WPR Blog Archive

I think it’s safe to say that French President Nicolas Sarkozy has yet to find the sweet spot for situating French foreign policy since U.S. President Barack Obama took office. In Sarkozy’s first year in office, he got great mileage out of combining his dynamic energy with President George Bush’s political bankruptcy to create a sort of credibility for French diplomacy. He used his leverage expertly, in both European politics (today’s final ratification of the Lisbon Treaty culminates his initial EU initiative) and in transatlantic affairs (backing up a desperate Bush on Iran and Afghanistan). But being the best (only?) […]

One of the ironies of human thought is the way in which a new conceptual paradigm initially empowers effective action by challenging outmoded assumptions, only to later become hardened and resistant to empirical challenges itself. At that point, the once-revolutionary system of thought often does little more than empower the stubborn preference for theory over reality. That process used to take generations, but with the advent of modern communications, the pace has accelerated. I think it’s possible to argue that in the case of the U.S. Army’s COIN doctrine, we now have an example of it happening over the course […]

If you’re interested in a political scorecard for Afghanistan — post-election fiasco — from a non-Coalition perspective, MK Bhadrakumar has a pretty sobering assessment at Asia Times Online. The essential takeaway is that in going after Afghan President Hamid Karzai but failing to either effectively sideline him or force him to accept an acceptable power-sharing arrangement, the Obama administration — and Western governments in general — emerge dramatically weakened. The irony, according to Bhadrakumar, is that in emphasizing legitimacy as the election’s litmus test, the West burned its bridges with a Karzai team that is actually well-positioned to deal with […]

Another lawfare development to keep your eye on, this one in South Africa. Apparently the investigations that went into the Goldstone Report also turned up evidence of South African nationals fighting in Gaza on behalf of the IDF. It’s not clear from the article in what capacity they were fighting, that is, whether they were contractors, mercenaries or Jewish South Africans who enlisted in the IDF out of solidarity. In any event, a group of South African lawyers is trying to build the case for a war crimes investigation. We’ve already seen some of the legal difficulties that have arisen […]

Over at Kings of War, Paula Broadwell has a review and discussion of Mark Moyar’s book on leadership in counterinsurgency, “A Question of Command.” According to Broadwell’s reading (I haven’t read the book itself), Moyar presents an alternative to the dominant population-centric approach to COIN, whereby the civilian population represents the center of gravity to be won over through improved security and better governance. Instead, Moyar argues, the determinant factor in counterinsurgency is the leadership elites on both sides, leading him to examine what qualities should then be selected for in COIN leadership. The qualities he arrives at seem pretty […]

There are probably still a few more twists and turns ahead, but for now it seems as if Iran has backed out of the draft agreement to ship its enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment and processing into fuel rods. I mentioned last week that the Iranian political consensus that saw no real satisfactory options in the negotiations mirrored the view from Western capitals, and presented the makings of a mutually sub-optimal deal. But this, from the NY Times, seems to suggest that the Iranian government’s domestic room for maneuver might be even more limited than that of the Western […]