US Army Photo

Last year, the Iraqi Army suffered its most devastating defeat in the Sunni-dominated city of Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar province approximately 55 miles west of Baghdad. After a coordinated series of suicide bomb attacks on government positions, many of the soldiers and police officers tasked with securing the city panicked and fled the area to save their own lives. The rout of thousands of Iraqi security personnel in the face of only several hundred ISIS militants brought back the bad memories of June 2014, when a similar embarrassment occurred in Mosul.

Now, eight months later, Baghdad’s troops have largely redeemed themselves, having fought their way into Ramadi, braving booby-trapped buildings, streets laced with IEDs, the intangible threat of suicide bombers, and snipers perched on rooftops. Still, like most of the battles against ISIS over the past year and a half, the Ramadi operation was a mixed bag for the security forces.

The Good

Iraqi officials clearly understood that ISIS’s hold over Ramadi stained the integrity and competence of the military and the government at large. As long as the so-called Islamic State retained control of a city of 450,000 people in the heart of the country’s largest province, the Abadi administration was cornered, having to explain away its failures and offering excuses as to why the counterattack was taking so long.

But here is the good news: Even though it took months of preparation, Prime Minister Abadi was able to retake Ramadi without assistance from the Shi’a-dominated Popular Mobilization Forces (PMUs) – a band of militias theoretically under the control of the government, but in reality operating rather autonomously. The capture of Tikrit in April 2015 was the epitome of unaccountability among the PMUs. As Human Rights Watch reported:

Satellite imagery corroborated witness accounts that destruction of buildings occurred primarily after pro-government forces had routed ISIS and the Iraqi army left the area to militia control.

A similar series of abuses from the Shi’a militias in Ramadi would have dwarfed any tactical success resulting from the city’s capture. Prime Minister Abadi’s reasoning that “another Tikrit” would have been disastrous for his government’s strained relationship with Anbar’s Sunni population is a positive sign in itself. Read More →

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras gives a speech aboard the Chinese frigate Changbaishan at the port of Piraeus, February 19, 2015 (Greek Prime Minister’s Office)

Two of the biggest financial stories of the summer have been the remarkable downturns of the Greek and Chinese economies, with Athens experiencing yet another wave of fallout from its center-stage role in the ongoing eurozone debt crisis while Beijing’s previously unstoppable stock market recently took its biggest fall since 2007. Both countries are clearly in trouble; Greece defaulted on a $1.7 billion loan to the IMF before agreeing to a new austerity package that includes the sale of $55 billion in state assets, and China’s powerful bull market has “staggered to a halt” following an 8.5 percent hit to the Shanghai Composite Index that precipitated a sharp currency devaluation.

While these two economically distressed nations are unlikely natural partners, China is in a prime position to leverage the Greek crisis as a distraction from its own financial woes, perhaps stymying further losses in the process. By launching infrastructure projects and overseeing strategic transportation acquisitions in Greece now, policymakers in Beijing can help reposition the nation back on course for the prosperous future it has projected.

The Chinese word for crisis has often been misinterpreted as combining the symbols for danger and opportunity, but perhaps this is truly the case for China in Greece. In its search for a gateway into Europe, China will want to find the most vulnerable part of the region to make initial contact — and it just so happens that Greece’s financial collapse has made it the undisputed weakest link of the EU. In a relatively short amount of time, Beijing could transform the Hellenic Republic into a base of operations for the European mainland. Beijing’s opportunity lies in increasing access into EU markets through the crisis in Greece, providing greater availability to one of the biggest consumer blocs in the world for China’s export engine; it also presents the burgeoning Chinese consumer class with high-demand European technologies.

China has already invested significantly in the Greek port of Piraeus and taken over two of three maritime terminals, with plans underway to purchase the entire port itself. With the state asset fire sale that comes with Greece’s recent bailout package, China can continue its Greek gateway strategy by sweeping up the port of Thessaloniki, state-owned railways TrainOSE and ROSCO, and one or two of the 14 regional airports soon to be available. In doing so, China will control its own streamlined transportation system into European markets. Read More →

Recent events concerning the Ukraine have again raised fears of a confrontation between the West and Russia. Rivalry over Eastern Europe is nothing new though and Russia has long pressed for the institutionalization of a buffer zone between it and NATO. Most importantly, Russia is not the Soviet Union and it should not be treated or perceived as such.

The Cold War was characterized by the stark delineation of two antagonistic ideological blocs comprised of capitalists and communists, which in turn were sustained and overseen by one of the two superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union, respectively. However, each bloc had its own ideological dissentions too.

While the Soviet system had always had exceptions such as Yugoslavia, Albania or Cuba, it was de-Stalinization that led to the Sino-Soviet split and the emergence of an alternative communist offshoot under the leadership of China. Beijing actually competed with Moscow in sponsorship of revolutionary movements worldwide, as was seen in Biafra or Angola.

The West in turn had its own dissenting group which was loosely bound together by the weight of diplomatic isolation. Apartheid South Africa, Rhodesia, Israel and Portugal cooperated at times to make up for ambiguous support by the United States. This group often found understanding and aid in Paris, for the French too had reservations — particularly after the Suez crisis — about America’s uncompromising stance in favor of national liberations.

Yet there is a major exception to this perfect symmetry between the blocs: whereas the isolationist strain of capitalism never seriously considered approaching Moscow, Maoist China certainly had little compunction in switching sides to secure a better deal which ended in Henry Kissinger’s visit and the ensuing Sino-American rapprochement. This policy was successful in dividing the communist bloc and even stopped the expansion of Soviet influence in Asia. The question then is “why?” Read More →

The most obvious and prototypical torn country is Turkey…

Having rejected Mecca, and then being rejected by Brussels, where does Turkey look?

These two lines from Samuel Huntington’s famous Cash of Civilizations provide a window, albeit an often-foggy one, into the occasionally schizophrenic politico-cultural milieu of present day Turkey. Such schizophrenia would always have significant geopolitical implications given Turkey’s unique location straddling both Europe and Asia, however, in the wake of the Arab Spring, the magnitude of the implications increases dramatically.

A potential “Turkish Model” of balancing secular democracy and faith seemed to have a chance to earn adherents throughout the region and was largely supported by both the Bush and Obama Administrations. Of course, the giddy days following the fall of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt has given way to bloody quagmires regionwide, from Tripoli to Damascus. And the “Turkish Model” itself has been battered as simmering tensions within Turkey itself exploded in protests and old geopolitical paradigms shifted dramatically. Today, the future of Turkey seems on one hand to be potentially brighter than at any time since the end of the Ottoman Empire and on the other, potentially grimmer than most Westerners appreciate.

I was fortunate enough to personally set foot briefly into this dynamic situation earlier this year through a U.S. State Department funded program organized by the Washington DC-based think-tank, the Atlantic Council. The trip was illuminating and seemed to validate much of what Huntington wrote twenty years ago. Read More →