WPR Blog Archive

We tend to think of the war in Afghanistan in terms of its impact on American power, and even for the implications it will have for NATO as an out-of-theater alliance. But here’s a thought: What if the most significant impact of the Afghanistan War is to soothe Germany’s fraught relationship with the use of “hard power”? If so, then a major joint operation launched this week — in which 300 German troops supported 1,200 Afghan soldiers with heavy arms and mortar, light-armored vehicles and air support — marked a turning point. The operation is Germany’s first offensive military campaign […]

The outskirts of Marseille are burning, more than 2,000 acres so far, and the cause of the blaze was an artillery training exercise in a military camp outside the city. More specifically, according to Jean-Dominique Merchet, the fire was likely set off by the pyrotechnic tracer rounds that accompanied the artillery. Having spent six years in the foothills about an hour or so northeast of Marseille, and having done quite a bit of wandering through the parched forest and brush during the high-risk summer fire season, I can tell you that only a moron would shoot off pyrotechnic tracer rounds […]

It occurred to me after yesterday’s post on the new WPR feature issue that I never flagged our previous feature issue, Risk and Resilience in the Globalized Age. That was a major oversight on my part, because the two articles — by John Robb (Global Guerillas) here, and by David Steven and Alex Evans (Global Dashboard) here — are among the most thought-provoking I’ve read on the “big” problems facing policymakers today. Better late than never, though, so definitely give them a look. If you’ve seen “resilience” being tossed around and wondered what people were talking about, or if you’re […]

James Joyner’s got a provocative piece at the National Interest arguing that so far, President Barack Obama’s foreign policy reflects continuity with George W. Bush’s so-called “third term” (i.e., 2006-2008): There are strong signals that a real break will come on some secondaryissues. Obama is much less enthusiastic about missile defense, morelikely to show tough love to Israel and less apt to fervently pursueour half-century-old idiocy in Cuba. But on all the major issues, themovement has been cosmetic. Now, I’d argue that some of the secondary issues are not so secondary (Israel, for instance). I’d also argue that some of […]

For anyone who enters the site through the blog, I very strongly urge you to take a look at the new WPR feature issue, Back to the Future, that just went live today. It’s a really fascinating examination by three insightful foreign policy voices of the continued relevance of some tried-and-true, but nevertheless abandoned, foreign policy approaches from America’s recent history. Michael Cohen explains why the Powell Doctrine is more appropriate today than ever.Eugene Gholz examines how the Nixon Doctrine could be applied to address America’s current strategic challenges. And Robert Litwak discusses why Containment is as valid an approach […]

Lots of attention given to this initial Obama-Gates victory over Senate pork on the F-22. Less to the Gates announcement that the Army will temporarily add 22K troops over the next three fiscal years. For everyone keeping score at home, that’s on top of the 65K for the Army and 27K for the Marine Corps already budgeted for, which itself is on top of the transformation of the Army Reserve (205K) from a strategic reserve to an operational reserve. That’s a lot of extra boots that are, one imagines, meant to be put on the ground.Max Bergmann is a good […]

Georges Malbrunot writing at Le Figaro flags one of the hidden ironies of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s sudden preoccupation with burqas, as well as France’s approach to veils in general — namely, that Indian Sikhs might be affected by the laws, too, and this at a time when France is busy wooing India in a major way. India was the guest of honor at this year’s Bastille Day military parade, reflecting the importance of the French-Indian defense relationship (France is India’s third-largest arms supplier). And French nuclear giant Areva already has some bids in for civil nuclear reactors. According to […]

The NY Times reports that Pakistan is less than keen about the latest Marine offensive in southern Afghanistan, and I think Rob over at Arabic Media Shack has a pretty useful takeaway: Manyin America, especially inside the COIN community, have becomefrustrated with Pakistan lately, wondering why they “don’t get it,” andwon’t develop their own Counter-Insurgency to take out pro-Talibanelements inside Pakistan. It’s quite simple actually: Pakistan and theU.S. do not have mutual interests in this case.Can we just admit this? I’d add that Pakistan and the U.S. do not share a common perception of Pakistan’s interests in this case. And […]

I didn’t see any major notice of this in the American press, but the Times (UK) reported last week that the director of Iran’s nuclear program, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, resigned. Aghazadeh was a political ally of Mir Hossein Moussavi and also closely aligned with Ali Rafsanjani. More importantly, he was an able and effective administrator of Iran’s nuclear program for 12 years, leading the Times to speculate that his resignation was a setback for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I initially had a less optimistic take, wondering whether his departure didn’t leave an opening for Ahmadinejad to fill with a hardliner. […]

Since the events earlier this month inXinjiang, there has been a spateof newsstoriesasking, “Why isn’t the Muslim world protesting against China forcracking down on Uighurs?” Why indeed? There is something a littlepatronizing about the question, with its implicit judgment that thereare worthy and unworthy things to be protesting, and that Muslimsought to justify their apathy towards the Uighurs. (I’m still waitingfor the stories about why the Americans aren’t protesting thesituation in Honduras, or global warming, or any number of otherthings outsiders might think we ought to be protesting.) And there is probably a little reverseschadenfreude, too, if there is a […]

Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers officially signed off on plans Monday to set up a human rights commission at a meeting of the regional organization. The decision creates the region’s first human rights body, but some supporters and human rights groups are disappointed over the severe limitations placed on it. “There are a few countries in ASEAN that are among the most repressive in Asia, if not the world. I could never see how this group could ever agree on anything with teeth,” Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch’s Asia director told the Financial Times. Since some members […]

Pope Benedict XVI’s complex critique of the global economic system in his latest encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), released a couple of weeks ago, is described in Saturday’s New York Times as “remarkable but poorly written.” This is surprising, comments the Times’s religion writer Peter Steinfels, because the German-born pope has “often shown himself [to be] a graceful writer.” Criticism of the document’s style — called “a tough read,” and “molasses-like” — are based on the English version and beg two questions. First, given the enormous amount of expert input required, how much is in the pope’s hand? […]

For some reason, my thoughts keep coming back to this brief passage from Hillary Clinton’s speech yesterday, following her discussion of NATO: At the same time, we are working with our key treaty allies Japan andKorea, Australia, Thailand, and the Philippines and other partners tostrengthen our bilateral relationships as well as trans-Pacificinstitutions. We are both a trans-Atlantic and a trans-Pacific nation. It’s little more than a boilerplate reiteration of a geopolitical reality that dates back to the turn of the 20th century. But it comes at a time when many of our Asian allies have begun to wonder whether our […]

Thomas P.M. Barnett flags an article on a subject I’ve been keeping an eye on recently. According to the WSJ, global migration patterns have reversed, with immigrants increasingly returning to their countries of origin as a result of the global downturn, in addition to actual immigration slowing down. I’d initially expected the reverse to be true, at least in terms of the latter phenomenon. According to the WSJ, the reason why fewer people are setting out for the “lands of opportunity” is that they might just find more opportunity at home. I’ve been doing some reading recently on informal economies, […]

Gay and human rights groups are calling on Lithuania to reconsider a bill curtailing the dissemination of information about homosexuality over concerns it institutionalizes homophobia and curtails free speech. “Far from protecting children, the law deprives young people of their right to freedom of expression and access to information, and risks isolating children who are already amongst the most at-risk of violence at school or within the family,” John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s researcher on Discrimination in Europe said in a press release. The controversial legislation, named the Law on the Protection of Minors against the Detrimental Effect of Public Information, […]

Given all my griping about the war in Afghanistan, I thought I’d pass along two recent articles that offer a more positive outlook on the chances for a successful outcome there. The first is by Peter Bergen in the Washington Monthly (via Matthew Yglesias), the second by Fotini Christia and Michael Semple in Foreign Affairs (via Thomas P.M. Barnett). Bergen attacks what he calls the twin myths that Afghanistan is unconquerable and ungovernable. He argues that both can be accomplished with the current military footprint (augmented by increased Afghan security forces), combined with an expanded and internationalized civilian footprint. Essentially, […]

I’m trying not to be too cynical about the speeches, because I recognize that they often serve as the birthplace of foreign policy doctrines. I’m not sure if we yet have the makings of an Obama doctrine, per se, since President Barack Obama’s four major speeches have so far been more calibrated to specific audiences, even if there have been some broad declarations of vision. But Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech yesterday seems like an ambitious attempt to collect the scattered bits of already articulated principles into a coherent conceptual structure for the Obama administration’s conduct of foreign policy. […]