WPR Blog Archive

Zimbabwe’s African neighbors have generally been feckless in their past relations with Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe. But facilitating the transport of a shipload of Chinese weapons likely to be used by the Mugabe regime in a bloody crackdown aimed at holding onto power after being voted out of office is apparently the straw that broke the camel’s back. The Chinese ship An Yue Jiang has already been turned away from South Africa and Mozambique. The United States is also involved in the effort: U.S. intelligence agencies are tracking the vessel, the An Yue Jiang, and American diplomats have been instructed […]

For the first time ever, the combined emerging markets of China, India, Russia and the Middle East will consume more crude oil than the United States (Bloomberg via 2point6billion). These are projections, but what’s surprising is the way in which the impact of an expected American economic contraction will be offset by continued growth in the emerging markets. Consider that in 2001, the American recession led to a twenty-five percent drop in crude oil prices, to roughly $20 a barrel. Contrast that to 2008, when the price is expected to rise to $120 before the end of the year. The […]

Richard Weitz has got a good rundown right here at WPR of the recent maneuvering in the Russian-Georgian standoff over Abkhazia, including Russia’s clever gambit of offering limited normalization of relations to both Georgia and the breakaway province at the same time. The idea seemed to be to exploit an ambiguous stance of neither recognizing nor rejecting Abkhazia’s independence in order to make things as uncomfortable as possible for Georgia in its quest for NATO membership, without quite pushing the envelope to outright conflict. But that was before Georgia claimed a Russian MiG shot down one of its aerial drones […]

That Chinese cargo boat carrying weapons bound for Zimbabwe has now been turned away by Mozambique and South Africa, with a gathering campaign now focused on keeping it from docking on the African continent: The International Transport Workers Federation says it has asked its members across Africa not to help unload the An Yue Jiang, which is reportedly carrying three million rounds of ammunition, 1,500 rocket-propelled grenades and 2,500 mortar rounds. Namibia and Angola have been mentioned as possible alternatives for getting the weapons into Robert Mugabe’s hands, but American pressure is reportedly being applied to keep that from happening. […]

Foreign Policy’s Passport blog has got an ongoing discussion of the challenges facing UN peacekeeping operations, and why we need to meet them that’s worth checking in with here. As much as they’re sometimes looked down on, these operations secure pretty vital national interests, and actually function as major force multipliers in that they cost us way less than mounting an actual American deployment.

How do you respond to a democratically elected governing party that just happens to be a terrorist outfit? I guess that depends who the outfit is. According to an unconfirmed report citing the U.S. Ambassador to Nepal, Nancy Powell, the State Dept. is ironing out the final “technicalities” needed to remove the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), winners of Nepal’s recent elections, from its terrorism watch list. Now, there are several terrorist listings maintained by the U.S. government, including the Foreign Terrorist Organization list, the Terrorist Exclusion List, and EO 13324 (an executive order issued in the aftermath of the […]

Vladimir Putin had this to say in denying a Moskovsky Korrespondent report last week that he’d divorced his wife in order to marry champion gymnast and current Russian legislator Alina Kabayeva: I have always reacted negatively to those who, with their snotty noses and erotic fantasies, prowl into others’ lives. Just how negatively? Well, let’s just say that the paper was closed down by its publisher today, who denied any political motivation behind the decision. To be fair, according to the Moscow Times, the coverage of politicians’ personal lives is considered something of a taboo in Russia, and the Korrespondent […]

The Times reports on the growing internal debate within the Bush administration over requests by American military commanders in Afghanistan for more operational leeway to go after Taliban and al-Qaida forces in Pakistan’s tribal frontier areas. The usual dilemma over the overall costs of more agressive tactics on Pakistan’s stability have been complicated by the fact that the new Pakistani coalition government is even more hostile to American intervention than Pervez Musharraf was. So far the discussion seems to center around targeted missile strikes from UAV’s, but that hardly seems like an adequate response to what’s basically a hostile local […]

To follow up on Judah’s post on Nabucco, the recent (rather amusing) comments of the Russian ambassador on the Nabucco project show that Russia is also trying to use the Iran threat to undermine U.S. and EU support for the project. Thanks to John Rosenthal for sending along this story from the EU Observer: EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – Moscow has questioned the viability of the EU-backed Nabucco energy corridor, a pipeline designed to lessen the bloc’s dependency on Russia. “I know few things about political geography. The only way to fill the Nabucco pipeline is to rely on Iranian gas,” […]

One of the recurring subtexts of China’s relative opening to the world has been the tightrope the Chinese leadership is forced to walk between mobilizing nationalist sentiment to push back against Western human rights criticism, and actually keeping a lid on that nationalist sentiment to keep it from getting out in front of the official line of a peaceful rise. Case in point: Over the weekend there were demonstrations in several Chinese cities converging on the French supermarket chain, Carrefour, in part to protest the French government’s very muted grumblings about the goings-on in Tibet, in part to respond to […]

More problems for the Nabucco pipeline project, which if it never actually ends up delivering gas might have a future as a soap opera. This time the sticking point has to do with Turkish transit fees, which the EU and Azerbaijan wants to set at market rates, and which Turkey wants to negotiate at a “privileged ownership” rate. Hey, why not? Meanwhile, as John Rosenthal pointed out in a WPR piece not so long ago, the Nabucco pipeline really makes the most sense if it brings Iranian gas online. John saw that as a potential wedge Tehran could drive between […]

I flag these two stories to illustrate the difficulties involved in a containment strategy for Iran based on sanctions and isolation, in the absence of any real international sense of urgency or outrage over their nuclear program. The result is often a curious ambivalence where countries pay lip service, on the one hand, to the ostracization demanded by the U.S., while at the same time quietly carrying out their day to day business with Tehran. In this case it’s Turkey, which has too many points of overlap to seriously consider shunning its neighbor (among them security concerns about Kurdish guerillas […]

A study written by Joseph Collins, a former Pentagon official whohelped plan for post-invasion humanitarian operations in Iraq, has beengetting a lot of attention for its conclusion that the war is adebacle. The gang over at Small Wars Journal was a bit skeptical abouthow the report was being cited and spun, and decided to contact Collinshimself. Turns out that, according to the author, his work is being taken out of context to make points that aren’t his own. The points he is making (.pdf), mind you, are pretty damning. But just not in the way people are saying they are.

Hampton’s right. I got a little bombastic about the erosion of civil liberties during the Bush administration, which don’t really compare to WWII, and get a run for their money from the Palmer Raids and the McCarthy blacklists. I’m glad he kept me honest on that, and along the same lines, we invite anyone who disagrees with anything written here (or with how it’s written, for that matter) to drop a line. The hope is to engage a discussion around the ideas, not beat people over the head with them, and I’m certainly open to having my own opinions broadened […]

I don’t agree with Judah’s specific sentiment below that the Bush administration has seen the “worst erosion of our own democratic traditions” (WWII was much worse, for example), but I do agree with the general sentiment that liberty at home can be endangered by crusading abroad. John Quincy Adams, the first son of a president to himself become president, did too. His oft-cited July 4, 1821, speech to the U.S. House of Representatives, when he was serving as Secretary of State, is worth revisiting in this context. Here’s an excerpt: Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or […]

Missile defense has its proponents, otherwise we wouldn’t have spent $150 billion on it since 1983, with another $62.5 billion requested by the Pentagon over the next five years. Philip Coyle isn’t one of them. Judging by his resume, Coyle’s the kind of guy you want keeping an eye on program R&D, which might explain why the Pentagon paid him to do just that for seven years. In addition to his gig as Asst. Secretary of Defense and Director of Operational Test and Evaluation during the Clinton Administration, Coyle also did two stints for a combined 32 years at Lawrence […]

Thanks to Hampton for pointing out the Buruma piece. It’s always refreshing to read an articulate reminder of why it pays to be circumspect about the latest conventional wisdom. The last twenty years is littered with the wreckage of very convincing theories about the emerging geopolitical landscape, and the end of American hegemony might end up joining them. Still, Buruma’s debunking of the multi-polar world seems to point in the direction of Haass’ analysis, where America’s relative power declines due to a rising tide, but everyone else is still busy plugging the leaks that their boats are springing. As for […]