPR Blog Archive

Arms Control Wonk just posted the full transcript from the Syria-N. Korea intel briefing to “senior U.S. officials.” This is the key passage explaining what the intelligence community concluded about the site from the available evidence: We told our President four things: This is a reactor; the North Koreans and the Syrians are cooperating on nuclear activities; the North Koreans and Syrians are cooperating on the construction of this reactor; and this reactor – its purpose – is to create fuel for a nuclear weapons program. Here’s the breakdown of evidence supporting each conclusion: . . .[T]he fact that it […]

The below video was made by U.S. intelligence and shown to members of Congress this week: Online Videos by Veoh.com

It looks like I’m the only one who’s underwhelmed by the Petraeus appointment to CENTCOM commander, but what the heck. In for a penny, in for pound. So here’s another thorny question that I’ve yet to see directly addressed. (Hampton, make sure you’ve had your morning cup of Joe before reading any further.) I mentioned that by using his direct lines of communication with the Oval Office to leapfrog Adm. Fallon, Petraeus had already been serving as de facto CENTCOM commander. But in thinking about it, the leapfrog actually went much further than that, because President Bush made it clear […]

Arms Control Wonk’s got the video presentation made to the House and Senate intel committees on Syria’s Al Kabir facility. To a layman, it makes a pretty convincing, if entirely circumstantial, case for the claim that the facility was a nuclear reactor, although questions remain, which means I’ll be checking back in with the gang at ACW for further updates. Here’s what Jeffrey Lewis had to say yesterday: Assuming the provenance, interpretation and timing are all square, I would think the presumption now shifts to “it was a reactor” — which is not to say that hitting it was a […]

What’s clear so far about the Petraeus CENTCOM announcement is that all anyone can do right now is speculate on what impact this will all have. But while answers will only come with time, the fundamental questions are shaping up pretty quickly. According to Abu Muqawama they boil down to how Gen. Petraeus’ experiences in Iraq are going to influence his regional vision in general, his approach to Iran in particular, and his ability to make detached decisions about how to distribute scarce resources between the two theaters of war now under his command. Tom Barnett, on the other hand, […]

Sam Roggeveen ups the ante in our “furious agreement,” and points out that regardless of what conclusions ought to be drawn from Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s clear from global defense expenditures that the consensus has formed around expanding expeditionary forces. In other words, expect more, rather than less, military intervention. At the risk of escalating our agreement even more, I’d add that in addition to the amphibious vessels (that increasingly serve as logistical support centers for expeditionary forces) and the NATO/EU A400M airlift initiative that Roggeveen mentioned, I also heard whispers recently of an EU initiative to increase tactical and […]

There’s obviously going to be a lot of snarky commentary about the Army’s decision to sell its most sophisticated counter-IED technology to the Iraqi government. The immediate objection is that the sale to Iraq is tantamount to a technology transfer to Iran, given the latter’s infiltration of the Iraqi government with sympathizers and loyalists. Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time that weapons destined for Iraqi use wound up in the hands of insurgents or worse. But regardless of whether or not it’s handed over or captured, battlefield technology is always at risk of falling into enemy hands. And […]

Last week I flagged a severe drubbing that missile defense took at a Congressional Oversight Subcommittee hearing. In the interests of fair play, I thought I should link to a hearing that took place the following day at the House Armed Services Committee, where missile defense proponents from the DoD, including Missile Defense Agency head Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, testified on its behalf. The kindest thing I can find to say about missile defense, globally speaking, is that the advances made in short- and midrange in-theater defense technologies (the Patriot and Aegis systems, for instance) seem promising and worth pursuing. […]

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing yesterday on the ongoing crisis in Darfur, where solutions seem hard to come by, measures already in place seem ineffective, and the conditions on the ground remain horrifying. I tend not to give this conflict the attention it deserves, mainly out of discouragement. Kudos to Joe Biden for keeping it in the spotlight. There’s a lot of suffering being inflicted, and the only hope of ever resolving the multiple conflicts that are causing it is if we don’t forget that.

Just wanted to jump in here to comment on the question Judah raised about Petraeus’ qualifications to be leader of CENTCOM. The use of the word “temerity” in wondering why no one has so far questioned Petraeus’ qualifications for the CENTCOM job is appropriate. Another, less cynical, less political, way of saying that “the only real qualification Petraeus seems to have for the jobis to have offered President Bush a fortuitous tactical approach thatcoincided perfectly with Bush’s political needs” is to say that Petraeus main qualification for the job is in finding a way to turn around a war that […]

If it weren’t for all hell breaking loose in the Middle East, the tectonic shifts going on in South Asia would probably be the decade’s storyline. As it is, they still might be. In addition to China’s rise and India’s emergence, there’s also all sorts of movement towards warmer relations between the region’s traditional rivals that could smooth the way for further growth. Pakistan-India relations, while still prickly and marked by tit-for-tat missile tests, are more cordial than they’ve ever been. Same goes for China-India relations.As for China-Pakistan relations, a couple of articles (one here at Asia Times Online, and […]

As a follow-on to Judah’s post about U.S. information operations and public diplomacy, particularly his discussion of the difficulty of making U.S. foreign policy, or the United States in general, look swell to an audience that to a certain extent is pre-disposed to oppose it, I wanted to flag again something I linked to back in January: this Washington Post op-ed by Gary Anderson. Anderson has some interesting advice for how to deal with the “lipstick on a pig” phenomenon, as Judah calls it. Essentially, he says, we should forget about charm campaigns focused on bolstering the U.S. image and […]

When Jimmy Carter was recently praised for bringing “honesty and pragmatism to the Middle East,” it wasn’t anybody in Washington or Jerusalem who expressed appreciation for Carter’s meetings with Hamas representatives during his latest trip to the region. The praise came instead from Gaza, via the Washington Post, which gave Mahmoud al-Zahar, the “foreign minister” of Hamas, the opportunity to outline the group’s views on peace in the Middle East. But as an editorial printed opposite to Zahar’s piece noted, Zahar left little doubt that Hamas has no interest in a negotiated peace. Indeed, the uncompromising stance expressed by Zahar […]

It’s become something of a truism that the outcome of the struggle against what for simplicity’s sake I’ll call Jihadist terrorism (you’ll understand shortly) depends in large part on driving a wedge between terrorists and the broader Muslim world that does not support their tactics. And the consensus has it that not only are we losing the information operations (IO) battle for hearts and minds in the Muslim world, but that we’re at an inherent disadvantage in the “war of ideas” because our tradition of a free press hamstrings us when faced with an enemy that can not only control […]

The Lowy Interpreter’s Sam Roggeveen takes me to task for too quickly dismissing the efficacy of military intervention here. But I think his post brushes aside some pretty significant considerations that argue against his conclusion that “. . .the relative success of military solutions does encourage greater dependence on it.” To begin with, Roggeveen distinguishes between the “brilliant successes” of the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions, and the costly quagmires of the post-invasion counterinsurgencies. My argument is precisely that the tempting successes of the former, which are indisputable, led us to ignore the predictable (and predicted) dangers of the latter. Here, […]

In replacing Donald Rumsfeld, who as defense secretary often seemed to embrace the bull-in-a-china-shop style of leadership, Defense Secretary Robert Gates no doubt has been a more calming presence for the Pentagon’s military and civilian employees. While Gates may be a less confrontational and unassuming leader than the brash, often arrogant, suffer-no-fools Rumsfeld, however, he has proven that he is no less of an iconoclastic thinker. While Rumsfeld’s ideas about transforming the military to a lighter, quicker, more expeditionary force did not serve him well in specific application to post-invasion Iraq, however, Gates has had the benefit of the lessons […]

There’s a discussion this week over at TPMCafe of Matthew Yglesias’ imminently available book, Heads in the Sand. It focuses on Yglesias’ vision of a “liberal internationalism,” by which he means the forward leaning diplomatic engagement, under the auspices of a multi-lateral system of institutions and laws, that characterized American foreign policy throughout the Cold War. Specifically, on his blog, Yglesias has targeted the use of pre-emptive war as an effective non-proliferation strategy. I call attention to it not only because it’s an interesting discussion, but also because it folds in nicely with this short monograph (.pdf) by Carl Connetta, […]