WPR Blog Archive

I think the trouble Art Goldhammer of French Politics identifies here is the kind oftrouble Nicolas Sarkozy welcomes. The two things Sarkozy really lackeddomestically in the first year of his presidency were a real crisis anda real opponent. They’re the gas that makes his political engine run,and he’s gotten both in spades on the European level during France’s EUpresidency. As for the opponents Art mentions, I don’t think Sarkozyloses much politically by counting Czech president Vaclav Klaus amonghis enemies. Same goes for President Bush. In his response to thefinancial crisis, I think Sarkozy, despite his wild ideologicalopportunism (neoliberal to state-directed […]

Without indulging in any speculation about whether or not it representsa message of some sort, and if so to and from whom, the Americanspecial ops strike on Syrian territory is likely to have severalconsequences. The first and probably most significant is to make aSyrian-Israel peace deal less likely. Syria might be powerless toretaliate for the humiliation of repeated violations of itssovereignty, but it still has some leverage in the neighborhood, andthis sort of thing won’t make Damascus very enthusiastic about givingit up, especially with the prospect of a Netanyahu government poised to take power in Israel. That in turn clouds […]

I got an email alerting me to MDC’s analysis over at Foreign Policy Watch of the export guarantees proposal for Iranian enriched uranium that I mentioned earlier, reminding me that this was in fact where I first learned of the idea. So a belated citation is in order. He raises a good point about how exactly to determine what constitutes “excess” uranium, considering Iran has no functioning reactors, and the nuclear fuel for the one that’s soon to go online at Bushehr was delivered by Russia. This is, of course, one factor that raised so many red flags about Iran’s […]

I just got finished reading David Sanger’s NY Times article comparing the foreign policy positions of the two presidential candidates. Like David Shorr at Democracy Arsenal, I agree that it’s “probably the best stand-in we’ll get for the foreign policy debate that might’ve been,” and an illustration of how the much-derided written press can often confront candidates’ position more effectively than the presidential debate format, which veers towards the theatrical for obvious reasons. Like Shorr, too, I agree that John McCain’s late reversal on the acceptability of an NPT-compliant uranium enrichment program in Iran is probably closer to my own […]

I mentioned the other day that while China had turned down Pakistan’s request for a loan, it had agreed to sell it two nuclear reactors. Given Pakistan’s non-NPT status, you might be wondering how China can do that without approval by the Nuclear Suppliers Group. James Acton at Arms Control Wonk explains that it can’t, but that it really doesn’t matter: But, realistically, all the NSG has at itsdisposal to enforce its rules is the restraint of its member states. IfChina does sell the plants to Pakistan what’s the NSG going to do? Write China a very strongly worded letter? […]

It’s about time. The Army’s difficulty in standing up translators is a piece waiting to be written.

A quick followup to Benjamin Friedman’s and Justin Logan’s well-argued piece against NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia: it ain’t happening. It occurs to me that given Barack Obama’s foreign policy positions — and I’m thinking about upping the ante in Afghanistan, support for European missile defense, and NATO expansion — the honeymoon with Europe is likely to be a short one.

It comes just before the end, but eventually Warren Strobel’s latest McClatchy gem on the largely successful American COIN operation in the Philippines makes the point that leaped out to me after the first couple of paragraphs: While this mission could provide lessons for other global arenas, it’s also unique in many ways. The Philippines is a majority Catholic country with a functioning central government; a long, if checkered, relationship with the U.S.; and leaders willing to fight terrorism. Of all those criteria, I’d say the functioning central government is the most significant. When you start out with a policy […]

A few months back I was talking with an aquaintance in the telecom industry. I mentioned an article I had just read about leading Chinese telecom companies choosing 3G standards that weren’t compatible with international norms. Her response was basically that when you have the kind of domestic market that China has, international norms will eventually come to you. Fast forward a few months and a couple economic meltdowns later and we find, via an excellent NY Times piece, that when the U.S. (and the world) sneezes, China might not catch cold, but it does reach for its handkerchief. Among […]

The interesting aspect to this Josh Paltrow piece in the WaPo isn’t the “dog bites man” angle of U.S. Peace Corps volunteers discovering that the Peace Corps is actually an instrument of American foreign policy (in this case, in Bolivia). What struck me was the citizen diplomacy angle of some of the volunteers who were withdrawn from the country by the Peace Corps choosing to go back independently to continue their projects. Individuals really can make a difference, both within the official context of the Peace Corps or outside of it. Sometimes I think we lose sight of the fact […]

Hard to know what went on in that high-level timeout in Helsinki the other day between JCS Chief Adm. Mike Mullen and his Russian counterpart, but I’d be surprised if today’s declaration by Russian FM Sergey Lavrov that Russia will not veto a UNSC resolution extending American troop presence in Iraq in the absence of a deal between Baghdad and Washington is just a happy coincidence. Mullen went on talk tough in Lithuania about the need to better integrate Baltic defense into NATO’s architecture. But the Baltic is already a done deal. To my mind, Russia’s major strategic blunder in […]

A number of very interesting aspects to this NY Times article on how the Goergia War has impacted Azerbaijan. First, it illustrates how the argument that Russia will pay a longterm cost for its belligerence, while valid, is limited to those countries (and investors) who have a choice as to whether or not they deal with Russia, or who have little to fear from Russia’s demonstrated willingness to use military force. As this article makes clear, Azerbaijan meets neither of those criteria, and so it’s not surprising that “the chess board has been tilted.” Second, while many analysts have focused […]

In response to a post a few weeks back on the economics of COIN, WPR reader and Northwestern University professor Jon Caverley directed my attention to some related work he’s done (.pdf) on the question of why democracies choose to wage counterinsurgencies, despite firepower-heavy military doctrines that are ill-suited to winning them. Caverley uses a process analysis of the Vietnam War to argue that: . . .capitalized military doctrine results in a condition of moral hazard for the average voter, shifting the costs away from the median voter and leading a democratic state to pursue attempts at military coercion whose […]

Good news for sane people. There should be the nation-state equivalent of a timeout, whereby countries with tense relations be required to send high-level delegations to Helsinki or Oslo for “secretly arranged meetings” that wind up in the next day’s papers.

Good point by Matt Eckel at The Global Buzz regarding Iran’s ability to cut off the flow of oil in the Straits of Hormuz as a deterrent against an American attack, most recently cited by Robert Kaplan in his Atlantic piece on Iran’s asymmetric naval strategy: The problem with Kaplan’s logic, however, is that it assumes Iran is only a crude oil exporter; that by attacking maritime shipping in the Strait of Hormuz it will only reap the bounty of higher oil prices. Except Iran isn’t only an crude oil exporter. It is a major importer of gasoline and other […]

Nikolas Gvosdev, writing at the Atlantic Council, is the latest analystI’ve seen make the case that Cyprus — and not Kosovo — is theprecedent to study when considering the aftermath of the Georgia War. Sothe fact that Georgia-Russian talks may have broken down in Geneva maynot have much of an impact on Europe’s relations with Russia, just asnon-resolution of the Cyprus issue over the last three decades has notdramatically affected either the U.S. or European relationship withTurkey. In other words, we already have a precedent of the Westperfectly willing and able to compartmentalize such problems. Europeanstates can easily proclaim their […]

I just finished reading Nir Rosen’s Rolling Stone piece on his gonzo “embed”with the Taliban, and to be honest, I find the reaction to the piece as revealingas the article itself: Does it take cojones to go where Rosen went?Yes. (Spencer Ackerman.) Does it blur some legaland ethical lines? Yes. (Dave Dilegge.) Does it blur some factual lines? Yes. (Joshua Foust.) Does itprovide valuable source material for students ofcounterinsurgency? Again, yes. (Andrew Exum.) But does it shed light on the subject? There I’m not so sure. Compared to Dexter Filkins’ NYT Sunday Magazine piece last month on the Pakistani tribal […]