MER Article The Politics of Health in Counterterrorism Operations In the conflict zones of Afghanistan, where multiple fronts shift concurrently, the lines between who is, or is not, a legitimate recipient of aid and protection are not just blurred but erased. As in other counterterrorism wars, these life or death issues are exacerbated by shifting power and terri Jonathan Whittall • 13 min read
Current Analysis North African Commonalities (part one) Bill Lawrence is director of the North Africa Project for the International Crisis Group. He is a former Peace Corps volunteer (Morocco), Fulbright scholar (Tunisia), development consultant (Egypt), State Department official, Arabic translator and filmmaker (Marrakech Inshallah, Moroccans in Boston) David McMurray • 9 min read
Current Analysis "Green on Blue": Message Not Received American and NATO media handlers are in message control mode trying to contain the fallout from the escalation of insider killings of American and NATO soldiers by trained Afghan forces, known in military parlance as “green on blue” attacks. The latest rash of insider attacks [http://www.nytimes.com Steve Niva • 4 min read
Current Analysis Libya's Lessons Libya is commonly counted as a success story among the ongoing Arab uprisings. NATO bombing, the story goes, saved thousands of lives and allowed Libyans to overthrow the absurd and murderous Muammar Qaddafi. The intervention proves that the West has aligned its interests in the Arab world with its Chris Toensing • 2 min read
MER Article Was the Libya Intervention Necessary? The death of Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi has become one of the most contested moments of Libya’s eight-month war. The exact circumstances of the colonel’s demise on October 20 are unclear, but evidence is mounting that Libya’s former ruler was killed -- extra-judicially executed -- by the band of young Claudia Gazzini • 20 min read
Current Analysis The Colonel, the Rebels and the Heavenly Arbiter To the average American, the NATO intervention in Libya may look like another Iraq: another US-led adventure aiming to dislodge a would-be totalitarian Middle Eastern state with lots of oil and sand. The topography of the two countries is similar: The land is flat and parched, and the architecture d Nicolas Pelham • 14 min read
MER Article NATO's Future in the Middle East Although US interventionism is part of the collective Arab experience, NATO interventionism isn’t – at least not yet. According to NATO’s “New Strategic Concept,” however, this could change soon, with European forces being propelled into global military engagements – even in the Middle East. Karim El-Gawhary • 5 min read
MER Article Discriminate Intervention NATO, long the linchpin of Western military operations in Europe, should be prepared to intervene “out-of-area” -- in the Third World, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. This was the message delivered in February by Michael Legge, NATO’s assistant secretary-general for defense planning policy and author of the Mariano Aguirre • 15 min read
MER Article Turkey's Other NATO Link Ostensibly multilateral, NATO is often merely the framework for bilateral relations in which the United States is the commanding partner. Nowhere is this more the case than with Turkey, separated geographically from the other NATO allies by its main adversary, Greece, and heavily dependent on the US Diana Johnstone • 4 min read
MER Article Bad News for NATO The air show disaster in West Germany in late August that killed 62 and injured 300 was bad news for the US Air Force, even though Italian jet fighters were involved in the crash. Germans were already nervous in the wake of a series of military jet crashes earlier this year. On a single day in June, Martha Wenger • 1 min read
MER Article NATO Goes to the Persian Gulf In the last half of 1987, some 75 US, French, British, Italian, Belgian and Dutch warships steamed into the Persian Gulf in what became the largest peacetime naval operation since World War II. Six NATO countries had joined efforts specifically to police the Gulf, considerably increasing the longsta Jochen Hippler • 10 min read
