Daily Telegraph – Military historian John Keegan’s reviews the current state of affairs in Iraq.
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Category Archives: Geopolitics
Geopolitics / Iraq – Writing of Wrongs
Foreign Affairs – Professor Lawrence Freedman reviews The Assassins’ Gate, by George Packer – a searing account of the Bush administration’s failures in Iraq.
Geopolitics – Signs of hope and despair
Winnipeg Free Press – Gwynne Dyer ends the year on an interesting note, as always, summarizing the state of conflict in the world in the last year???
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Geopolitics / Internet – Who Will Control the Internet?
Foreign Affairs – Foreign governments want control of the Internet transferred from an American NGO to an international institution. Washington has responded with a Monroe Doctrine for our times, setting the stage for further controversy.
Terrorism – Can Democracy Stop Terrorism?
Foreign Affairs – The Bush administration contends that the push for democracy in the Muslim world will improve U.S. security. But this premise is faulty: there is no evidence that democracy reduces terrorism. Indeed, a democratic Middle East would probably result in Islamist governments unwilling to cooperate with Washington.
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Geopolitics / Europe – Transatlantic Tension and Threat Perception
Naval War College Review – Because of profoundly different understandings about both the nature and responsibility of federal authority, Washington and European capitals are talking past each other. The answer to the question, ìWhat are the threats to domestic security for which the federal authority is responsible?î sounds very different on opposite sides of the Atlantic.
Geopolitics / Middle East – The Strategic Implications of Political Liberalization and Democratization in the Middle East
Parameters – Promoting democracy has become a strategic imperative in the Bush Administrationís war on terrorism. The purpose of this paper is to explore what a democratic Middle East would mean for US interests.
Geopolitics / Islam – A Clash of Systems: An Analytical Framework to Demystify the Radical Islamist Threat
Parameters – The purpose of this article is to provide an alternative framework to Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” that instead portrays the current global conflict as a clash of systems, not civilizations.
Geopolitics / Iraq – How to Win in Iraq
Foreign Affairs – An insightful essay by Andrew Krepinevich. Because they lack a coherent strategy, U.S. forces in Iraq have failed to defeat the insurgency or improve security. Winning will require a new approach to counterinsurgency, one that focuses on providing security to Iraqis rather than hunting down insurgents. And it will take at least a decade.
Geopolitics / China – China's Search for Stability With America
Foreign Affairs – No country can affect China’s fortunes more directly than the United States. Many potential flashpoints — such as Taiwan, Japan, and North Korea — remain, and true friendship between Washington and Beijing is unlikely. But their interests have grown so intertwined that cooperation is the best way to serve both countries.
Geopolitics / Afghanistan – Afghanistan Four Years On: An Assessment
Parameters – A look at where Afghanistan stands today in terms of its efforts to become a viable nation.
Geopolitics – Peace is spreading: the troubling thing is, we don't really know why
Daily Telegraph – Niall Ferguson writes on how believe-it-or-not, peace is really spreading around the world. But why?
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Geopolitics / Southeast Asia – The Growing Prospects for Maritime Security Cooperation in Southeast Asia
Naval War College Review – Southeast Asia has responded to the maritime dangers that in the 1990s replaced Cold War rivalries, and the terrorist threat that has more recently stepped to the forefront, producing an unprecedented degree of “operationalized” interstate cooperation. Fundamental obstacles remain, but the underlying dynamics are promising.
Geopolitics – The Power Brokers
Foreign Affairs – In Running the World, David Rothkopf provides page after page of raw material on the history and workings of the National Security Council. Unfortunately, the information is not matched by much rigorous analysis.
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Geopolitics / Taiwan – Taiwan : Melos or Pylos?
Naval War College Review – If taken to heart, lessons of the Peloponnesian War could help clarify thinkingóand dispel dangerous illusionsóin Taipei, Beijing, and Washington. The island of Melos learned the futility of unsupported resistance against overwhelming factors of force and geography; the Athenians and Spartans learned at Pylos expensive lessons about the difficulties of island campaigning and about the unpredictability of warfare as a policy.
Geopolitics / China – In China's Own Eyes
Foreign Affairs – The Man Who Changed China, a state-sanctioned portrait of Jiang Zemin, reflects the image that China’s new leaders want their people to see: pragmatic, moderate, and above politics. The vision, however, does not often match reality.
Geopolitics / Oil – The Breaking Point
New York Times Magazine – The United States and China are counting on the Saudis to satisfy our growing thirst for oil. The Saudis say they can supply all our needs. Critics say that that is becoming impossible. They just might turn out to be right.
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Geopolitics – When Is Coercion Successful? And Why Can't We Agree on It?
Naval War College Review – The scholarly controversy over coercion by states-military, diplomatic, and economic-does more than complicate academic arguments; it has consequences for policy. It might become a more effective instrument than it has so far proved if the theoretical community can reach consensus as to what it is, how it can be effectively applied, and what constitutes success.
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Geopolitics / Terrorism – Counterterrorism in Retrospect
Foreign Affairs – A new history of the United States’ pre-September 11 efforts to combat terrorism portrays them as marked by myopia, indecision, and diffidence.
Geopolitics / Disease – Preparing for the Next Pandemic
Foreign Affairs – If an influenza pandemic struck today, borders would close, the global economy would shut down, international vaccine supplies and health-care systems would be overwhelmed, and panic would reign. To limit the fallout, the industrialized world must create a detailed response strategy involving the public and private sectors.
Geopolitics – Regime Change and Its Limits
Foreign Affairs – So far, the Bush administration has shown it would like to resolve its problems with North Korea and Iran the same way it did with Iraq: through regime change. It is easy to see why. But the strategy is unlikely to work, at least not quickly enough. A much broader approach — involving talks, sanctions, and the threat of force — is needed.
Geopolitics / Islam – A Crescent Over Europe?
Air Force – Demographic change could turn the heartland of Western culture into an Islamic redoubt.
Geopolitics / Terrorism – Terrorism and the New Security Dilemma
Naval War College Review – The reliability of interstate balances of power is declining; the capacity of the ìstates systemî to provide security is deteriorating; the state itself is coming under increasing centrifugal pressure from both outside and inside, from above and from below; and the reshaping of the wider political environment in reaction to complex globalization remains rudimentary and uneven. We can expect substate and cross-border destabilization and violence, including but certainly not confined to terrorism, to become increasingly endemic.
Geopolitics / United Nations – "In Larger Freedom:" Decision Time at the UN
Foreign Affairs – Kofi Annan says dealing with today’s threats requires broad, deep, and sustained global cooperation. Thus the states of the world must create a collective security system to prevent terrorism, strengthen nonproliferation, and bring peace to war-torn areas, while also promoting human rights, democracy, and development. And the UN must go through its most radical overhaul yet.
Geopolitics / Freedom – Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spread?
New York Times – Around the world (and among some critics at home), America’s long-held desire to export liberty and democracy is called hubristic, messianic, imperialistic and worse. But try imagining a world without it???
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