David Ignatius's Blog, page 134

On Syria, reality-check time

RABAH AL-SARHAN, Jordan

The Syrian border is just a few miles north of this processing station for refugees. Syrian rebel commanders had invited me to travel with them inside their country, entering through a crossing point near here, but the Jordanian government emphatically said no. So this account is based on interviews with Syrians I met in Jordan or who talked with me from inside Syria by phone.

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In camps, a yearning for home

ZAATARI REFUGEE CAMP, Jordan

Ask Yousef Bargash when he might go home to his village of Mahaja in southern Syria and he turns his palms skyward in supplication. The old man says it’s his “main hope,” but his manner implies he won’t be leaving soon. The war is too brutal.

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War returns to Iraq on the eve of elections

AMMAN, Jordan

Iraq is slipping back into civil war, and Sheik Zaydan Aljabiri, one of the political leaders of the Sunni insurgent group known as the Tribal Revolutionaries, seems confident that his side is winning.

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Closer, but still no deal on Iran

As the Iran nuclear talks reach roughly the halfway point in the six-month timetable for negotiating a comprehensive agreement, both sides report slow, steady progress in closing gaps — but no deal yet.

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Has the Ukraine crisis been defused?

Has the Obama administration really found the famous “exit ramp” in Ukraine that will provide an eventual diplomatic resolution of the crisis? It’s too early to know, but there were certainly signs of progress Thursday in Geneva, where seven hours of negotiations produced what Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called “a compromise, of sorts.”

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The cost of Putin’s adventurism in Ukraine

As President Obama looks at the Ukraine crisis, he sees an asymmetry of interests: Simply put, the future of Ukraine means more to Vladimir Putin’s Russia than it does to the United States or Europe. For Putin, this is an existential crisis; for the West, so far, it isn’t — as the limited U.S. and European response has demonstrated.

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Warning signs of trouble in China’s markets

China’s financial markets seem to be signaling trouble, as a government crackdown on corruption and loose credit begins to bite and jittery local investors scramble for safety.

China remains an opaque country, and even the most knowledgeable experts say they aren’t sure how to read the tea leaves. But the warning signs are growing that, after decades of economic expansion and exploding wealth, China is moving toward the scary side of the perpetual seesaw between greed and fear that drives financial markets.

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Putin steals the CIA’s playbook on anti-Soviet covert operations

The West has made NATO’s military alliance the heart of its response to Russia’s power grab in Ukraine. But we may be fighting the wrong battle: The weapons Russian President Vladimir Putin has used in Crimea and eastern Ukraine look more like paramilitary “covert action” than conventional military force.

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The U.S. is still indispensable when it comes to free trade

Name a foreign policy issue on which China and most of the rest of the world’s nations are struggling to keep up with a U.S. initiative. If you guessed “free trade,” you’re correct.

In a season that has mostly brought reversals for Obama administration efforts abroad, the free-trade agenda keeps on chugging. The massive weight of the U.S. economy creates incentives for cooperation with the United States rather than resentment.

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A tortured debate between Congress and the CIA

It has been an unlikely Washington feud, pitting a determined Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the implacable chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, long regarded as a supporter of the CIA, against the agency’s equally stubborn director, John Brennan.

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