WPR Blog Archive

I’ve got to agree with Andrew Sullivan on this one. We still don’t know how the final chapter on the Surge will turn out, because we still don’t know how the final chapter on Iraq will turn out. Setting aside the problems of causality (the Anbar Awakening that preceded it, the sectarian cleansing that had been largely accomplished before it, etc.), I acknowledge that the decision to double down and dig in — which struck me as a desperate measure with “last ditch” written all over it — obviously struck some of the actors in Iraq quite differently. But as […]

Jeffrey Lewis of Arms Control Wonk reads the tea leaves and wonders whether India won’t try to use the 123 Agreement (if it’s ever approved) as license for a new round of nuclear weapons testing. There’s reason to believe that India’s last round of tests in 1998 did not include a successfully detonated hydrogen bomb. Lewis speculates that Indian PM Manmohan Singh might be under pressure to fill that technological gap. It’s hard to imagine exactly what regional consequences that would have, but I think it’s safe to say there aren’t very many positive ones in the range of possibilities. […]

It looks like the EU went ahead and froze the European assets of Iran’s Melli Bank, and banned its activities on the continent. The bank, suspected of providing services to Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, had already been targeted by American sanctions last year. The move had been prematurely announced by English PM Gordon Brown last week and immediately denied by the EU, and comes on the heels of a supposed “freeze for freeze” offer, whereby Iran would agree to hold off on any increase in its uranium enrichment capacity in return for the EU3+3 holding off on any […]

Meanwhile, the debate over the American military engagement in Iraq has been reduced to the choice between maintaining or withdrawing our troops. Ignored is the notion that we can maintain troop levels while disengaging politically (e.g. disengaged bases) or that, conversely, we can withdraw our troops while significantly ramping up our political engagement. The latter option is what this report (.pdf) by the Task Force for a Responsible Withdrawal from Iraq proposes as the basis for a complete withdrawal of American forces within 12-18 months, beginning with a modified UN mandate that internationalizes the Iraqi aid and support mission in […]

Dr. iRack over at Abu Muqawama has emerged recently as an authoritative analyst of the Iraq War (and everything that term implies), so I recommend this rundown of the current situation that he posted over the weekend. Without getting too much into the details of his post (which is pretty comprehensive), it’s reassuring to see that I’m not the only one who finds it difficult to make any meaningful sense out of the various narratives and counter-narratives that are now coming out of Iraq. Glass half-full or glass half-empty depends to a great deal on the observer. But I’d venture […]

If a forgery is so good that it fools the experts, is it really a forgery? In the age of globalization, the question becomes, if a counterfeit Gucci is made in Italy out of fabric made in Asia, does it count as an Italian import for brand-conscious Chinese consumers? (Via 2point6billion.com.)

The following post by Sam Roggeveen first appeared on The Interpreter: NY Times political reporter Matt Bai is in Sydney, and this morning he spoke at the US Consulate about how the internet has changed US politics. Some interesting observations: -The internet is now part of the US political mainstream, which should be no surprise, given how important it has been for some time to others facets of American life. Politics is a late adopter.-This is the last election cycle in which TV advertising will dominate campaign budgeting.-The online revolution will be more important for politics than was the switch […]

Ali Larijani is emerging as one of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s principle rivals among conservatives, and while some people have suggested that this is an encouraging sign, I’ve never found it too reassuring. This Sami Moubayed profile of him over at Asia Times Online gives an idea why: The two men differ in style, not in substance. Both want to continue to support Hezbollah in Lebanon. Both want to pursue Iran’s dream of nuclear power for civilian use and refuse to grant concessions to the Americans, and both strive to export the Islamic revolution outside its borders, to neighboring countries […]

The small town of La Verpillière, near Lyon in central France, caused a national uproar when it opened its municipal pool during off-hours for a “women’s only” swimming session. Critics immediately argued that by accomodating the town’s Turkish (read Muslim) minority, the town had violated France’s code of “laïcité,” or separation of government and religion. The only problem being that the session was organized by the town’s outreach services, not the Turkish community, and the participants were women of all religions (and perhaps more significantly, according to the organizers, of all ages), many of whom had refrained from using the […]

The EU has agreed to continue with the ratification process of the Lisbon Treaty, while putting off a formal solution to Ireland’s rejection of it until the next European Council in October. There’s been some mention of a special status for Ireland, and some concessions are already being considered (a Brussels “hands off” policy with regard to Ireland’s neutrality, abortion ban and economic model) in the event the treaty makes it past the seven remaining countries set to vote on it and Ireland goes ahead with a new referendum. According to European Commission President Manuel Barroso, one week wasn’t enough […]

It’s not easy, but with a little imagination you could probably come up with some sort of category that groups together America, Saudi Arabia and China. Consolation pool for the soccer World Cup, for instance, or a snarky “Friends of the Ozone Layer” award. But toss Sweden in there, and the exercise becomes a bit more challenging. Until you consider that yesterday, Sweden’s parliament passed an aggressive surveillance bill that allows its national intelligence agency to scan all telephone and electronic communications that cross the country’s borders for key words without a court order: “By introducing these new measures, the […]

One of my favorite blog discoveries of the past few months is The Interpreter, whose editor Sam Roggeveen has on several occasions forced me to clarify or defend my arguments here in a way that has invariably rendered them more rigorous. As part of the Lowy Institute for International Policy, The Interpreter features a wide array of contributors, all of whom offer smart and insightful analysis of the world and Asia from a distinctly Australian perspective. We’ve already added The Interpreter to our blogroll, but now we’ll be doing a trial run over the next few weeks with some crossposting […]

A few months ago, a friend here in Paris asked me how Americans could consider the Iraq War a failure when it had accomplished its principle strategic goal, namely securing Iraqi oil for American consumption. I argued that the rise in crude oil prices had largely offset whatever advantage had accrued from securing access to it, and that the missing element to his argument was American oil companies — as opposed to the Iraqi government — actually profiting from the oil. As Andrew Sullivan points out here, that missing element will very shortly no longer be missing, making the case […]

You’d think the idea of a naval blockade of Iran would have raised the eyebrows of advocates for an Iran policy that, if it doesn’t manage to prevent a worst case scenario, at least doesn’t start off just a hair-trigger incident away from one. But instead the idea, which I first (and last) saw mentioned offhandedly in the Israeli press about a month ago, has flown under the radar to emerge fullgrown as one of the conventional wisdom options for pressuring Tehran to freeze its uranium enrichment program. According to Laura Rozen, it’s something to keep your eyes on, and […]

Another common China theme is the question of what its growing military budget reveals about its regional and global ambitions. Writing in the current issue of The Washington Quarterly, MIT’s M. Taylor Fravel argues that instead of arguing backwards from worst case scenario assumptions, we should use China’s increasing transparency about its military doctrine as a window into what’s driving its military buildup. He identifies five principle strategic goals found in speeches by Chinese military policy makers and Chinese military scholarship: regime security, territorial integrity, national unification (preventing Taiwan’s secession), maritime security and regional stability. He then analyzes the elements […]

We’re used to reading about China in the context of increasing competition for scarce natural resources, most notably energy, iron and eventually water. Now Gérard-François Dumont, in a French-language article over at DiploWeb, reminds us that as an indirect consequence of its demographic campaign to limit population growth, China’s facing a shortage of a pretty essential human resource: girls. According to Dumont, in every five-year age bracket from birth to post-adolescence (0-4, 5-9, 10-14, 15-19), there are at least five million more Chinese boys than girls. The potential internal consequences range from domestic societal instability, an aging population on the […]

The New York Times reports that the most dire predictions about the effects of Cyclone Nargis on the Burmese people have not occurred: . . . doctors and aid workers returning from remote areas of the [Irrawaddy] delta are offering a less pessimistic picture of the human cost of the delay in reaching survivors. They say they have seen no signs of starvation or widespread outbreaks of disease. While it is estimated that the cyclone may have killed 130,000 people, the number of lives lost specifically because of the junta’s slow response to the disaster appears to have been smaller […]