Tag: Sudan
The end is nigh, once again
2013 is ending with a lot of doom and gloom:
- South Sudan, the world’s newest state, is suffering bloodletting between political rivals, who coincide with its two largest tribes (Dinka and Nuer).
- The Central African Republic is imploding in an orgy of Christian/Muslim violence.
- North Korea is risking internal strife as its latest Kim exerts his authority by purging and executing his formally powerful uncle.
- China is challenging Japan and South Korea in the the East China Sea.
- Syria is in chaos, spelling catastrophe for most of its population and serious strains for all its neighbors.
- Nuclear negotiations with Iran seem slow, if not stalled.
- Egypt‘s military is repressing not only the Muslim Brotherhood but also secular human rights advocates.
- Israel and Palestine still seem far from agreement on the two-state solution most agree is their best bet.
- Afghanistan‘s President Karzai is refusing to sign the long-sought security agreement with the United States, putting at risk continued presence of US troops even as the Taliban seem to be strengthening in the countryside, and capital and people are fleeing Kabul.
- Al Qaeda is recovering as a franchised operation (especially in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and North Africa), even as its headquarters in Pakistan has been devastated.
- Ukraine is turning eastward, despite the thousands of brave protesters in Kiev’s streets.
The Economist topped off the gloom this week by suggesting that the current international situation resembles the one that preceded World War I: a declining world power (then Great Britain, now the US) unable to ensure global security and a rising challenger (then Germany now China). Read more
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What could go wrong?
Tucked away in Fred Hof’s latest post on Syria, is an extraordinary condemnation of the Obama adminsitration’s ineptitude on Syria:
The Obama administration did not anticipate that the Assad regime would use the Washington-Moscow agreement on chemical weapons as a free pass to terrorize civilian populations. When the administration pressed for the setting of a conference date, it did not intend for the regime to treat that date as an interim finish line, as it sprints for military advantage with the critical assistance of Iranian-raised militias and Russian rearmament. When the administration urged the nationalist Syrian opposition to commit itself to attending the conference, it had no inkling that Islamist rivals to the West’s opposition of choice would humiliate the recipients of US meals-ready-to-eat, medical kits, and pickup trucks.
None of these setbacks was difficult to anticipate. Many commenters wrote about how the chemical weapons agreement would make the Asad regime an essential partner to the international community and stabilize its hold on power. The speed-up of military efforts is canonical behavior before peace negotiations. The takeover of the opposition by Islamist forces had been widely anticipated, even if the particular seizure of supplies was not.
Now let’s anticipate the possible negative consequences of the January 22 (Montreux) and January 23 (Geneva) meetings, assuming that the Syrian opposition follows much Western advice and goes into them with a sincere list of nationalist figures, heavily loaded with minorities and not too offensive to the Russians, to staff the post-Asad regime. What might go wrong? Read more
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The world according to CFR
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) survey of prevention priorities for 2014 is out today. Crowdsourced, it is pretty much the definition of elite conventional wisdom. Pundits of all stripes contribute.
The top tier includes contingencies with high impact and moderate likelihood (intensification of the Syrian civil war, a cyberattack on critical US infrastructure, attacks on the Iranian nuclear program or evidence of nuclear weapons intent, a mass casualty terrorist attack on the US or an ally, or a severe North Korean crisis) as well as those with moderate impact and high likelihood (in a word “instability” in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq or Jordan). None merited the designation high impact and high likelihood, though many of us might have suggested Syria, Iraq and Pakistan for that category. Read more
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For those who couldn’t make it
I gave the last of my pre-holiday talks on Righting the Balance yesterday at the Middle East Institute. Here is the latest iteration of the talking points I’ve been using, admittedly with occasional departures to tell a story or respond to a skeptical look.
1. Thank you for that kind introduction. It is truly an honor to present at MEI, which welcomed me as a scholar after I moved to SAIS from USIP three years ago and provided a steady flow of interns who did essential fact-checking, footnoting and commenting on the manuscript.
2. As I am going to say some harsh things about the State Department and USAID, and even suggest they be abolished in favor of a single Foreign Office, I would like to emphasize from the first that I have enormous respect for the Foreign Service and the devotion of its officers to pursuing America’s interests abroad. I feel the same way about the US military.
3. But I don’t think the Foreign Service is well served by the institutions that hire, pay and deploy our diplomats and aid workers. And I don’t think our military should be called upon to make up for civilian deficiencies.
4. My book, Righting the Balance, is aimed at correcting those imbalances. But it does not start there. Read more
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Peace picks, November 11-15
The Federal government is closed Monday for Veterans Day but the rest of the week has lots of peace and war events. The Middle East Institute Conference (last item) is not to be missed:
1. How to Turn Russia Against Assad
Tuesday, November 12th, 2013
6:00pm
Rome Building, Room 806
1619 Massachusetts Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20037
Samuel Charap
Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia, IISS
Jeremy Shapiro
Visiting Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program, Brookings Institution
Chair: Dana Allin
Editor of Survival and Senior Fellow for US Foreign Policy and Transatlantic Affairs, IISS
A light reception will follow
No RSVP Required
For More Information, Contact SAISEES@jhu.edu or events-washington@iiss.org
Samuel Charap is the Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies based in the IISS–US in Washington, DC. Prior to joining the Institute, Samuel was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow at the US Department of State, serving as Senior Advisor to the Acting Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security and on the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff.
Jeremy Shapiro is a visiting fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. Prior to re-joining Brookings, he was a member of the U.S. State Department’s policy planning staff, where he advised the secretary of state on U.S. policy in North Africa and the Levant. He was also the senior advisor to Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Gordon, providing strategic guidance on a wide variety of U.S.-European foreign policy issues. Read more
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Peace picks August 5-9
Summer doldrums, but some good pickings:
1. Dissecting the Pentagon’s Strategic Choices and Management Review, Brookings Institution, Tuesday, August 6, 2013 / 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Venue: Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036
Speakers: Marvin Kalb, Michael E. O’hanlon, Mackenzie Eaglen
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel recently summarized the results of his Strategic Choices and Management Review (SCMR), an internal Pentagon process designed to assist the Department of Defense as it plans for a future period of uncertain and significantly constrained defense spending. Deputy Secretary Ashton Carter also provided Congressional testimony on the subject. The review explored how the Pentagon might deal with at least two possible budget scenarios: the president’s own long-term plan, which calls for another $150 billion in ten-year defense savings beyond those mandated initially in the 2011 Budget Control Act, and the possibility that sequestration will stay in effect for a decade, requiring a full $500 billion in additional defense cuts relative to the same baseline.
On August 6, the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at Brookings will host a discussion on the usefulness of the SCMR as an analytical product which clarifies the kinds of changes that will be needed in the future, while also examining plans within it that may not be prudent. Panelists, among others, will include Mackenzie Eaglen of the American Enterprise Institute and Brookings Senior Fellow Michael O’Hanlon, author of Healing the Wounded Giant: Maintaining Military Preeminence While Cutting the Defense Budget (Brookings, 2013). Marvin Kalb, nonresident senior fellow at Brookings, will moderate the event.
After discussion, the panelists will take audience questions.
Register for the event here:
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