WPR Blog Archive

To the Editors, Richard Weitz [“Unity of Guam States Threatened in Efforts to Realize Energy Potential,” July 10, 2008] is a correct that the GUAM Organization would be doomed to extinction without Azerbaijan, and that the organization’s future depends on Azerbaijan’s economic resources and transit potential. However, the portrayal of Azerbaijan as a member country that impedes GUAM’s democratic development, along with the fanciful notion that it is considering quitting the organization, is wholly inaccurate. One should not forget that the very idea of GUAM began with the late President of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev who brought the initiative before his […]

“Syria and Lebanon are one country” — that is what a Syrian security officer said when a reporter of the Israeli daily Haaretz wondered why Lebanese journalists were attending a press conference with President Bashar al-Assad in Paris that was supposedly open “only for Syrian journalists.” It is this kind of thinking that made many diplomats and politicians question if French President Nicolas Sarkozy was right to invite his Syrian counterpart to Paris to attend the inauguration of a “Union for the Mediterranean” and to stay on to join the festivities for Bastille Day. But Haaretz analyst Zvi Bar’el seems […]

While Sunday’s launch summit of the Union for the Mediterranean produced little in the way of real results (see Frida Ghitis’ WPR rundown here), it was notable for producing such a large group of political winners in a region so often characterized by zero sum rivalries. That the summit even came off at all is already a symbolic victory for Nicolas Sarkozy, and the image it gave of an active, dynamic French diplomacy is political gold. Getting all the Arab Mediterranean nations (besides Libya) and Israel to the same table reinforces France’s role as a trusted intermediary, as does the […]

Thinking out loud a bit about the news out of Iraq, what’s interesting is how the Iraqi government, by preempting the call for American troop withdrawals, has essentially appropriated what was originally formulated as an American leverage point (conditional disengagement) and used it against us. The political calculation in Baghdad is that we now need Iraq more than Iraq needs us. But what makes it impossible to really assess the significance of the development, besides the fact that it has yet to be put into ink, is that the political calculation will ultimately depend on the domestic security calculation, and […]

Now that the world is paying attention to Asia, what is Asia paying attention to? Central Asia. Specifically, Central Asian energy, according to this post over at 2point6billion.com. China and India are both making big pushes not only to secure oil and gas supplies, but also to establish military bases and defense agreements, and the scramble for a toehold in the region has broader strategic implications: “The global order is re-dividing into roughly two de facto blocs — one has the US at its core and the other has Russia-China at its core. Energy is the major dividing line between […]

With all the talk recently about commander-in-chief qualifications and alleged shifts in Barack Obama’s Iraq policy, I’m surprised this Defense News interview with Barack Obama from last week didn’t get more attention. (It might be behind a free registration wall, but it’s worth the thirty second sign-up.) It’s a lengthy, in-depth, hardhitting conversation about a wide range of defense issues, and in sharp contrast with this John McCain interview from last October, you can almost feel the initial tension in the room. Almost as if the DN editors are testing Obama out. What’s great about the interview — including Obama’s […]

It looks like Nicolas Sarkozy will have a full house on Sunday for the launch summit of the Union for the Meditaerranean. After weeks of uncertainty about Turkey’s participation, President Abdullah Gul just announced he’d be arriving in Paris tomorrow. His visit coincides with what Turkish FM Ali Babacan called “positive signals” from the EU regarding the opening of new negotiation chapters for Turkey’s EU accession. Turkey is increasingly tying its participation in the UM — which seems more and more crucial as Turkey’s regional influence (see this and thi on PM Erdogan’s visit to Baghdad) grows — to its […]

For anyone interested in the state of play of Indian politics regarding the U.S.-India nuclear deal, this interview with the main opposition (BJP) party leader L.K. Advani from The Hindu is worth a read. Unlike the Left Party, which until this week was part of the government majority and opposes any strategic relationship with the U.S. on principle, Advani expressed his party’s desire in the post-Cold War era to develop a more solid relationship with the U.S.: I said several times that India and the USA are the two major democracies of the world — one the strongest, the other […]

A few weeks ago, we commenced a World Politics Review reader survey, which we announced on this blog, in our email newsletters, and on banner ads on our front page. Thanks to each and every one of the hundreds of World Politics Review readers who participated. We learned a lot, and your feedback will help us improve WPR in myriad ways in the coming months. Those who took the survey might also recall that we also promised to give one lucky survey taker an Apple iPhone. Yesterday, from the hundreds of email addresses submitted, we randomly drew one. And the […]

WASHINGTON D.C. — Both the Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs committees convened Wednesday to discuss the many strategic challenges posed by Iran — two meetings only amplified in significance following the news that Iran had test-launched nine missiles earlier in the day. Opening the House committee’s hearing, Chairman Howard L. Berman spoke about Iran’s missile test most directly: To illustrate the immediacy of [the Iranian threat], we need look no further than today’s news of an Iranian long-range missile test – a missile capable of carrying a nuclear payload to Israel. This, coupled with the belligerent talk from […]

Outside of the U.S., no other country has borne the brunt of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns more than Great Britain. So it’s noteworthy that morale in the British armed forces has plummeted, as this BBC article reports. The Guardian questions the representativeness of the sample, but the report jibes with anecdotal accounts of “alarmingly low” levels of British army morale that I encountered while researching the French Livre Blanc series. I haven’t been able to find anything on U.S. Army morale (if anyone has any links, please forward them), but what strikes me is how this kind of intensive, […]

Iran’s missile test is getting a lot of attention, which is to be expected given the amount of posturing going on on both sides right now. (As an idea of how out of control the media “psy ops” have gotten, there’s this article in Press TV citing Iraqi press reports of Israeli war planes secretly based in Iraq in preparation for an attack on Iran.) To my mind, the missile test launch seems like the kind of signal you’d expect the Iranians to send following the much publicized “training operation” over the Mediterranean and Greece a few weeks back. What’s […]

There’s a fascinating discussion taking place over at The Interpreter about the basis of a stable regional order for Asia, beginning here with a post by Raoul Heinrichs about the challenges facing the “Concert of Asia” model, continuing here with Hugh White’s more optimistic take (that nonetheless includes the argument that one of the preconditions for a stable regional order is a Japanese nuclear arsenal), and winding up here with Sam Roggeveen’s “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?” reaction to the Japanese nuclear proposition. Very much worth a read, with the likelihood of more to come.

ARUSHA, Tanzania — If you turn over your camera and passport, stroll through the airport-style metal detector, continue on past the weary clerks and anxious lawyers in the courtyard, and enter the fourth floor chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda — occupying, for a decade now, a conference center-turned-U.N. compound here — you can listen to the still-unfolding tales of the horrific genocide that killed 800,000 people. Though few Americans are likely aware of it, the wheels of international justice at the ICTR — a red-headed stepchild to its counterpart in the Hague — are still in spin. […]

Call me a crank, but when everyone starts agreeing on something, I start looking for flaws in the argument. I get the feeling that Steven Metz is the same way, which is probably why I get such a kick out of reading his work. In this case it’s a short op-ed (.pdf) from the Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute questioning the gathering consensus that the U.S. Army needs to be expanded. Metz points out that the troops needed to ease the strain caused by Iraq and Afghanistan will take five years to generate, especially the officer corps. If we […]

According to this WaPo article, the clock will most likely run out on the U.S.-India deal before Congress has a chance to approve it. But if you think that means that Indian PM Manmohan Singh has jeopardized his government coalition for nothing, think again. Because once the deal has been approved by the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, India will pretty much have a clean bill of health to pursue nuclear deals with third parties, like France and Russia. Indian public opinion will probably be easier to win over, a third party deal would put fewer constraints on Indian […]

Democracy Arsenal’s Max Bergmann takes the American foreign policy establishment to task for basically ignoring the EU, in a post he tiled, The EU and its Rise: While conservative foreign policy thinkers have always dismissed the importance of the EU, the progressive foreign policy establishment has really not been much better. Most still abide by the view that the EU should not duplicate or infringe upon NATO and will point to the importance of continued enlargement of the EU into the Balkans and Turkey, but few actually seem to think that Europe will have any real role in foreign affairs […]