A close friend, Erin Baines, has a truly amazing article in last weekend’s Globe. I have been hearing details of this story for a year or so now, and have been enthralled. You will not hear a better case, or read a better story, that so dramatically displays the challenges, hypocrisies and frustrations [...]

Dave and I have the following piece in this week’s Embassy. It is in part based on research I have done on the US bombing of Cambodia with Ben Kiernan, an overview of which can be read in this Walrus article.
Embassy, May 7th, 2008
Afghanistan Another Iraq? Try Another Cambodia
Of the many complexities [...]

Patrick Travers and I have an oped, here, and below, in the Star today on the recent NATO summit in Bucharest.

2011 is a date, not a goal
Reinforcements are welcome but do not address Manley’s sweeping critique
Apr 05, 2008
Patrick Travers
Taylor Owen
Prime Minister Stephen Harper told reporters in Bucharest that the French troop commitment to [...]

I am disappointed that Power has stepped down from the Obama campaign. She was more than a mere Obama policy adviser, she was his liberal internationalist Condi. She is also someone for whom I have a tremendous amount of respect, not to mention a fair dose of envy. It was [...]

It is often difficult to disentangle the debates on Afghanistan and Iraq.  The two are not the same, as Tony Cordsman demonstrates convincingly in his latest brief.  Part of the problem of course is the rhetoric used for both tends to slip into the same fight against islamo-fascism story.  In this regard, Harper’s shift in [...]

David and I have the piece below in this morning’s Toronto Star. It tries to link the supply side of the opium problem (our failing counter narcotics initiatives in Afghanistan), to our failure to address the domestic demand side of the issue. Closing Vancouver’s Insite supervised injection site would be a major [...]

Janice Stein and Eugene Lang have written a great book on the first 5 years of the Canadian engagement in Afghanistan. I won’t review it in full, but a few of quick points.
First, this is a very effective model for a foreign policy book.  Lang was on the inside, so we are privy [...]

1) Should/must Hamas be part of any Mideast peace talks? 2) Should the US keep permanent bases in Iraq, and should US companies get ‘first rights’ to Iraqi oil contracts? 3) Is decreasing violence in Baghdad because a) the surge is kicking ass, b) forced religious segregation/killing is almost complete, c) they just [...]

The best book reviews are those that avoid the easy shots, the type of superficial critiques that can be made of any book, and go straight for the gut. Such reviews don’t quibble with details, or point out obvious biases, but rather go after the central thesis of the work. They challenge the [...]

… move by the Harper government. First the good. Along with other Commonwealth members, and in notable contrast to Bush’s recent statements, Canada has led the way on suspending Pakistan from the Commonwealth.
Now the bad. The current government is trying to shut down the supervised injection site in Vancouver. The [...]

Dave and I had the following op-ed in the Globe today:
Kandahar deal breakers: The Afghan poll is not a blank cheque
TAYLOR OWEN AND DAVID EAVES
Special to Globe and Mail Update
November 2, 2007 at 1:03 AM EDT
The results of the poll of Afghans by Environics on behalf of The Globe and Mail, the CBC and La [...]

David and I published this piece in Embassy Magazine this week. They’d asked for our reaction to PM Harper’s speech at the Council on Foreign Relations.
—
Embassy, October 3rd, 2007
OPED
Africa is not a Liberal Idea
Taylor Owen and David Eaves
“It was clear that he had a particular feeling about the continent (Africa) and particularly that underdog feeling [...]

Yesterday, David and I had the following oped in the Toronto Star.  Let me just add that the point is not that we should be sending in troops, but that the current default positions of pretending the crisis does not exist and blaming the Americans for screwing it up, are simply untenable for a country [...]

This is wonderful news. At the time of his kidnapping, Johnston was the only western journalist permanently based in Gaza. His kidnapping has had a serious effect on our knowledge of the region, and the wider conflict. Something that benefits no one. This line is also interesting:
Mr Johnston said Hamas’s seizure of power in Gaza [...]

I have a couple of articles on the concept of 3D peacebuilding currently being used in Afghanistan. Both are co-authored with a friend, Patrick Travers. The idea that defense, development and diplomatic initiatives must coordinate in fundamentally new ways is seen by many as the future of peacebuilding. This, however, brings with it [...]

So let me get this straight….The moment the democratically elected government is undemocratically reconfigured is the right time for aid to be re-instated? hmmm, now what lesson does this send to those for whom this aid is rightly intended?
Tangentially, can we please put the absolutist democracy promotion rhetoric to rest. Yes, democracy is good, but [...]

The article I wrote with Ben Kiernan on the US bombing of Cambodia has been reprinted in Japan Focus.  The newer version was slightly updated and a few more maps were added. A critique of the piece sent to the Walrus is here and our reply is here. A series of zooms that [...]

Together, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have just become the second costliest in US history (as absolute dollars, not percentage of GDP). So what have other US wars cost? Below is a list from the Congressional Research Service, figs are in Billions of 2006 bucks.

The American Revolution: $1.54
War of 1812: $1.14
Mexican War: [...]

Following the comments to my post about potential regional negotiations between the US, Iran and Syria on Iraq, I asked a friend, David Eaves (who moonlights as a negotiations consultant), how he might approach such talks.
Specifically, I asked: ‘how would you run ME regional talks on Iraq using negotiation theory? Say US, Syria and [...]

OK, so this is well trodden ground and I realize I am a broken record on this, but I really think that the strategic costs of civilian casualties are the central challenge of the peacebuilding effort in Afghanistan. This story, for example, perfectly captures the challenge facing NATO.  The circle between fighting neo-Taliban, accidentally killing [...]

This morning, Bush defined success in Iraq as an ‘acceptable level of violence’. This argument ties withdrawal of American forces to the level of violence. In many ways, this logic is as problematic as a benchmarked timetable. If some insurgents want the US to leave, wouldn’t they just stop fighting until they do, and if [...]

These ICC arrest warrants in Darfur have been a long time coming. Several months ago I saw William Shabas speak, one of the principle lawyer/academics behind the ICC, and he was furious that Ocampo hadn’t moved on Sudan yet. It will also be interesting to see where they go with the N. Uganda indictments. [...]

I’d be curious what others think about this. Seems to me like a temporary measure. But maybe that is what is needed, a ‘temporary’ wall until the tempers subside. The problem with walls though is that once they are up, they usually end up sticking around for a while…
Here are some [...]

David Eaves and I have an op-ed, here and below, in today’s Globe and Mail.
Beyond Vimy Ridge: Canada’s other foreign-policy pillar
This is a hallmark year for Canadian foreign policy. 2007 marks the anniversaries of two events through which Canada contributed significantly on the international stage: the Battle of Vimy Ridge and Lester Pearson’s Nobel Peace [...]

Andy McCarthy cites Geneva, Sullivan rebuts:
Unlike prisoners detained by the U.S. in Iraq - some of whom were tortured so badly they died? Memo to Andy: your beloved administration has derided the Geneva Conventions as “quaint”. They have sanctioned not gentle questioning, but waterboarding, sleep deprivation and stress positions for prisoners captured in a war, [...]

I just saw a wonderful talk by Lawrence Wright who was in Toronto accepting the Gelber Prize for his book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and The Road to 9/11. It is refreshing to see such a soft spoken yet tremendously authoritative treatment of this topic. An exemplar of the type of analysis fundamentally [...]

What metrics should we be using to measure the success of the surge? Some are beginning to note a decrease in bombings in Baghdad, but given that it was widely believed that the insurgents (of some stripes anyways) would simply lay low until the surge was over, is this really a viable indicator? The first [...]

Apologies for the light posting of late, it has been a hectic work month. I have an op-ed in today’s Toronto Star (written with friend and colleague David Eaves), the slightly longer and unedited version of which is below:

Getting Back on Track in Afghanistan
Success in Afghanistan remains as vital today as when the government [...]

Bolton: This is in many respects simply a repetition of the agreed framework of 1994. You know, Secretary Powell in 2001 started off the administration by saying he was prepared to pick up where the Clinton administration left off. President Bush changed course and followed a different approach. This is the same thing that the [...]

So it turns out that in 2003, Iran offered the following to the US - ending support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups, helping to stabilize Iraq following the US-led invasion and making its nuclear programme more transparent. This in return for Washington to end its hostility, to end sanctions, and to disband the [...]