In October 2015, Russia intervened directly in the conflict in Syria, seeking to prop up its beleaguered ally in Damascus and push back rebel groups that had plunged the country into civil war. The United States, which was backing several insurgent groups fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime, was not impressed.
In the words of U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, two “handshakes” now define the increasingly intimate Indo-U.S. defense partnership. The “strategic handshake” was examined in detail in my last article for The Diplomat. We will now turn our attention to the “technological handshake,” shorthand for the growth in arms sales, technical cooperation, and defense co-production and co-development.
Ilyas El Omari is on the offensive. The bespectacled 49-year-old activist who heads Morocco's Party of Authenticity and Modernity (PAM) has spent years honing PAM's political message and worldview. Now, with the Kingdom heading into what is shaping up to be a decisive general election on October 7, Omari senses a political opening.
The revelation of recent days that, back in January, President Obama agreed that the United Nations should lift its sanctions against two Iranian state banks which financed Iran's ballistic missile development puts the lie to Washington's claims - stubbornly maintained for more than a year - that it was determined to rein in the Islamic Republic's expanding missile program.
How healthy is Russia, really? Over the past several years, the official narrative of Vladimir Putin's government has been clear and consistent: thanks to firm leadership, the demographic problems that once plagued Russia and the Soviet Union are now effectively a thing of the past.
The problem with high technology is that it can be difficult to understand, leading to what are often confused policy prescriptions. A perfect example is the proposed upcoming transition of the internet-naming function from U.S. to private control - an event that's scheduled to take place just a few days from now, on Sept. 30. While the transition itself isn't necessarily a bad idea, the Obama administration's current plan has definite flaws.
Three years ago this summer, Egyptians took to the streets en masse to vent their frustration at the government of then president Mohamed Morsi. The source of their discontent was the widespread economic stagnation and ideologically driven policies that came to punctuate Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government. The result was nothing short of a counterrevolution, as Morsi was ousted by the country's powerful military in an almost-coup led by his then minister of defense, Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
Last month, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter reflected on the remarkable progress he and his Indian counterpart, Manohar Parrikar, have overseen in bilateral defense ties over the last two years. With his gift for memorable analogies, Carter insisted the budding Indo-U.S. defense partnership was built atop two “important handshakes.” One was a “technological handshake,” a reference to the rapid growth in arms sales, co-development, and technology-sharing. A companion piece to follow this article will explore the technological handshake in greater detail, and the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.
The nuclear threat from North Korea continues to grow, despite numerous strong statements of concern from the United States. But Pyongyang knows that talk is cheap. The more powerful message from American inaction is: keep building.
"We shall proceed with reform and opening up without hesitation," China's President Xi Jinping told his country's top leaders in August 2014 during a symposium marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of former leader Deng Xiaoping. At the time, this pledge appeared sincere. Since taking office in March 2013, Mr. Xi had consistently advocated a reform agenda intended to continue the economic restructuring and national revitalization that Deng had started in 1978. Now, two years later, and despite his consolidation of power, Mr. Xi's reforms are mired in a morass of bureaucratic hurdles and official foot dragging.
Greater cooperation with Russia in the struggle to defeat the Islamic State terrorist group (ISIS) and other extremist elements in the Muslim World is now being urged by a number of prominent Americans. Russia and America both have a problem with Islamists, goes the argument, so we should work together to defeat the common enemy.
In Washington, conventional wisdom has long held that Iran's presence south of the U.S. border constitutes little more than an axis of annoyance. In this telling, Iran's activities in Central and South America - from numerous commercial and trade deals with various nations to the establishment of cultural centers throughout the region - are disorganized, opportunistic, and ultimately of little consequence.
Years from now, historians are sure to view the nuclear deal concluded last year between Iran and the P5+1 powers - the U.S., U.K., Russia, China, France and Germany - as the greatest foreign policy achievement of President Obama's second term. But it is far less clear that they will see the agreement as having advanced America's strategic interests.
On a hot rainy day in August 2013, a group of young Colombians were celebrating the completion of a playground project in the village of Villarrica, Tolima. The project was funded by a nonprofit, Fundación ECCO, which I founded to encourage youths in rural areas affected by violence to develop leadership skills and engage in the democratic process.
The United States was humiliated this week when the USS Nitze came under simulated attack by four Iranian missile and torpedo-equipped speedboats in international waters. Despite American warnings, radio calls, flares and foghorns, two of the boats came within a few hundred yards of the Nitze. Iran is harassing American naval warships in the Persian Gulf while Washington refuses to acknowledge Iranian threats for reasons that are both political and practical.
Does anyone remember Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Until recently, the Islamic radical and former military officer who served as Iran's sixth president could be considered something of a political footnote.
President Barack Obama is considering making a "no first use" declaration regarding U.S. nuclear weapons. Under this framework, it would be the policy of the United States not to resort to using nuclear weapons in a potential crisis unless another country did first. This is widely seen as a legacy move in the final months of Obama's presidency, a way to cement his anti-nuclear reputation in history.
Israel's growing diplomatic, military, and economic ties across the Middle East Africa, and Asia should shatter an enduring myth: that the Israel-Palestinian conflict will make Israel an international pariah.
These ties reflect not only the foresight of Israel's leaders, the doggedness of its diplomacy and the strength of its economy, but also the rise of Iran in the region and the spread of terrorism beyond it.
Back in 2008, at the height of the global economic meltdown, Rahm Emanuel, President-elect Obama's designee for chief of staff, summed up his guiding political philosophy. "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," he told the Wall Street Journal. "Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with."
Machiavelli counseled, "never do an enemy a small injury." Ralph Waldo Emerson rendered the same thought as, "never strike a king unless you are sure you shall kill him." The coup plotters in Turkey can ponder these aphorisms from their cells while they await their potentially grisly fates.
Before the nuclear deal between Iran and the countries of the P5+1 (the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, China, France and Germany) was concluded a year ago today, the true extent of the compromise struck over Iran's nuclear ambitions wasn't yet publicly known.
As the global nuclear deal with Iran marks its one-year anniversary this week, Tehran is maintaining its fierce anti-Americanism, receiving $100 billion-plus in sanctions relief with which it can better confront the United States in its region and beyond, and apparently trying to cheat its way to nuclear weaponry.
You could say that Serhiy Kvit is a man on a mission. The soft-spoken 50-year-old former journalist may no longer be Ukraine's minister of education and science, having stepped down from that post back in April as part of a governmental reshuffle that accompanied the resignation of controversial Prime Minister Arsenii Yatsenyuk. But he nonetheless remains at the forefront of the fight for the intellectual future of his country.
Late last year, Captain Khatoon Ali Krdr, 36, the commander of an all-female Kurdish peshmerga unit, visited a family in the village of Kocho in northern Iraqi Kurdistan to see a woman who'd had nearly everything taken away by the Islamic State (ISIS). Like Khatoon, the woman and her surviving family members are Yezidis, an ethno-religious Kurdish minority group. ISIS has long enslaved, tortured, and killed, Yezidi women. Khatoon tried to speak to the woman, but she could not answer. These days, she is mute and can only stare ahead.
Slowly but surely, a strategic reorientation is underway in Israel. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a high-profile state visit to Russia. The trip, Netanyahu's fourth in the past year, was a public sign of the rapidly expanding ties between Jerusalem and Moscow.
Last week's vote by England to formally leave the European Union has touched off nothing short of a political earthquake, both in Europe and in the United States. In the aftermath of Thursday's referendum, which saw a slim majority (52 percent) of Britons vote in favor of "Brexit," there has been no shortage of recriminations from the chattering classes on both sides of the Atlantic, which have been quick to label Britons as both xenophobic and foolish for their choice.
Jihadists are hailing the mass shooting at the Orlando gay nightclub Pulse as an Islamist victory. The Islamic State terror group has claimed credit for the atrocity, saying "a soldier of the Islamic State has carried out the attack." President Barack Obama said that the shooter, Omar Mateen, was "filled with hatred" and that the investigation "will go wherever the facts lead us." They will lead directly to radical Islamism.
Israel responded to a Palestinian terror attack in Tel Aviv which claimed four lives by revoking 83,000 travel permits for Palestinians to enter the country during Ramadan. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights suggests that response amounts to "collective punishment" and is, thus, illegal under international law.
Pakistan returned to the headlines last month, after a U.S. air strike eliminated Afghan Taliban commander Mullah Mansour inside Pakistani territory. It marked the first ever U.S. strike on an Afghan Taliban leader inside the group's Pakistani sanctuary of Baluchistan, which had been off-limits to U.S. drones as part of an informal arrangement with Islamabad. Washington has touted the drone strike as an important victory for the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. However, it will prove symbolic and short-lived unless it prompts more fundamental reform of America's Pakistan policy. To effect real change, Washington must increase pressure not just on the Taliban residing in Pakistan, but on Pakistan itself.
Nearly a year after its passage, the nuclear deal with Iran - formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action - remains a political football in Washington. In response to pressure from Tehran, the Obama administration continues to seek ever-greater sanctions relief for the Iranian regime. The justification propounded by administration officials, from Secretary of State John Kerry on down, is that Iran has yet to reap real benefits from the deal and, therefore, a further sweetening of the pot is necessary to ensure its continued compliance with the terms of the deal.
"I can assure you," Wendy Sherman, President Barack Obama's lead negotiator on the Iran nuclear deal, said the other day, "that if Iran takes truly horrific terrorist action, or truly horrific human rights action, that people will respond." Uh huh.
Last month, Sri Lanka officially lifted a hold on the Colombo Port City project, a $1.4 billion Chinese initiative to construct a "mini-city" atop reclaimed land at the country's capital. The project is the largest in Sri Lanka's history and falls under Beijing's One Belt, One Road and New Silk Road initiatives, which are designed in part to expand and secure China's trade routes throughout Asia.
At first glance, Madinat Al Irfane seems like an odd location from which to launch a global war of ideas against Islamic radicalism. The upscale middle-class suburb of Rabat is packed with nondescript office buildings and recently built apartment blocks, telltale signs of the widening prosperity of Morocco's capital. But nestled behind these structures is a marker of a very different sort: a multimillion-dollar academic campus that houses the kingdom's premier religious training academy, formally known as the Mohammed VI Institute for the Training of Imams.
Whatever happened to al-Qaeda? A decade-and-a-half ago, it perpetrated the single largest act of international terrorism to ever take place on American soil. Yet, these days, Osama bin Laden's terror network barely warrants a mention in the mainstream news media. Instead, it is al-Qaeda's onetime Iraqi franchise, now known as the Islamic State, or ISIL, which commands near total attention in both politics and the press. That has never been more true than on Iraq's bloodiest day of 2016 when bombs swept through Baghdad killing at least 93.
The Balkans are burning. Europe's refugee crisis has now entwined with the general crisis of governance afflicting the Balkans, and reached its apogee in Macedonia.
The security situation in North Africa is growing increasingly dire, with destabilized countries and growing terrorist groups. Meanwhile, the U.S. combatant command for the region has been stuck in Germany for eight years. It is time to make another attempt to find a host country in Africa, and Morocco may be the place.
It is widely known that Russia has a difficult relationship with its past. In the quarter-century since the collapse of the Soviet Union, successive governments in Moscow have been conspicuously consistent in skirting serious questions about the repressive nature of the now-defunct Soviet state and minimizing the shadow that it continues to cast over the Kremlin.
Largely unnoticed by the West, Vladimir Putin has just launched a radical overhaul of power in Russia. On April 5th, the Russian President formally announced the creation of a new National Guard intended to serve as an umbrella organization and coordinating body for the country's numerous "force ministries."
"I think the president would like to do it," John Roos, President Barack Obama's former ambassador to Tokyo, said the other day about a possible Obama visit to Hiroshima when he attends the Group of Seven Summit next month in Japan. "He is a person who bends over backwards to show respect to history, and it does advance his agenda."
That a visit to Hiroshima, on which President Harry Truman dropped the world's first deployed atomic bomb, would advance Obama's agenda is clear. He has long envisioned a world without nuclear weapons, announced steps to pursue it in a high-profile speech in Prague in April of 2009, and continues to push for U.S.-Russian cuts in nuclear arsenals and global efforts to secure loose nuclear materials.
We're witnessing a strange spectacle in U.S. foreign policy, one with no obvious precedent: President Barack Obama is trying desperately to protect his cherished nuclear deal with Iran, making one concession after another in response to Iran's post-deal demands to ensure that Tehran doesn't walk away from it.
Last week, a fresh political scandal erupted on Capitol Hill over Iran. At issue was a new plan being considered by the Obama administration to provide Iran's ayatollahs with limited access to the U.S. financial system as a sweetener for their continued compliance with their government's 2015 nuclear deal with the nations of the P5+1.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's March 14 announcement of a partial withdrawal of forces from Syria predictably surprised the Obama administration, which is habitually surprised by the current occupant of the Kremlin. In doing so, it became part of a larger pattern. Recent Russian-American ties demonstrate all too clearly that President Barack Obama still fails to grasp what it is, exactly, that Russia wants - and why it is successfully achieving these objectives despite the country's growing domestic crises.
Call it Vladimir Putin's "mission accomplished" speech.
The Russian president recently caused an international furor when he abruptly announced that his government was commencing a military withdrawal from Syria. Russia had "radically changed the situation" on the ground through its involvement, and its strategic objectives had been "generally accomplished," Putin said in a televised meeting with top advisors in Moscow, including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. As a result, Russia's commander-in-chief declared, he had made the decision "to start withdrawal of the main part of our military group from the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic starting from tomorrow."
Iranians are famously savvy negotiators, so recent revelations that, under the U.S.-led global nuclear deal, Iran has far more leeway than we had thought to hide its nuclear progress and test ballistic missiles shouldn't surprise us.
It should, however, alarm us.
In the current political season, it's the policy dog that isn't barking.
Over the past several primary debates, candidates on both sides of the aisle have sparred at length over national security, offering contrasting - if still vague - strategies for dealing with Russia, the Islamic State and Iran, among other foreign policy challenges. But precious little attention has so far been paid to a more fundamental question: Does the U.S. military actually have the resources to adequately respond to today's global threats?
On Friday, Iranians went to the polls to select new representatives for the country's legislature, known as the Majles, and its Assembly of Experts, the powerful clerical body that oversees the performance of Iran's supreme leader. The results reflect a stronger-than-expected showing from the country's so-called "reformist" camp, particularly the political circles surrounding Iranian president Hassan Rouhani.
As expected, last summer's nuclear deal is already shaping up to be an economic boon for Iran. From stepped-up post-sanctions trade with countries in Europe and Asia to newfound access to some $100 billion in previously escrowed oil revenue, the agreement (formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) has put the country on the path toward a sustained national recovery.
Henry Kissinger famously remarked some time ago that Iran must decide whether it wants to be "a nation or a cause." For decades, U.S. presidents of both parties have been trying to coax Tehran toward the former and away from the latter.
Most recently, the U.S.-led global nuclear agreement with Iran - with its scores of billions in sanctions relief that President Obama hoped Iran would invest to improve the living standards of its people - was designed to convince Tehran to abandon its revolutionary ways and become a nation in good standing.
Recent media accounts have argued that the U.S. government suffers from an absence of high-quality expertise on Russia. These accounts correctly note that funding for careers to ensure career opportunities for a continuing flow of people interested in Russia has dried up as well as the quantitative as well as qualitative lack of capable analysts. Undoubtedly we suffer from a shortage of funding and of professional interest in Russia, which is widely regarded as a busted flush of little account despite Ukraine and Syria. This shortage tallies with the president and his administration’s view that Russia is a declining regional power. Yet, as we have seen reality continues to belie such shortsighted thinking, particularly when it comes to the information battlefield and America’s struggle to contest Russian dominance in the weaponization of information used by the Kremlin against the United States and NATO.