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211. Securing Afghanistan: Entering a Make-or-Break Phase?

Author:
T.X Hammes and Robert B. Oakley
Publication Date:
03-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
To appreciate Afghanistan's predicament, it is essential to understand that all Afghan politics are tribal. Thus, while Afghans share a genuine national identity, their immediate concern in any political process is to advance or preserve the welfare of their ethnic or extended family group. Further, since the Russians and British artificially imposed the country's international borders, the tribes are not wholly contained within Afghanistan. They straddle the borders with surrounding nations. Thus, tribal politics are also international politics.
Topic:
Security, NATO, and United Nations
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Russia, and Middle East

212. A Strategy for Nuclear Iran

Author:
Thomas Donnelly
Publication Date:
10-2004
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
Regardless of who is elected to the presidency in November, the growing threat posed by a nuclear Iran is certain to be at the top of the next administration's national security agenda. Unfortunately, neither a "grand bargain" with Tehran nor a conventional military strike against its nuclear facilities offers much hope of preventing one of the world's most dangerous regimes from acquiring the world's most dangerous weapons. In the short term, at least, the United States must instead work to isolate Iran not only militarily but ideologically, by succeeding in the democratic transformation of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Topic:
Security and Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, and Iran

213. Taiwan: Test Case of the Bush Doctrine

Author:
Thomas Donnelly
Publication Date:
04-2004
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
While the Bush administration has articulated an ambitious agenda for the liberalization of the greater Middle East, fighting to establish beachheads of freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as pressuring regimes in the region to adopt domestic reforms, it has thus far proven somewhat reluctant to embrace this commitment to liberty in other parts of the world. Nowhere has this retreat from its rhetoric been more pointed than in Taiwan, a flourishing free-market democracy menaced by an authoritarian colossus next door. Taiwan's March 20 election provides fresh evidence of the extent to which the "one China" policy and "strategic ambiguity"—those avatars of conventional wisdom—have passed into the realm of anachronism. Indeed, if the Bush Doctrine represents anything, it is the conviction that there must be nothing ambiguous about America's support for the forces of freedom.
Topic:
Security and Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, China, Iraq, Middle East, and Taiwan

214. Iraqi Freedom and American History

Author:
Thomas Donnelly
Publication Date:
01-2004
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
With the capture of Saddam Hussein and the diminishing number of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, there is a new sense of confidence and optimism about the direction of the Bush administration's foreign policy. It is important, however, to place these recent developments within the broader context of the endeavor to which the president has committed our nation. The invasion of Afghanistan in the autumn of 2001 and that of Iraq in the spring of 2003 together mark a significant departure from longstanding American strategy in the greater Middle East. In place of "off-shore balancing," wherein the United States sought to preserve the status quo by supporting a revolving rogue's gallery of native regimes, American power is now actively engaged in reshaping the political order of the Islamic world. This is, by definition, a generational commitment.
Topic:
Security and Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, and Middle East

215. The Post 9/11 Partnership: Transatlantic Cooperation Against Terrorism

Author:
David L. Aaron, Frances G. Burwell, C. Richard Nelson, Anna M. Beauchesne, K. Jack Riley, and Brian Zimmer
Publication Date:
12-2004
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
On September 11, 2001, the world was introduced to a new type of terrorism, one that was truly global in its organization and its impact. In both Europe and the United States, it was immediately clear that an effective response would require new levels of cooperation across the Atlantic and around the world. The initial response was in part military, as NATO invoked its mutual defense clause for the first time ever and a military campaign began in Afghanistan. But equally important was the decision by both the European Union and the United States to boost the capacity of their domestic law enforcement agencies and judiciary to respond to global terrorism and to look for ways to cooperate with each other in doing so. Since then, U.S.-EU cooperation in combating terrorism has been one of the success stories of transatlantic relations.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, and Europe

216. Minimal Investments, Minimal Results: The Failure of Security Policy in Afghanistan

Author:
Michael Bhatia, Kevin Lanigan, and Philip Wilkinson
Publication Date:
06-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Columbia International Affairs Online
Abstract:
Prime Minister Tony Blair's 2003 declaration that the international community “will not walk away from” Afghanistan missed the real question: When will the international community really walk into Afghanistan, and make the necessary commitments and investments that will give the Afghan people a reasonable chance at building a peaceful and stable country?
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Development, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Asia

217. Security Sector Transformation in Afghanistan

Author:
Mark Sedra
Publication Date:
08-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
Abstract:
The U.S.-led Coalition's swift victory over the Taliban regime in October 2001 created a security vacuum across Afghanistan that the international community was unprepared to fill. Winning the peace in Afghanistan has proven to be a much more complex, costly, and protracted endeavour than winning the war, an imposing burden that has severely tested the resolve of the international donor community. With only 11,000-13,000 Coalition troops mandated to eradicate the last remnants of al-Qaeda an the Taliban in the south and a limited NATO presence of 6,000 troops deployed in the capital to insulate the fledgling political process, the onus for maintaining security in the country fell on the Afghan government and its fledgling security forces. After 23 years of civil war the country's security sector was in a state of disarray, its infrastructure destroyed, resources limited, and facing a shortage of human capacity. To bolster Afghanistan's beleaguered security institutions and ensure they conform to international standards, the major donors engaged in the country launched a security sector reform (SSR) process. Security sector transformation rather than reform seems more appropriate to describe the task of creating efficient, effective, and democratically accountable security forces in Afghanistan, for the bulk of the country's formal security apparatus ceased to function over a decade ago. In spite of the massive challenges that face program, it has been portrayed as the primary means to redress Afghanistan's immediate security woes. What by its very nature is a gradual, long-term process has been thrust into the position as short-term panacea.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, and NATO
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Middle East, and Taliban

218. Road to Ruin: Afghanistan's Booming Opium Industry

Author:
Barnett Rubin
Publication Date:
10-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on International Cooperation
Abstract:
President George W. Bush declared recently that “the people of Afghanistan are now free.” While the president boasts, Afghanistan's opium industry, which fosters terrorism, violence, debt bondage, and organized crime, has expanded to the point that it could undermine the entire U.S. and international effort. As President Bush's own special envoy and ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, recently admitted, ''[r]ather than getting better, it's gotten worse. There is a potential for drugs overwhelming the institutions – a sort of a narco-state."
Topic:
International Relations and Security
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, and Asia

219. How to Win the Battle of Ideas in the War on Terror

Author:
Robert Satloff
Publication Date:
11-2004
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
President George W. Bush will enter his second term leading a country that is at war on five fronts at once. Four are clear: in Iraq and Afghanistan, against al-Qaeda and its global affiliates, and within the homeland. The fifth front, however, is the poor stepsister to the other four. It is being fought with an arsenal of outmoded and dysfunctional weaponry, a set of confused and self-defeating battlefield tactics, and no clear strategy for victory. Such is the status of the U.S. effort to fight the "battle of ideas" -- the ideological war to prevent Islamists and their sympathizers from capturing the social, cultural, economic, and political high ground in Muslim societies around the world.
Topic:
Security, Religion, Terrorism, and War
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Iraq, Middle East, and Arab Countries

220. A Ramadan Offensive in Iraq

Author:
Patrick Clawson
Publication Date:
10-2004
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
Ramadan starts on October 15 or 16, depending on the sighting of the moon. Last year on the first day of Ramadan, five car bombs went off in Baghdad within an hour, including one in front of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) offices. There is a disturbing prospect that the insurgents could try in Ramadan this year to mount a more significant offensive than any attacks to date. Such an offensive would underline the insurgents' claim to act in the cause of Islam; it could significantly complicate plans for elections in Iraq; and it might aim to influence the U.S. elections.
Topic:
Security, Religion, and War
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Iraq, Middle East, and Arab Countries