Global Security Environment

North Korean belligerence is preventing it from moving toward critical economic reform, says Richard Solomon, a senior fellow at the RAND Corporation and former assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.

During an interview on PBS's Tavis Smiley show, Solomon called the situation “the last hot conflict of the Cold War period.” He added that while North Korea's belligerence is intended as a show of force to its own people, it is also creating a hostile environment abroad which would preclude any opening up to the outside world.

Syria is looking more like a collapsed state every day. Spillover is destabilizing Lebanon, putting pressure on Jordan, an important regional partner, and imposing a major strain on Turkey, a NATO ally. The influx of Sunnis, some of whom are extremists, into Iraq from Syria is putting Iraq's tenuous stability at risk and pushing the Maliki government closer to Iran. Nearly a million people have now fled Syria for safety abroad. Meanwhile, the influence of extremist groups, such as the al Nusrah Front, continues to grow as these groups slip into the areas vacated by the Syrian state.

Then there is the question of Syria's chemical weapons. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper recently expressed his concern to Congress that the Assad regime, “having found its escalation of violence through conventional means inadequate, might be prepared to use the chemical weapons against the Syrian people.”

This commentary appeared in U.S. News & World Report on March 28, 2013.

For the past several months, the Senkaku islands—known as the Diaoyus in China—have been at the center of tensions between China and Japan. Both sides claim ownership of these uninhabited islets in the East China Sea, and of the potentially resource-rich waters surrounding them.

China, challenging Japan's existing control of the islands, has sent ships and aircraft into the area to confront the Japanese. Each side has scrambled fighter jets in response to the other, and Chinese warships have reportedly locked weapon-targeting radars onto a Japanese helicopter and ship—a subtle but unmistakable ratcheting up of the tension.

This commentary appeared on cnn.com on March 19, 2013.

Ten years after the Iraq war started, violence may persist as the shift from Saddam Hussein's totalitarian regime to one dominated by nationalist Shiites continues – a point underscored by a string of bombings overnight. Yet despite much pessimism, the new order survives, without U.S. assistance. And it is a lot less fragile than it often appears.

Back in 2003, when U.S. forces arrived in Baghdad, they were shocked by the complete disintegration of the Iraqi state – U.S. analysts had failed to comprehend the tremendous impact international sanctions and international isolation had had on Iraq’s economy and society.

This commentary appeared in U.S. News & World Report on March 14, 2013.

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, one of the most important events of the early 21st century. In nearly a decade of war, the United States learned painful lessons about the challenges of nation-building, the extraordinary costs intervention can incur, and the pros and cons of large scale deployments of boots on the ground, to name a few.

But how strictly do those lessons apply to other cases?

This commentary appeared in Foreign Policy on March 13, 2013.

“Never Again” is the wrong lesson to draw from the Iraq war.

The war in Iraq is regarded by most Americans as a costly mistake. This does not mean the experience was without value. Indeed, one can profit from mistakes even more than successes in terms of improved performance. Ten years on, it is worth asking whether we as a nation have done so.

This commentary appeared in U.S. News & World Report on March 6, 2013.

Iran's presidential campaign is well under way. The unprecedented public attack by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, in which Ahmadinejad accused Larijani of trying to control Iran through a family-run mafia, attests to a deep divide within the Iranian regime. But unlike in most real democracies, the likely contenders for the presidency are not trying to woo reluctant voters with snazzy TV ads or get-out-the-vote drives. Indeed, many regime officials would prefer that many Iranians—especially liberal urbanites—not vote at all.

The June election will not be about mobilizing the Iranian public. It is instead the culmination of a years-long evolution in Iranian politics: the transformation of the Islamic Republic from a mildly representative theocracy into a Revolutionary Guards-controlled kleptocracy. Ultimately, the election is meant to fulfill Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's ambition of wielding absolute authority. But far from strengthening his rule, the election could actually erode the credibility and legitimacy of a fading regime.

This commentary appeared in Foreign Policy on March 1, 2013.

In November 2010, while working for U.S. Special Operations Command, I traveled to the U.S. base in Shkin along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Several dirt roads snake through the area, but virtually none are paved. The dusty, parched landscape is strangely reminiscent of Frederic Remington or C.M. Russell's paintings of the American West.

Shkin serves as a microcosm of one of the most significant weaknesses of the U.S. war in Afghanistan: a failure to address the insurgent sanctuary in Pakistan. As U.S. officials pointed out at Shkin, the Taliban and other insurgent groups use their safe haven in Pakistan to live, train, rearm, and conduct strategic and operational planning.

This commentary appeared on Project Syndicate on February 28, 2013.

The European Union already faces considerable risks concerning its structure, uncertain economic recovery, north-south imbalances, and British ambivalence about membership. Exposure to bad outcomes in Africa, with its myriad security problems, increases those risks.

Much of Africa north of the equator continues to be violent and potentially explosive. The showers of the Arab Spring have not produced an attractive crop of leaders, let alone a harvest of democracy. Anarchy, banditry, and terrorism by Al Qaeda affiliates and wannabes, exhibited in Algerian gas fields and Mali, may develop into more than a lethal nuisance.

This commentary appeared on CNN on February 25, 2013.

It was the deadliest day in the rebellion's deadliest decade: On February 12, dozens of gunmen armed with assault rifles and wearing ballistic vests attacked a Thai Marine post in the southern province of Narathiwat. At least 16 of the militants were killed.

The so-called Pattani Insurgency has taken more than 5,000 lives since its embers were rekindled in 2004, but this was reportedly the greatest death toll on a single day in several years. The assault, combined with a recent spate of attacks on school teachers, raises a troubling question throughout Southeast Asia and beyond: Is this long-ignored revolt poised to explode into something even more dangerous?

The remainder of this op-ed is available at cnn.com.