Category: Blogs

Mart Laar becomes Estonia’s new Defense Minister

By the AP

French Special Forces deployed in Libya

By RIA Novosti

From RIA Novosti:  French Special Forces units have been deployed in a remote desert area in south-western Libya, where they have allegedly carried out a raid against Al Qaeda militants or arms smugglers, the Algerian El Khabar newspaper said on Thursday. The newspaper quoted Algerian military sources as saying French unmanned aerial vehicles and warplanes […]

Rasmussen fails to persuade Turkey to close İzmir base

By Ercan Yavuz, Today's Zaman

NATO: “No country is vetoing this target or that one, it’s not like Kosovo”

By Steven Erlanger, the New York Times

From Steven Erlanger, the New York Times:  Angry charges by Libyan rebels that NATO has failed to come to their aid point up a question that has haunted the Western air campaign from the start: how to avoid a stalemate and defeat the Libyan leader without putting foreign troops on the ground.

France’s Role in Three Conflicts Displays a More Muscular Policy

By Steven Erlanger, the New York Times

From Steven Erlanger, the New York Times:  France on Tuesday found itself engaged in three shooting wars at once for the first time in memory, indicating a new muscularity in using power by the politically embattled French president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

What Next in Ivory Coast?

By Peter Pham

As the Ivory Coast’s former president, Laurent Gbagbo, stubbornly clings to power, his writ confined to a bunker under his house in the commercial capital of Abidjan and surrounded only by his combative wife Simone and a coterie of diehard supporters, the relevant questions are less about the fate of the besieged strongman than what […]

America Addicted to War? Hardly

By Derek Reveron

Stephen Walt recently posed the question in Foreign Policy, Is America Addicted to War? Prompted by the latest international intervention in Libya, Walt explains:  It remains to be seen whether this latest lurch into war [in Libya] will pay off or not, and whether the United States and its allies will have saved lives or […]

Unintended and Intended Consequences

By Harlan Ullman

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld elevated the words “known and unknown” to high art forms. In essence, Rumsfeld was referring to both the intended and, more importantly, unintended consequences of policy decisions on difficult and often intractable issues. Indeed, in 2011, it is the unintended consequences of what is taking place in North […]

French FM: NATO may get bogged down in Libya

By Brian Love and Nick Vinocur, Reuters

From Brian Love and Nick Vinocur, Reuters:  French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Wednesday NATO could get bogged down in Libya because leader Muammar Gaddafi had made it more difficult for the military alliance to avoid civilian deaths.

Leader of Libya’s rebel army: “NATO has become our problem”

By Angus MacSwan, Reuters

From Angus MacSwan, Reuters:  The head of Libya’s rebel army has condemned NATO for its slow chain of command in ordering air strikes to protect civilians, saying the alliance was "letting the people of Misrata die every day.