WPR Blog Archive

Recently, Poland and Russia have been having a little dust up over the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, in anticipation of tomorrow’s 70th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland. To calm things down, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin penned a piece for the Polish daily, Gazeta, addressing himself to the Polish people. It’s a conciliatory appeal that seeks to address Polish sensitivities while using pre-WWII Great Power maneuverings to argue for Russia’s place in the European security architecture. And it illustrates what I meant earlier when I said that the Poles stand to gain from a more cooperative atmosphere between Russia and […]

President Barack Obama’s presidential heroes are Lincoln and FDR, but if Afghanistan spins out of control, he is more likely to find himself compared to Lyndon B. Johnson. The latter’s major agenda of social change at home — the Great Society — was undercut by a war in Vietnam he couldn’t win. Like Johnson, Barack Obama came to the White House with the promise of social change — and a war in Afghanistan inherited from his predecessor that shows no signs of resolution. Recently, the New York Times reported that in June Obama invited a number of American historians to […]

Ever since I got back from vacation, I’ve been putting off one unavoidable post. It has to do with Afghanistan, where the online debate seems to have shifted from tactics to strategy. Namely, does the U.S. have a vital strategic interest in Afghanistan-Pakistan that justifies our continued military presence there? I think I’ve been dreading formulating my thoughts on this one because in some ways, I think the theoretical debate is irrelevant. Until we’re operating in support of a credible and legitimate national government, until we have a unity of command that includes allies willing to fight and able to […]

Should the reports of a relocation of European-based missile defense prove true, expect to hear a lot more along the lines of this coming out of Eastern Europe, from the NY Times article: “It is clear that Eastern Europe is out of the epicenter of thisAmerican administration,” said Piotr Paszkowski, a spokesman forPoland’s foreign minister. Just keep in mind that driving the aggrieved laments, of course, is not so much a profound sense of abandonment or betrayal, but rather profound concerns over money. Poland is in the midst of a major and sorely needed defense modernization, reflecting its increasing ambitions […]

Recent reports that IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei is resisting pressure from Western governments to make public intelligence reports demonstrating past Iranian weaponization efforts as part of its nuclear program got SWJ’s Robert Haddick pretty worked up. But they strike me as a bit disingenuous. After all, as the IAEA’s just-released Iran report (.pdf, via ACW) makes clear, the agency is having some trouble getting Tehran to respond to the weaponization claims because of restrictions placed by the source countries on sharing the intelligence with the Iranians. So if ElBaradei has his hands tied on sharing the dossier with the Iranians, […]

Chinese authorities have launched a new voluntary system for organ donation in a bid to end the country’s much-criticized dependence on body parts from executed prisoners. Human rights advocates had long called for reform of the previous system, challenging it as ripe for abuses. Authorities are launching the new public donation system with massive public awareness campaigns in 10 cities and provinces before taking it nationwide. Authorities will reportedly pair up donors with recipients and operate a publicly available waiting list to promote fairness and transparency. Under the old system, China — which routinely executes more prisoners on a yearly […]

Against my better instincts, I’m going to try to develop the thought that I pithily summarized yesterday by saying that I returned from a two-week vacation and media fast with the sense that the Middle East is “overrated” as a strategic focus of U.S. interests. Against my better instincts, because it goes against 40 years of U.S. strategic calculations, and involves an iconoclastic re-evaluation of the longterm impact of President George W. Bush’s ill-advised, badly intentioned and poorly conceived decision to invade Iraq. I will then try my best to publish the post before second thoughts lead me to dispatch […]

Smartest thing I’ve read on NATO’s future strategic mission, not surprisingly by Zbigniew Brzezinski (via Thomas P.M. Barnett). A longer version of the essay also appears in the new issue of Foreign Affairs. Essentially, NATO uses partnerships with other regional security organizations (CSTO, SCO) to participate in out-of-region security challenges, thereby avoiding gathering mothballs in Europe. The added advantage is that it reduces Russian and Chinese anxiety over NATO encroaching into their neighborhoods when the need — or desire, in the case of Georgia and/or Ukraine — arises. It also allows for NATO involvement in regional security solutions in the […]

Anand, commenting over at Joshua Foust’s Registan blog, comes up with about the best analysis I’ve seen of the strategic incoherence of our Afghanistan mess: There seem to be three different strategies . . . on three different planets: 1) Short-term “TRIAGE” or improvement in security (McChrystal, Abu Muqawama and most of the press).2) Medium-term Afghan capacity building (CSTC-A, OMLTs, TTs, civilian advisers to GIRoA civilian agencies).3) Long-term economic development (UNAMA’s planet, and the planet thatNGOs, Japan’s, India’s, Germany’s, EU’s and many other internationalaid agencies live on). Whence will the three planets meet? Outside of the improper usage of “whence,” […]

Something funny happened after two weeks without reading a newspaper, looking at a computer screen or checking e-mail. In many ways, it felt like I “checked out” of the world. But in others, it also felt like I checked back into it. Part of it was looking out over the ocean, the horizon and, at night, the stars — as opposed to online news reports — to find out what would be driving events each day. But part of it was also reconnecting with a more concrete, grassroots experience, not so much of the world, but of my world. Focusing […]

Earlier this month, Interpol publicized the results of a first-of-its-kind operation in West Africa aimed at freeing children trafficked to cocoa- and palm-plantation owners. The operation resulted in the arrests of eight people on charges of illegal recruitment of minors and the rescue of 54 children — aged 11-16 — from seven countries. “With Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire producing around three-quarters of the world’s cocoa, it is believed that hundreds of thousands of children are working illegally in the plantations across these two countries alone. The trafficking of children is often camouflaged by the cultural practice of placing young children […]

In the course of private meetings with Kenyan officials on her recent African trip, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressed for the dismissal of the Kenyan chief of police, the attorney general and other government figures she said were linked with corruption and the country’s recent post-election violence. According to the Kenyan paper the Nation, quoting a government minister who was present at one such meeting, Clinton presented the Kenyan government with a list of “violence and corruption suspects,” promising to name, shame and ban them from visiting the United States, the Nation reported. Among older Africans, that would […]

Tunisian authorities continue to permit and encourage rights abuses under the guise of fighting terrorism and promoting national security, Amnesty International charges in a new report. “The government portrays Tunisia as a country where the rule of law prevails, but that is far from the reality. In practice, the Tunisian authorities continue to carry out arbitrary arrests and detentions, allow torture and use unfair trials, all in the name of the fight against terrorism. This is the harsh reality behind the official rhetoric,” Malcom Smart, director of AI’s Middle East and North Africa Program said in a statement. The report, […]

Whether it is better to continue the quest for Mideast peace with small steps, or go for a “grand bargain,” is a question that has been hotly debated for quite some time. Earlier this year, two preeminent experts on the subject, Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, offered President Obama their advice about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and they repeated the core of their argument in a recent New York Times op-ed piece that was published under the ominous title “The Two-State Solution Doesn’t Solve Anything.” Particularly the longer of the two pieces made for rather surprising reading, because Agha and Malley […]

Over at the Columbia Journalism Review, I have a quick rundown of the continuing American media war between Georgia and Russia. But there is something I left out, and it speaks to how we can try to make sense of global events: opinion journalism. In this Great Newsmedia Contraction we’re all puzzling our way through, most news agencies have either removed or severely constrained their foreign bureaux. As a result, there are far fewer reporters covering global hot spots — both print and TV. A few years back, in 2007, well before the current crisis point newspapers have hit, the […]

There is tremendous buzz about Afghanistan’s elections. Open up any op-ed page, and you can find countless articles about votes and democracy and Karzai not instantly winning, and whatever else. But what I don’t get is why anyone cares.Democratic elections usually rest on a few basic principles: a free and fair vote, an uncoerced selection of candidates, and an agreement by all parties to abide by the results. Afghanistan doesn’t quite qualify for any of these. *Take the idea of a free and fair vote. Pajhwok, an internationally-funded independent Afghan news service, has an entire news page set aside for […]

The ongoing security fears every Iraqi grapples with are multiplied for members of the country’s gay community, which is being targeted for punishment by homegrown militias across the country, Human Rights Watch says in a new report. Several hundred men are believed to have lost their lives as a result of a campaign against gays that began in earnest in the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City earlier this year and has spread to other cities, according to the report, “They Want Us Exterminated: Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq.” Punishments carried out by militia members range from beatings […]