U.S. Foreign Policy

ENEMIES INTO FRIENDS, Charles A. Kupchan, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2010, var. pages. "During his first year in office, U.S. President Barack Obama made engagement with U.S. adversaries one of his administration's priorities. The historical record makes clear that Obama is on the right track: reaching out to adversaries is an essential start to rapprochement." READ MORE

THREAT AND ANXIETY IN U.S. FOREIGN POLICY. Christopher J. Fettweis, Survival, April 2010, pp. 59–82. "Four decades ago, Karl Deutsch devised what he called 'Parkinson's Law for national security': A nation's feeling of insecurity expands directly with its power. This certainly seems to apply to the United States, which is simultaneously the strongest country in the history of the world and the most insecure of today's great powers. The threats it has recently identified in the international system, from Iraq to Hugo Chavez to terrorism, are minor compared to what most states have had to confront throughout history. As states grow in power they usually also become more materially secure; why, then, do they often seem to worry more, often about trivial matters? This essay explores the political psychology of unipolarity. Pathologies arise when irrational forces drive policymaking; presumably better policy results from more rational cost-benefit analyses." READ MORE

War and Peace

NO WAR, NO PEACE: WHY SO MANY PEACE PROCESSES FAIL TO DELIVER PEACE. Roger Mac Ginty, International Politics, March 2010, pp. 145-162. "Many societies emerging from civil war can be described as experiencing ‘no war, no peace’ situations. Despite a ceasefire or peace accord, these societies may continue to be mired in insecurity, chronic poverty and the persistence of the factors that sparked and sustained the civil war. Yet the post-Cold War period has also witnessed massive peace-support interventions aimed at shoring up peace accords and post-peace accord states. This article identifies and conceptualises the ‘liberal peace’ as the formulaic western peacebuilding vehicle wheeled out in response to civil war and peace processes. It argues that the liberal peace is often inflexible, ethnocentric, ministers to conflict manifestations rather than causes, and is unable to address the underlying factors contributing to armed conflict in deeply divided societies. It is the structural factors behind the liberal peace that explain why so many peace processes fail to deliver peace." READ MORE

AFRICA'S FOREVER WARS. Jeffrey Gettleman, Foreign Policy, March/April 2010, var. pages. "There is a very simple reason why some of Africa's bloodiest, most brutal wars never seem to end: They are not really wars. Not in the traditional sense, at least. The combatants don't have much of an ideology; they don't have clear goals. They couldn't care less about taking over capitals or major cities -- in fact, they prefer the deep bush, where it is far easier to commit crimes. Today's rebels seem especially uninterested in winning converts, content instead to steal other people's children, stick Kalashnikovs or axes in their hands, and make them do the killing. Look closely at some of the continent's most intractable conflicts, from the rebel-laden creeks of the Niger Delta to the inferno in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and this is what you will find." READ MORE

INVESTING FOR PEACE: THE PRIVATE SECTOR AND THE CHALLENGES OF PEACEBUILDING. Mats Berdal and Nader Mousavizadeh, Survival, April 2010, pp. 37–58. "The new environment for peacebuilding is defined by new approaches to aid, a redefinition of the private sector to include hybrid forms of state and market activity, a new balance of emphasis between corporate social responsibility activities on the part of private-sector actors and the foundational importance of robust legal and regulatory frameworks, a structural boom in demand for natural resources, and the opportunity to have essential small and medium-sized private-sector activity catalysed by macro-finance investment in natural-resources sectors. It presents new risks as well as new opportunities and requires, above all, a new compact between the international donor community and governments in countries experiencing or emerging from conflict that seek to trade their way to sustainable development." READ MORE

Afghanistan

AFGHANISTAN'S ROCKY PATH TO PEACE. J Alexander Thier, Current History, April 2010, pp. 131-137. "Even if all essential parties are interested in a negotiated settlement, getting to yes is no sure thing. It is a hallmark of intractable conflicts that the distance between the status quo and the conflict’s inevitable resolution can appear unbridgeable. Such is the case with today’s Afghanistan. For the first time since 2001, when the US-led intervention in Afghanistan began, a serious prospect exists for political dialogue among the various combatants, aimed at the cessation of armed conflict." READ MORE

AFGHANISTAN: BUILDING THE MISSING LINK IN THE MODERN SILK ROAD. Andrew C. Kuchins, Thomas M. Sanderson, and David A. Gordon, The Washington Quarterly, April 2010, pp. 33-47. "The Northern Distribution Network, transit corridors developed by the United States to deliver nonlethal goods to its forces in Afghanistan, could provide the missing link in a unified trade and transport system—the Modern Silk Road—that would enhance Eurasian prosperity and security for all. READ MORE

DEBATING AGHANISTAN. Paul R. Pillar and John Nagl, The National Interest, March/April 2010, var. pages. "Kabul is set to become the primary focus of Obama’s strategic agenda. But is this the right choice? Pillar, former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, argues that a just intervention has devolved into a worthless quagmire, while Iraq War veteran Nagl believes al-Qaeda must be vanquished in the borderlands of AfPak." READ MORE

EXPLORING USAID'S DEMOCRACY PROMOTION IN BOSNIA AND AFGHANISTAN: A 'COOKIE-CUTTER APPROACH'? Matthew Alan Hill, Democratization, February 2010, pp. 98-124. "US democracy promotion is integral to the pursuit of the grand project of the American Mission. By promoting democracy America makes its role one of international engagement as opposed to one of isolation. The first part of this paper examines the political and cultural aspects of US democracy promotion in the post-Cold War era through the bi-polar framework of the case-specific versus one-size-fits-all. To better understand USAID's democracy promotion policy, the second part takes this framework and applies it to its political reform strategy in Bosnia under the Clinton administration from 1995 to 2000 and Afghanistan under the Bush administration from 2001 to 2008. This paper confirms that America's democracy promotion simultaneously employed both the case-specific and one-size-fits-all approaches. USAID programmes and projects did at times respond to local conditions but nevertheless appear to employ a blueprint design." READ MORE

Iraq

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN: PERILS OF PREMATURE EVACUATION FROM IRAQ. Kenneth M. Pollack and Irena L. Sargsyan, The Washington Quarterly, April 2010, pp. 33-47. "The United States is leaving Iraq, but how it leaves is tremendously important. The authors draw lessons from recent history around the world to foresee the risks, namely civil war resuming or problems between the Iraqi military and civilian government arising, and how to minimize them." READ MORE

THE US AND IRAQ: TIME TO GO HOME. Toby Dodge, Survival, April/May 2010, pp. 129–140. "Given the record of the US occupation and the profound limitations of America's present stature, the Barack Obama administration is right to continue to draw down the American presence in Iraq. But in remembering the egregious mistakes of its predecessor the administration should not claim victory as it exits. It should not, as Vice President Joe Biden did in the midst of the de-Ba'athification crisis, claim all is well in Baghdad. A more honest and realistic approach would recognise the impossible legacy left by the Bush administration. The damage the previous administration did so much to encourage would then be minimised with the help of US allies and multilateral organisations. In short, after seven years of American occupation, it is time to go home." READ MORE

Middle East

ARMISTICE NOW: AN INTERIM AGREEMENT FOR ISRAEL AND PALESTINE. Ehud Yaari, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2010, var. pages. "Rather than pursuing a final-status deal now, Israel and the Palestinian Authority should agree to establish a Palestinian state within temporary armistice boundaries. Without it, the Palestinians may abandon the idea of a two-state solution altogether." READ MORE

BACK TO SQUARE ONE? THE NETANYAHU GOVERNMENT AND THE PROSPECTS FOR MIDDLE EAST. Raffaella A. Del Sarto, Mediterranean Politics, November 2009, pp. 421–428. "For observers of Israeli and Middle East politics, the advent of a second Netanyahu government stirred an uneasy sense of de´ja` vu. Particularly, Likud’s explicit rejection of Palestinian statehood seems to have taken Arab-Israeli peacemaking far back in time, to a distant era long before the Oslo peace process started 16 years ago. However, after two and a half months in office, Netanyahu publicly announced in his foreign policy speech of 14 June 2009 that he would accept a future Palestinian state. Certainly, Bibi coupled the support for such a state to a long list of conditions and it only came in response to the demands of US President Barack Obama. [...] Perhaps there is something new under the sun, after all? Is it possible that the second Netanyahu government will enter Israel’s history as peacemaker, thus validating the dictum that rak ha’Likud yakhol – ‘only the Likud can [make peace]’? Or was the volte-face a reminder of Netanyahu’s sensibility to political pressure from Washington, while his aversion to the land-for-peace formula remains deep? His first premiership clearly bore witness to this pattern." READ MORE

Deradicalization

DERADICALIZATION, THE YEMENI WAY. Marisa L. Porges Survival, April 2010, pp. 27–33. Marisa L. Porges argues, "... continued detention may be the best answer for the 'highest-threat' Yemeni detainees. For the rest, the appropriate approach depends on the individual detainee's background and security threat." READ MORE

MARTYRDOM, INTERRUPTED. Matthew Alexander, The National Interest, March/April 2010, var. pages. "The former head interrogator in Iraq goes undercover in Indonesia to learn the secrets of their top-notch interrogation program. To win the battle against terrorism, violent extremists must be converted into antijihad advocates. Learn how a country can become terror free." READ MORE

Islam in Europe

A CULTURAL CONUNDRUM: THE INTEGRATION OF ISLAMIC LAW IN EUROPE. Jocelyne Cesari, Harvard International Review, Winter 2010,var. pages. In the aftermath of 9/11 and the subsequent terrorist attacks in the West, the Muslims in Europe have become the center of media spotlight and the contemporary debate concerning the compatibility of Islamic social and political values with European secular and democratic norms. Consider, for example, the case of shari'a law, which is conventionally conceived as the antithesis of European notions of secularism, liberty, and human rights. This paper aims to challenge the above-mentioned predominant view by suggesting that the perceptions of the shari'a law and the debate concerning its application rest on a profound misunderstanding of its meaning, its complex historical evolution, and its role and significance among contemporary Muslim communities in Europe. On the basis of research conducted among Muslims in Europe and published in Muslims in the West After 9/11: Religion, Law and Politics in 2010, this paper purports to show that Islamic law is already taken into account in most European legal systems. READ MORE

DEBATING ISLAM IN AUSTRIA, GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND: ETHNIC CITZENSHIP, CHURCH-STATE RELATIONS AND RIGHT-WING POPULISM. Martin Dolezal; Marc Helbling; Swen Hutter, West European Politics, March 2010, pp. 171-190. This article explores public debates regarding Islam and Muslim immigration in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. The authors are interested in which issues dominate the debates, which actors participate, which positions are taken, and which arguments are mobilised. Exploring three countries with an ethnic model of citizenship allows them to control for important cultural factors and to focus on three other explanatory variables: the dominant model of political participation, the relationship between the state and church/Islam, and the strength of right-wing populism. To test their arguments, they rely on a new dataset based on content analyses of quality newspapers from 1998 to 2007 that enables them to go beyond existing studies, which concentrate on state activities or on mass-level attitudes. The authors demonstrate that above all the relationship between the state and church/Islam, i.e. issue-specific opportunity structures, influences the debates to a great extent. READ MORE

EU Issues

OBAMA'S LUKEWARM START WITH EUROPE. Will Englund, National Journal, March 13, 2010, var. pp.  President Obama's honeymoon with Europe lasted precisely one month. On February 20 of last year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates sat down in the Sheraton Hotel in Krakow, Poland, for a meeting with NATO defense ministers and was told not to ask for any more troops for Afghanistan, because they wouldn't be forthcoming. This was a surprise, and not a pleasant one, for the Americans. Only two weeks earlier, Vice President Biden had addressed a security conference in Munich and had laid out just how dramatically the Obama administration intended to change Washington's conduct of foreign affairs. The United States was going to listen more to its allies, Biden said--and it was going to ask more of them. Europeans heard the first part and loved it, but had the second part gotten lost in translation? READ MORE

REFORMING THE EUROP-ATLANTIC SECURITY ARCHITECTURE: AN OPPORTUNITY FOR U.S. LEADERSHIP. Jeffrey Mankoff, The Washington Quarterly, April 2010, pp. 65-83. For the past year and a half, President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia has been pressing the United States and its European allies to open negotiations on a treaty establishing a new Euro-Atlantic security architecture. After enunciating a series of broad aims in mid-2008, the Russian leadership did not initially provide much detail about its idea for a new security agreement. Without a clearer sense of Moscow’s aims, officials in many countries came to view the idea in a poor light, seeing it as a clumsy attempt to undermine existing European and Euro-Atlantic security institutions as well as weaken Europe’s ability to pursue a unified policy toward Russia. Although Moscow finally released a draft treaty proposal in late November 2009, the Russian draft did little to allay these concerns. Russia’s continued intervention in affairs of its neighbors, manipulation of energy supplies, and failure to abide by existing agreements have all made Washington and its allies wary of Moscow’s proposal. Nonetheless, the underlying concept of a new security framework encompassing the United States, EU, and Russia is an attractive one, insofar as it offers hope of ameliorating Russia’s post—Cold War estrangement from the West, while reducing the likelihood of conflict across the unstable post-Soviet space between the borders of the EU and Russia. READ MORE

NATO

NATO NUCLEAR POLICY AND EURO-ATLANTIC SECURITY. Sam Nunn, Survival, April–May 2010, pp. 13–18.  The revision of NATO’s Strategic Concept in 2010 is an historic opportunity. Twenty years after the end of the Cold War, NATO governments and publics will expect, if not demand, that the Alliance re-evaluate longstanding US and NATO nuclear declaratory policy, US tactical nuclear weapons deployed in Europe, and the role of nuclear weapons in NATO security. For many years, I have made the case that reducing the dangers posed by nuclear weapons is the most important issue in national security and foreign policy today. But progress on these issues cannot take place in the absence of progress on a much broader agenda, and that front includes NATO policies writ large, our relationship with Russia, and tangible cooperation among nations to reduce and ultimately eliminate nuclear threats. READ MORE

NATO's EVOLVING PURPOSES AND THE NEXT STRATEGIC CONCEPT. David S. Yost, International Affairs, March 2010 pp. 489-522. Is there a conflict between the Alliance's original and enduring purpose of collective defence and its post-Cold War crisis management functions? This is an ill-framed debate, because the home base must be secure in order to support expeditionary power projection. The allies have, moreover, moved away from a static, reactive, and territorial concept of collective defence towards a more 'proactive' and 'anticipatory' approach. Some experts have even referred to a 'deterritorialization' of collective defence. Other issues also illustrate the changing dimensions of collective defence—missile defence, cyber warfare, space operations, the risk of state-sponsored terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction, political–military dynamics in the Middle East and the Asia–Pacific region, and the risk of a non-Article 5 operation becoming a collective defence contingency. Despite disagreements on how to pursue shared goals, the allies may yet demonstrate that they have the vision and political will to meet the new challenges. The question of the Alliance's 'level of ambition' in capabilities is inseparable from that of its agreed purposes and burden-sharing to achieve them. READ MORE

Internet: Freedom & Security Issues

TERRORIST FINANCING AND THE INTERNET. Michael Jacobson, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism,  April 2010 , pp. 353-363. While al Qaeda has used the Internet primarily to spread its propaganda and to rally new recruits, the terrorist group has also relied on the Internet for financing-related purposes. Other Islamist terrorist groups, including Hamas, Lashkar e-Taiba, and Hizballah have also made extensive use of the Internet to raise and transfer needed funds to support their activities. The Internet's appeal in this regard for terrorist groups is readily apparent-offering a broad reach, timely efficiency, as well as a certain degree of anonymity and security for both donors and recipients. Unfortunately, while many governments now recognize that the Internet is an increasingly valuable tool for terrorist organizations, the response to this point has been inconsistent. For the U.S. and its allies to effectively counter this dangerous trend, they will have to prioritize their efforts in this area in the years to come. READ MORE 

GOOGLE AND THE GREAT FIREWALL. Christopher R. Hughes, Survival, April–May 2010, pp. 19–26. Google, the world’s most popular Internet search engine, hit the headlines in January 2010 when it announced that it might shut down its operations in China due to a spate of cyber attacks on its corporate infrastructure.1 Its complaints fall into two related categories: surveillance of the online activities of human-rights activists through unauthorised accessing of Google-based e-mail (Gmail) accounts in China and the world, and the theft of intellectual property. With China not alone in engaging in cyber-espionage and regulation of the Internet, responses to Google’s protest have been mixed. READ MORE

U.S. Society Issues

STILL BOWLING ALONE? THE POST-9/11 SPLIT. Thomas H. Sander and Robert D. Putnam, Journal of Democracy, January 2010, pp. 9-16. "The crisis of the 9/11 terrorist attacks has sparked a surge of increased civic engagement by young people in the United States, but there is also evidence of a growing divide along class lines." READ MORE

TEA PARTY MOVEMENT: WILL ANGRY CONSERVATIVES RESHAPE THE REPUBLICAN PARTY? Peter Katel, The CQ Researcher, March 19, 2010, pp. 241-264. "The Tea Party movement seemed to come out of nowhere. Suddenly, citizens angry over the multi-billion-dollar economic stimulus and the Obama administration's health-care plan were leading rallies, confronting lawmakers and holding forth on radio and TV. Closely tied to the Republican Party — though also critical of the GOP — the movement proved essential to the surprise victory of Republican Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts. Tea partiers say Brown's election proves the movement runs strong outside of 'red states.' But some political experts voice skepticism, arguing that the Tea Party's fiscal hawkishness won't appeal to most Democrats and many independents. Meanwhile, some dissension has appeared among tea partiers, with many preferring to sidestep social issues, such as immigration, and others emphasizing them. Still, the movement exerts strong appeal for citizens fearful of growing government debt and distrustful of the administration." READ MORE

TEEN PREGNANCIES: DOES COMPREHENSIVE SEX-EDUCATION REDUCE PREGNANCIES? Marcia Clemmitt, The CQ Researcher, March 26, 2010, pp. 265-288. "After dropping steeply for a decade-and-a-half, America's teen birth rate began edging upwards in the past few years. Analysts aren't sure whether the trend will last and say there are numerous causes. A significant factor, however, is a drop-off in contraceptive use that began in the early 2000s, as better HIV/AIDS treatments diminished fear of the disease. In 2009, the Obama administration ended the Bush administration policy of federally funding only sex-education programs with abstinence until marriage as the primary focus. Instead, most funding will now go to programs that have been demonstrated in large, randomized trials to be effective for pregnancy prevention. Critics say the plan will unfairly eliminate funding for abstinence programs, which they contend have not been adequately evaluated by researchers and are the only ones that consistently teach the value of committed relationships." READ MORE

PREPARING FOR THE WORST: DEMOCRATS' FEARS OF THE 2010 MIDTERM ELECTIONS. Charles E. Cook Jr., The Washington Quarterly, April 2010 , pp. 183 - 189.  Midterm elections are almost inevitably a referendum on the party in power. When the same party occupies both the White House and control of Congress, things are pretty straightforward. One party has all the responsibility and takes the credit or blame (usually the latter) for whatever occurs. Another way of putting it is that midterm elections are binary, everything is either a “1” or a “0”—one side goes down, so the other side goes up.  It is perfectly normal for the party of a newly elected president to lose House seats in his first midterm election. In fact, it has happened in seven of the eight midterm elections during the first terms of a president in the post—World War II era, resulting in an average loss of 16 seats. The sole exception was George W. Bush, after the September 11, 2001 tragedy altered the trajectory of the otherwise predictable pattern. In the Senate, which has six-year terms, the pattern is less clear. The president’s party has lost seats in four elections, gained in four, and the average is a loss of four-tenths of one seat, basically a wash. So, if midterm election losses are normal, what makes the 2010 elections different? Why is the prediction of losses for Democrats so much greater than usual?