Michael J. Totten's Blog, page 27

The Consequences of Syria

The Syrian civil war is no longer the Syrian civil war. It's a regional war that started in Syria, has expanded into Lebanon and Iraq, and has drawn in the Iranians and to a lesser extent the Kurds and the Israelis.

Wars in North Africa tend to stay local, but wars in the Levant spill over and suck in the neighbors. There's no reason to believe this war has finished expanding or that an end is in sight.

Lee Smith's new short book, The Consequences of Syria, is about how we got here. Lee is a fr...

Egypt's Failed Revolution

I've spent enough time in Egypt and interviewed enough people there to know that authentic liberals (in the general, classical, sense of the word) are thin on the ground, but they do exist and Samuel Tadros is one of them.

Fortunately for us—and unfortunately for his country—he left and lives now in Washington.

Last year he published his first book, Motherland Lost, which I reviewed for the Wall Street Journal, and he returns now with a short book (a long essay between covers) called Reflection...

The Beginning of the End of Iraq?

Al Qaeda splinter group ISIS has taken the Iraqi city of Tikrit and the Kurdish Peshmerga has taken the Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Iraq's army fled both and hardly fired a shot.

God only knows what happens next, but this much is clear—the Syrian war is no longer the Syrian war. It’s a regional war. It spilled into Lebanon at a low level some time ago. It sucked in Iran and Hezbollah some time ago. Now it is spreading with full force at blitzkrieg speed into Iraq and has even drawn in the Kurdistan...

Al Qaeda Conquers Mosul

Iraq is rapidly becoming one of the worst places in the world all over again.

Al Qaeda has reconquered the city of Mosul. Iraqi soldiers dropped their weapons and fled.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has declared a state of emergency, but his army appears to be useless despite years of American training.

The Al Qaeda group that took the city is ISIS—the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

The Syrian war has been exploding beyond its borders for some time now. I see no reason why that should stop or...

Pivot to Asia

I’m heading overseas this week, but don’t wander off. The blog won’t go fallow. I’ve been preparing some long-form material in advance that I can publish while I’m out in the field.

Should be an interesting trip, especially now that the Mekong River and the South China Sea are Asia’s new battlegrounds. I’ve been looking long and hard at East Asia the last couple of months and I understand now why the White House wants to “pivot” there. See especially Robert Kaplan’s new book, Asia’s Cauldron:...

Syria's Bogus Election

Syria is holding a presidential “election” today and Bashar al-Assad will win, probably with 99 percent of the “vote.”

Not even the world’s biggest political idiot will believe this is authentic, so why even bother? It’s happening because the United States is the world’s only superpower.

The international community, such as it is, expects elections to be held just about everywhere, and that’s because the United States expects elections to be held just about everywhere. Because the US is dominan...

“Tell Morsi to Leave or Egypt will Burn”

I finally got around to watching Vice magazine’s mini documentary about Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammad Morsi. It packs a hell of a punch, especially with the benefit of hindsight.

Maybe I’m experiencing hindsight bias here rather than benefit, but it seems obvious, watching this, that something big and terrible was going to happen in Egypt.

Exactly what was going to happen could not have been obvious in real-time, but no country can withstand the eruption of mass anger and rage t...

The End of an Era

For more than two decades Ukraine did its best to have good relations with both the West and Russia, sometimes veering a little more in one direction than the other.

That will no longer be possible. If Russia were a good neighbor, sure, it would be easy. Having good relations with both would be no more difficult than having good relations with Canada and the United States simultaneously. But not once in its history has Russia been a good neighbor.

Russia’s bloodless annexation of Crimea was bad...

So Much For All That

Last week I noted that an opposition newspaper run by the terrific author and blogger Yoani Sanchez was about to debut. I wondered aloud if the Cuban government was trying to fool its useful tools in the West again by pretending to respect free speech, but even that pessimistic assumption was too optimistic.

The government shut her newspaper down mere hours after her launch and is redirecting readers on the island to a hysterical propaganda page.

OG Image: South America

The Battle for the South China Sea

Furious mobs fire-bombed Chinese-owned factories in Vietnam in retaliation for China placing an oil rig in what Vietnam claims are its territorial waters. Hanoi is cracking down on “hooligans” and even peaceful demonstrations, but Beijing still decided to evacuate thousands of its citizens.

Earlier this month the Vietnamese and Chinese navies squared off with each other in the South China Sea over the very same issue.

This is just the beginning of what could be a very long conflict. Vietnam and...