WPR Blog Archive

I’m always glad to find prestigious support for one of my personal bête noires, and that goes double when the prestigious person in question, the National War College’s Michael Mazarr, takes care of two of them at once (.pdf). In this case, it’s the militarization of American diplomacy and the temptation of COIN, both of which he tackles in the current issue of The Washington Quarterly under the title of ‘The Folly of Asymmetric War.’ Mazarr makes a lot of the arguments I’ve been trying to develop on the subject, but more articulately and with a broader base of knowledge […]

In case you haven’t seen it yet, ISIS (via Laura Rozen) has posted an English-language version (.pdf) of the EU3+3 Iran proposal I referred to yesterday. And in comparing it to the last concrete offer made in June 2006, it’s very clear that the major difference is in the political incentives added to sweeten the deal. Here’s the political component, circa 2006: Support for a new conference to promote dialogue and cooperation on regional security issues. Here’s the same section from this week’s offer: -Improving the six countries’ and the EU’s relations with Iran and building up mutual trust.-Encouragement of […]

France’s Livre Blanc was finally released today (French version here and here, parts 1&2, both .pdf), and the only real shock is seeing in print what’s basically trickled out in leaks and declarations over the past few months. It’s a very well-written document, coherently argued and convincingly articulated. As expected, counterterrorism and the integration of defense with homeland security play a prominent role, with an emphasis on developing intelligence capacity, both human and satellite-based, in the context of a newly added Anticipation component. There’s also a significant reduction of the French armed forces, from a total of 271,000 to 225,000 […]

Lots of confusion to sort through when it comes to the EU3+3 proposal just delivered to Iran. Iran rejected the offer. Or it didn’t. The EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels agreed to freeze the assets of Iran’s largest European banking outlet, the Melli Bank. Or it didn’t. And Iran removed $75 billion from its European accounts as a precaution. Unless, of course, it didn’t. The proposal itself (I’ve read the French version here (.pdf), and I’m trying to track down an English version, but you can get a sense of it here and here) offers a trust building “freeze […]

The first I heard that New York City’s manhole covers were made in India was in this offhanded TPM post by Josh Marshall last November. Now it turns out that Indian-made manhole covers are being stolen (from America, but also from Europe and Mumbai) because of the Peking Olympics. 2point6billion.com’s got the details, including what to do about the safety risk of open sewer manholes.

Friday Lunch Club flagged this French language Le Point article over the weekend on France’s diplomatic contacts with Syria. After some initial reservations, Condoleezza Rice has apparently now warmed up to the idea, saying she’s convinced that France will deliver “the right message” to Syria. Now Hurriyet reports that Nicolas Sarkozy is trying to arrange a side meeting between himself, Bashar Assad and Ehud Olmert at the upcoming Union for the Mediterranean conference (to which Syria was conspicuously invited), in order to add French support to Turkish-brokered peace talks between Israel and Syria. (That last clause figures highly on the […]

According to RIA Novosti, Russia-China trade rose 44 percent year on year, to $48 billion last year. Not surprisingly, 90 percent of Russian exports to China consisted of energy products and raw materials, while 40 percent of Chinese exports to Russia were engineering or electronic products. Again, in some ways this kind of reinforcement of bilateral ties among strategic rivals represents a threat to America’s interests. But in other, broader ways, it lessens the potential for a conflict between them that could threaten the stability of the global order. With regard to the more specific question of how China’s growing […]

Could the Lisbon Treaty somehow survive the Irish referendum that rejected it last week? That’s what the EU foreign ministers are trying to figure out in Brussels today and tomorrow. Opponents are calling the treaty dead, while supporters (like French President Nicolas Sarkozy) are trying to have it voted on by the eight countries yet to definitively pronounce on it. In the event it survives all eight, look for Ireland to be asked to hold a followup referendum on it towards the end of the year, with a major part of France’s EU presidency in the second half of 2008 […]

Whether or not Turkey belongs in the European Union is one that has yet to be decided. Whether or not they belong in the European Cup semifinals was decided last night in one of the most stunning comebacks in the tournament’s history. After dominating the first half and weathering a resurgent Turkish offense throughout the second, the Czech squad fell apart in the last fifteen minutes, giving up three goals to lose 3-2. The Turkish side even played the final two minutes of added time with a ten-man squad and a midfielder in goal, as their keeper had been sent […]

WASHINGTON – The future of U.S. trade assistance and the effects of Chinese hemispheric expansion dominated Hill foreign policy hearings here last week. On Thursday, the Senate Committee on Finance debated the utility of U.S. trade preference programs, two of which are set to expire at the end of this year. Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., opened the hearing with an appeal to the committee to consider the United States’ trade goals at large: “For us and for our neighbors, we cannot let these programs expire. But for us and for our neighbors, we must make our preference programs the best […]

If you have an interest in French politics, you probably already know about Art Goldhammer’s blog, French Politics. It’s the most in depth and intelligent English language treatment of French domestic politics I’ve seen, equal parts policy analysis and cultural criticism. It’s also the principle reason I don’t spend more time writing about the subject here. Art also has a piece on Sarkozy’s foreign policy in e-International Relations which dovetails nicely with this week’s WPR series on the French strategic posture review. I’ve seen Sarkozy’s method referred to as that of an “avocat d’affaires” before (literally business lawyer, but with […]

I agree with Shawn Brimley that the risk of the Army’s new emphasis on COIN tactics is less that we’ll lose the capacity to fight conventional wars against major powers like Russia and China. (Our military capacity is light years ahead of theirs, and let’s face it, that’s still what nuclear deterrence is about.) The risk is that we’ll fight more COIN-type wars of choice. It’s tempting to think of our newly evolved COIN approach as a precision tool capable of laser-guided interventions. But while the military component is necessary to secure areas in which to apply the political solution, […]

According to the Telegraph, the Irish government has now conceded defeat in the Lisbon Treaty referendum. This is pretty stunning, because the Lisbon Treaty was pretty much the last hope to get Europe back on track after what amounts to 12 years of paralyzed institutional construction. Ireland could conceivably be asked to conduct a do-over once the treaty is ratified by the rest of the member nations. But suffice it to say, I don’t think any of Europe’s foreign ministries are going to be taking the weekend off. I know there are a lot of Euro-skeptics, both in Europe and […]

The alarmist scenarios about China’s rise would worry me a lot more if the Chinese were hellbent on using globalization to slowly insinuate traditional Chinese culture on an unsuspecting world. Outside of tofu and soy sauce, though, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Instead, the Chinese elites seem much more interested in drinking French wine and buying contemporary art (albeit primarily Chinese contemporary art for the time being). To me, the tensions that continued globalization will inevitably raise between China (the government) and China (the people) seem by far more potentially alarming than those it will raise between China […]

Back in the mid-90’s, when I was working as an intervention counselor with adolescent gang members in Santa Cruz and Watsonville (Calif.), I once proposed paying the kids to join neighborhood watch groups. The logic was that by both offering them alternatives to illegal income and empowering them with a responsibility to protecting people in their neighborhoods as opposed to victimizing them, we could get them to buy into the system. Needless to say, my idea was shot down like a Georgian drone over Abkhazia by the head of the County Juvenile Probation Dept, to the general amusement of all […]

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I’m not sure about Phil Carter’s take on the Madeleine Albright NYTimes op-ed that’s generating a good deal of discussion. Here’s the key passage from Albright’s piece: . . .And despite recent efforts to enshrine the doctrine of a “responsibility to protect” in international law, the concept of humanitarian intervention has lost momentum. The global conscience is not asleep, but after the turbulence of recent years, it is profoundly confused. Some governments will oppose any exceptions to the principle of sovereignty because they fear criticism of their own policies. Others will defend the sanctity of sovereignty unless and until they […]