WPR Blog Archive

From a Der Spiegel article (via today’s WPR Media Roundup) on the failure of the latest WTO negotiations on the Doha round: Still, the real reason for the failed negotiations runs deeper. Concerns about globalization have become greater than the hopes it engenders, even in the industrialized nations and the successful emerging economies. . . The result is the death of a grand idea. . . In the coming months, experts expect to see a sharp increase in the number of bilateral negotiations aimed at setting up mini trade alliances. Now this mirrors a theme that I’ve been developing on […]

The first I’d heard of Aafia Siddiqui was yesterday on Arif Rafiq’s Pakistan Policy Blog. Today both McClatchy and the LA Times are on the story. Rafiq’s post, as well as the McClatchy article, gives a pretty detailed account of why the American version of Siddiqui’s arrest “. . .doesn’t pass the sniff test,” as her lawyer told the LAT. There’s no way to turn the sudden re-emergence of a woman who’s been “disappeared” in an intelligence black hole into a public relations windfall. But with five years to prepare a story, you’d think the Bush administration could do better […]

If you haven’t seen it on the WPR front page yet, give John Nagl’s and Brian Burton’s piece on the need for building civilian institutional capacity for counterinsurgency and nation-building operations a look. Obviously conflict zones are going to command a great deal of American attention and resources in the years ahead, and as Nagl and Burton make clear, unless civilian agencies adapt their training and institutional orientation, they will increasingly see their expertise farmed out to, or absorbed by, the military. As the article also makes clear, the necessary adaptation won’t take place until these agencies are funded and […]

According to this CFR backgrounder, neighboring Arab states are increasing their aid to and engagement with Iraq as a pre-emptive security investment in the event of an increasingly expected American troop withdrawal. Of course, forcing Iraq’s neighbors to assume more of a burden in stabilizing the country was one of the logical underpinnings of a withdrawal timeline, along with the pressure it would place on the Iraqi political process to make progress on power sharing arrangements. So, basically, two for two. Meanwhile, why does nobody ever mention the November 2006 midterm elections, which conclusively demonstrated that American public opinion had […]

Speculating over whether the U.S.or Israel will launch military strikes against Iran’s nuclear program is a pretty crowded market these days, so I prefer to concentrate on reading the tea leaves about potential diplomatic solutions to the crisis. And if you look at who’s racking up the frequent flyer miles in the Middle East these days, there’s some thought-provoking possibilities. Fresh off his trip to Tehran, where he denied carrying a message to the Iranian leadership, Syrian President Bashir Assad decided to take a little seaside vacation in Bodrum, Turkey, where he will be joined by Turkish PM Recep Tayyip […]

With energy policy pandering the topic of the moment, I found this Foreign Policy interview with Lehman Brothers’ chief energy economist, Robert Morse, noteworthy for his suggestion that the market might already be correcting itself on the fundamentals. Morse underlines the opacity of both supply (ie. How much reserve capacity does OPEC really have?) and demand (ie. How much oil does China really need?) as a driver of the recent price surge. But with increases in Iraqi production and global inventories, and a cost-driven decline in demand, Morse sees oil back in the double digits by election day. If what […]

Despite the steady stream of suggestive reports about Russia’s desire to regain a military presence in Cuba, here’s what a Cuban diplomat had to say about the matter: However, a high-ranking Cuban diplomat said on Saturday that the Cuban leadership had no intention of resuming military cooperation with Russia, especially after the surprise closure of the Lourde’s listening post. The electronic monitoring and surveillance facility near Havana at Torrens, also known as the Lourdes facility, the largest Russian SIGINT site abroad, was shut down in October 2001 by then-president Vladimir Putin. “We were not even notified about the decision [by […]

PREAH VIHEAR, Cambodia — The standoff between Bangkok and Phnom Penh over control of temples along the border of the two countries escalated after Thai troops moved into and occupied another holy site in the disputed border region. The second temple at Ta Moan Thom is about 200 miles west of Preah Vihear. A Cambodian government spokesman said Cambodian soldiers would work to avoid any showdown with Thai troops, who were ordered into the area after UNESCO responded to lobbying by Cambodia and listed Preah Vihear as a World Heritage site. Reports said 70 Thai soldiers had been occupying the […]

You’d think that after all the recent drama over the Indian nuclear safeguard agreement, the news that the IAEA Board of Governors approved the deal last Friday would make a splash. But it seemed to pass under the radar. Outside of India, that is, where opponents of the deal are up in arms because it puts India at the mercy of both IAEA inspections and the Hyde Act’s prohibition on further nuclear testing, with no guarantees for nuclear fuel supplies in the event of interruptions. In other words, while most people are worried that India’s exemption from the NPT undermines […]

Nikolas Gvosdev offers a caveat in the assessment of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s life and career: . . .[A] critic of a totalitarian system is not ipso facto a supporter of American-style liberalism. Nor, in seeking to destroy the old system, will such a person automatically endorse everything that the successor regime does. Solzhenitsyn was a bold and prophetic critic to the evils of the Soviet system; he was horrified by what occurred in post-Soviet, 1990’s “free” Russia. Solzhenitsyn’s trajectory is important to keep in mind as we expect and wait for Iranian and Chinese versions; critics of their own systems will […]

Call it coincidence, but on the very day that the two-week ultimatum for Iran to respond to the P5+1’s “freeze for freeze” offer runs out, Le Monde got its hands on detailed minutes of the Geneva meeting between Javier Solana and Saeed Jalili, attended by William Burns, two weeks ago in Geneva. And not surprisingly, the account isn’t very flattering for Jalili. Apparently he managed to completely ignore Burns, seated only two chairs away from Solana, who spoke only to say the following: I’m happy to be here to transmit a simple message: the United States are serious in their […]

Steve Clemons offers an unblinking defense of Richard Holbrooke that amounts to, “The guy ain’t pretty, but he gets the job done.” Comparing him to “global arm-twisters” (talk about a job description) like Brzezinski and Kissinger, Clemons adds: Barack Obama needs someone in close proximity on his foreign policy team that the world knows is tenaciously committed to outcomes and that it fears just a bit. Obama needs to be about hope, about light — but he needs someone who can pursue and defend American interests against thugs in the dark. Clemons is making the case for Holbrooke as Secretary […]

Melissa Brouwer at the U.S. Diplomacy blog flags last week’s Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing titled, Defining the Military’s Role Towards Foreign Policy. The fact that the military is absorbing both the budget and certain functions of foreign policy is pretty clear by now. Ascommittee Chairman Joe Biden pointed out in his opening remarks (.pdf), the share of development assistance channeled through the Pentagon quadrupled from 5.6 percent in 2002 to 21.7 percent in 2005. And Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has sounded repeated warnings about the funding imbalance between the Pentagon and State Department. Here’s why that’s a problem, […]

A propos whether success is possible in Afghanistan, Hampton forwarded me this Time article by Rory Stewart which is must reading. His arguments are specific to Afghanistan, a country he knows intimately from having walked across it in 2002, but also read as a manual of restraint and modesty in the conduct of foreign policy, especially when that foreign policy is increasingly outsourced to the military. I’m tempted to clip a paragraph or two, but instead I’ll just strongly encourage you to click through and read through to the end.

In a WPR piece about the aftermath of Turkey’s Constitutional Court decision that spared the ruling AKP party while imposing financial penalties, Jonas Clark writes that the episode, by demonstrating how out of touch the secularist old guard is with popular sentiment, might provide Turkey with a chance to define a more relevant, contemporary secularism: Caught between these two poles — Islamism and Kemalist secularism — Turkey has yet to stake out a coherent middle way. But a slightly chastened AKP may very well undertake such a course. Instead of waging polarizing and fierce ideological battles that threaten to destabilize […]

With the news that American intelligence has effectively linked Pakistan’s ISI intelligence/security apparatus to militants targeting American and Indian interests in Afghanistan, it’s become obvious that the only real differences between Pakistan and Iran are that, 1) Pakistan already has nuclear weapons while Iran is only allegedly pursuing them; 2) Pakistan is undermining our efforts in Afghanistan while Iran is operating mainly in Iraq; and 3) Pakistan has received $10 billion in American military aid over the past seven years while Iran is the target of American military contingency plans. It also bears mention that unlike Iran, where the central […]