James Madison University

August 3, 2011 | World Defense Review

Sudan’s Elections: What Now?

With all but the cynically duplicitous, willfully blind, or invincibly ignorant acknowledging that the elections in Sudan last week were more of a farce than a demonstration of the Sudanese peopl...

June 22, 2011 | World Defense Review

China Goes on Safari

By Dr. J. Peter Pham Understandably, the foreign policy focus of United States policymakers and media has been trained lately primarily on the ongoing events in the Greater Midd...

June 22, 2011 | TCS Daily |

Beyond Farce

The following is not the outline of a rejected screenplay by an aspiring Hollywood writer trying to outdo 24. Nor is it product of a freshman political science student's imagination, concoct...

June 15, 2011 | World Defense Review

São Tomé and Príncipe: An African Exception?

That the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe might somehow escape the various "traps" – ethnic conflict, the "resource curse," poor governance, etc. – en...

June 15, 2011 | World Defense Review

Sudan: Looming Crises, Strategic Opportunities

While international attention remains riveted on the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the western Darfur region – it has been less than two weeks since an Antonov transport belonging to the S...

June 15, 2011 | World Defense Review

Eritrea: The Horn of Africa’s Rogue Regime

Last week, exasperated with Eritrea's continued violations of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and its increasing harassment of representatives at the American Embassy in Asmara...

June 15, 2011 | World Defense Review

Beyond Mugabe’s Madness

Even by the ridiculously low procedural standards of Africa's club of presidents-for-life, last Friday's poll in Zimbabwe was a truly pathetic exercise. As Barry Bearak, the Pulitzer Pr...

June 15, 2011 | World Defense Review

Zimbabwe’s Runoff Rip-off

Three months ago, Zimbabweans went to the polls and by a clear majority repudiated the nearly three-decade misrule of the Zimbabwe Africa National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) in general and t...

June 15, 2011 | World Defense Review

Around the Troubled Horn

Even by the much-reduced expectations of the subregion, the news emanating from the geopolitically-sensitive, but ever-volatile Horn of Africa has not been at all good these last few weeks....

June 15, 2011 | National Interest |

Taiwanese Tightrope

On Tuesday, in the second-ever transfer of power from one democratically elected government to another in the history of the Republic of China (ROC), Ma Ying-jeou of the Nationalist Party (KMT) w...

June 15, 2011 | World Defense Review

Criminal Networks in West Africa: An Emerging Security Challenge

On April 30, Sidi Ould Sidna, a.k.a. Abou Jendel, an al-Qaeda-linked militant who was escaped earlier in the month from the courthouse in Nouakchott, Mauritania, where he was being tried for the...

June 15, 2011 | World Defense Review |

Rising Sun and Dark Continent: Japan’s Courtship of Africa

On May 28, forty African heads of state and government trooped into the Pacifico Conference Centre in the Japanese port city of Yokohama to join their host, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukada, in kickin...

June 15, 2011 | World Defense Review

U.S. Engagement of Africa in the National Interest

Earlier this year, citing an array of new initiatives including the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM), the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), and the President's Emergency Plan for...

June 14, 2011 | World Defense Review

Enabling Mugabe to Cling On

Last Friday was the twenty-eighth anniversary of Zimbabwe's independence, although the country's long-suffering people of the country might be forgiven for not exactly marking the occas...

June 14, 2011 | World Defense Review

Thinking about Terrorism and Other Security Challenges in Africa

In last week's column, surveying developments in the former Somalia, Sudan, the Maghreb and Sahel, Nigeria and West Africa, and the rest of the continent, I concluded that "Through the c...

June 14, 2011 | World Defense Review

Somalia Still Sinking as Eritrea Entertains Enemies

September has not been a good month in the sometime Somali capital of Mogadishu, even by the relative standards of a failed state that has not had an effective central government in the sixteen y...

June 14, 2011 | World Defense Review

The War on Terrorism in Africa: Assessment and Prospects

The end of one year and the beginning of another is a good time both to take stock of where we have been and to look ahead at the paths we are likely to take and the battles which we will have to...

June 14, 2011 | Dr. J. Peter Pham World Defense Review

Milestone in Partnership to Counter Terrorism in the Sahel

By Dr. J. Peter Pham Last Saturday, military personnel from the Unites States and thirteen African and European countries wrapped up a joint military exercise in the Malian capi...

June 14, 2011 | National Interest Online

Religion and Realism After 9/11

In 1996, halfway through America’s "holiday from history", terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp published an article warning of a surge in religious fanaticism that would manifest itself in "sp...

June 14, 2011 | World Defense Review

An Inconvenient Flag

Liberia's Ship Registry in the Age of Global Terrorism