NATO Special Operations: Promise and Problem

NATO special operations forces (SOF) are at a crossroads as the NATO role in Afghanistan winds down. After more than a decade of development, NATO SOF have greatly increased their ability to operate together in the field and in headquarters. If the alliance continues to emphasize SOF development, these forces can play a major role in future NATO campaigns, particularly outside Europe. Moreover, SOF can be maintained effectively in times of austerity. Yet intelligence sharing, particularly in real time, is currently one of the major limitations on NATO SOF, creating divisions between United States and United Kingdom on one hand and much of the rest of NATO on the other. In order to make truly effective use of SOF the alliance needs to make fundamental changes to its decades old system for sharing intelligence.     

The Middle East: Learning from the Past

The effort to bring peace to the Middle East has been an almost century long process. Legions of soldiers, politicians, and diplomats have attempted the political equivalent of transmuting dross into gold. They have failed; none more comprehensively than President Bill Clinton and his Middle East interlocutors. Despite personal energy, intelligence, and creativity, U.S. efforts failed. After a stretch of benign/malign neglect, Washington again is venturing into the swamp by sponsoring renewed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. There are learnable lessons from what has been (mis)managed in the past. The question remains whether the United States will take counsel from them.     

Air-Sea Battle and China's Anti-Access and Area Denial Challenge

The challenge presented by China's military modernization has seemingly altered the conventional balance in the Western Pacific, with significant implications for U.S. national security policy, and, thus, deserves the focus of planners and decision-makers.     

Beyond Fukushima: Japan's Emerging Energy and Environmental Challenges

This article considers the political-economic process by which “energy angst” created an embedded nuclear orientation in Japanese energy policymaking, and then how, following Fukushima, Japan initially tried to transform that structural tendency, through a political system poorly suited to reform, before edging back toward its traditional path. Due both to the prevailing systemic bias and the underlying political economy of nuclear power, the process of transformation promises to be a turbulent and extended one, with natural gas and energy efficiency being crucial tools for ameliorating the difficult realities of the domestic status quo.     

Radical Islam in Europe

Europe now faces three related but different challenges: how to respond, in a time when “native” European populations are shrinking, to the growing presence of Muslim minorities; how to avoid having its relationships with its Muslim communities controlled by Islamists who seek to replace Western civilization with Islamic government based on sharia law; and what to do generally about this Islamist threat. Thus far, the European responses to these challenges have been shaped by four factors: accumulated civilizational exhaustion; the inability to grasp the challenge posed to European national identities by the allure of the global Caliphate; weakness arising from degraded security capabilities, including the impact of the continued drive to “build Europe” by adopting the Treaty of Lisbon; and the preference for appeasement of Islamist demands.     

Prisoner Dilemmas: The American Obsession with POWs and Hostages

For centuries, the issue of American hostages and POWs has had incredible emotional and political resonance. Driven by a combination of idealism, wrath, and concerns over reputation, the status of captive Americans can become a national obsession. While deeply moral in many respects, this intense focus can encourage risky rescue operations, deepen conflicts, and lead to more Americans being captured abroad. Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan both suffered grave political damage from hostage crises, and the recent capture of an American by Somali pirates highlights the continued danger that a hostage crisis could overshadow the presidency of Barack Obama. U.S. officials should publicly downplay the issue of hostages and POWs, and work quietly behind the scenes to free the men and women concerned.     

The Costs of Respecting Sovereignty

Respect for sovereignty can be an effective tool to manage relations between states, drawing boundaries of acceptable behavior. But there are also clear costs of respecting sovereignty. A foreign policy based on a principled defense of sovereignty can be, in fact, morally wrong, politically illegitimate, and strategically dangerous. This does not mean that sovereignty should be broken wantonly, but only that prudential judgment must be exercised to weigh the costs and benefits of respecting the sovereignty of a state. In the end, our security and our values, not the principle of sovereignty, should be the metric by which we should judge the necessity and legitimacy of U.S. actions.     

Status and Leadership on the Korean Peninsula

This article examines both South and North Korea's search for status in international relations. By exploring how these countries seek status for themselves, how states define status for themselves and others, and also what status they are willing to grant other regional states, this paper concludes that crafting a stable regional status hierarchy will be as important to future stability on the Korean peninsula as will be the crafting of a stable balance of power or deepening economic interdependence.