Foreign Relations of the United States

Foreign Relations of the United States

The Foreign Relations of the United States series is the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions that have been declassified and edited for publication. The series is produced by the State Department's Office of the Historian and printed volumes are available from the Government Printing Office.

FRUS begins with the administration of Abraham Lincoln in 1861. There are two cumulative indexes covering 1861-1899 and 1900-1918. The organization of FRUS is generally chronological, but the dates of the volumes do not necessarily reflect the dates of documentary history. For example, the volumes for 1900-1918 do not include the records dealing with World War I or the Russian Revolution. Each volume has a subject and author index. There is also typically a table of sources and abbreviations at the beginning of each volume.

Many volumes published since 1960 are available online on the State Department website that is maintained by the University of Illinois at Chicago. A full description of Foreign Relations of the United States, including a listing of the online FRUS volumes, is available from the Office of the Historian website.

Latin America’s New Security Reality: Irregular Asymmetric Conflict and Hugo Chavez

Latin America’s New Security Reality: Irregular Asymmetric Conflict and Hugo Chavez

Source: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College

In 2005, Dr. Manwaring wrote a monograph entitled Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Bolivarian Socialism, and Asymmetric Warfare. It came at a time when the United States and Venezuela were accelerating a verbal sparing match regarding which country was destabilizing Latin America more. President Chavez shows no sign of standing down; he slowly and deliberately centralizes his power in Venezuela, and carefully and adroitly articulates his Bolivarian dream (the idea of a Latin American Liberation Movement against U.S. economic and political imperialism). Yet, most North Americans dismiss Chavez as a “nut case,” or—even if he is a threat to the security and stability of the Hemisphere—the possibilities of that threat coming to fruition are too far into the future to worry about. Dr. Manwaring’s intent is to explain in greater depth what President Chavez is doing and how he is doing it.

First, he explains that Hugo Chavez’s threat is straightforward, and that it is being translated into a consistent, subtle, ambiguous, and ambitious struggle for power that is beginning to insinuate itself into political life in much of the Western Hemisphere. Second, he shows how President Chavez is encouraging his Venezuelan and other followers to pursue a confrontational, populist, and nationalistic agenda that will be achieved only by (1) radically changing the traditional politics of the Venezuelan state—and other Latin American states—to that of “direct” (totalitarian) democracy; (2) destroying North American hegemony throughout all of Latin America by conducting an irregular Fourth-Generation War “Super Insurgency”; and, (3) country-by-country, building a great new Bolivarian state out of a phased Program for the Liberation of Latin America.

The Terrorism Index

The Terrorism Index

Source: Foreign Policy and the Center for American Progress

Surveying more than 100 of America’s top foreign-policy experts—Republicans and Democrats alike—the Foreign Policy/Center for American Progress Terrorism Index is the only comprehensive, nonpartisan effort to mine the highest echelons of the nation’s foreign-policy establishment for its assessment of how the United States is fighting the war on terror. First released in July 2006, and again last February, the index attempts to draw definitive conclusions about the war’s priorities, policies, and progress. Its participants include people who have served as secretary of state, national security advisor, senior White House aides, top commanders in the U.S. military, seasoned intelligence professionals, and distinguished academics. Eighty percent of the experts have served in the U.S. government—including more than half in the Executive Branch, 32 percent in the military, and 21 percent in the intelligence community.

National Intelligence Estimate: Prospects for Iraq’s Stability but Political Reconciliation Elusive

National Intelligence Estimate: Prospects for Iraq’s Stability: Some Security Progress but Political Reconciliation Elusive

Source: Office of the Director of National Intelligence (via Think Progress)

Driven largely by the accelerating pace of tribal engagement and the increasing tempo of Coalition operations, developments in Iraq are unfolding more rapidly and with greater complexity today than when we completed our January NIE. Regional variations in security and political circumstances are great and becoming increasingly more distinct–for example, intra-Shia violence in southern Iraq is very different from patterns of violence elsewhere. The intelligence assessments contained in this NIE largely focus on only a short period of the Iraqi conflict–the last six months–and in circumscribed areas–primarily the central provinces, which contain the center of gravity for Iraq’s security prospects and in which we have a greater Coalition presence and therefore more information. The unfolding pace and scope of security and political realities in Iraq, combined with our necessarily limited focus of analysis, contain risks: our uncertainties are greater, and our future projections subject to greater chances of error. These issues, combined with the challenges of acquiring accurate data on trends in violence and continued gaps in our information about levels of violence and political trends in areas of Iraq without a substantial Coalition presence and where Intelligence Community collectors have difficulty operating, heighten our caution. Nonetheless, we stand by these judgments as our best collective assessment of security and political conditions in Iraq today and as likely to unfold during the next six to 12 months.

Iraq Trip Report

Iraq Trip Report

Source: Brookings Institution

From July 17-25 we travelled extensively in central, western and northern Iraq. The trip was sponsored by the Multi-National Force—Iraq (MNF-I) command and so afforded unparalleled access to U.S. and Iraqi military personnel. We spoke at length with the four principal American division commands in those sectors, as well as nearly half of the brigade commanders and their staffs, as well as several battalion and even company commanders. We also met with senior U.S. personnel from the Detainee Forces command, and from the training command known as MNSTCI, as well as a number of Iraqi police and army officers. Similarly, MNF-I saw to it that we were able to meet with key civilian personnel in a variety of PRTs/EPRTs, the U.S. Ambassador, the President’s Special Envoy, the CIA station, the US AID mission, and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq. Both through our own contacts and those of the military, we also were able to meet with a number of the seniormost members of the current Iraqi government (including President Talabani, Vice President ‘Abd al-Mahdi, Foreign Minister Zebari, Deputy Prime Minister Salih, and National Security Adviser ar-Rubaie).

An Introduction to Theater Strategy and Regional Security

An Introduction to Theater Strategy and Regional Security

Source: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College

Theater strategy and theater security cooperation are two of the most important tools available in attaining national security. They offer an effective means for geographic Combatant Commanders to engage other countries, deter aggression, or resolve crises. However, there is little current, concise, and comprehensive guidance on how they are planned and implemented. This paper explains what theater strategy is, its basis, how it is formulated, and how it is executed with emphasis on theater security cooperation. The author illustrates the role in national affairs of theater strategy and security cooperation through examples from a case study leading up to and during Operation ENDURING FREEDOM in Afghanistan.

Terrorist Threats in the Horn of Africa: A Net Assessment

Terrorist Threats in the Horn of Africa: A Net Assessment

Source: National Security Outlook (American Enterprise Institute)

The struggle against Islamist extremism has been dubbed the “Long War” by America’s military leadership, but there is no agreed-upon model to forecast the development of this conflict. The challenge of assessing the Long War is exacerbated by the differences between the adversaries: the United States and its allies form the core of the international system, while the Salafist jihadists at the extreme of radical Islam comprise an irregular transnational movement that has adaptively spread throughout the world from its Middle East base. Comparing the structure, goals, strategy, and tactics of these fundamentally asymmetric forces is a chore to which our analytic tools developed during the Cold War do not lend themselves. This National Security Outlook examines whether the “net assessment” concept might serve as an appropriate framework for understanding the Long War and predicting its likely development.

Phased Transition: A Responsible Way Forward and Out of Iraq

Phased Transition: A Responsible Way Forward and Out of Iraq

Source: Project on Defense Alternatives

A Phased Transition plan is necessary for Iraq. The Bush administration should end its current “surge” of U.S. troops and launch a transition process that focuses U.S. forces on an advisory role and reduces our military presence in Iraq from approximately 160,000 today to about 60,000 by the end of 2008. At the same time that it implements the first phase, it should begin planning for subsequent phases and working to achieve a bipartisan consensus in the United States.

Is The United States Losing Turkey?

Is The United States Losing Turkey?

Source: Hudson Institute

The alliance between the United States and Turkey, which has endured since the 1947 Truman Doctrine and has contributed to the security of both countries, is now in serious trouble. What is worse, neither side is facing up to this reality, let alone taking serious remedial measures, nor even making concerted efforts to understand the new political currents within each other’s societies.

If this neglect continues, the price paid by both sides will be steep. It is becoming increasingly clear that Washington and Ankara see the world and define their interests in divergent ways. If allowed to continue, this trend could well undo the alliance. The good news is that there is still time to act, providing senior leaders on both sides move with dispatch. It is urgent that they do so, for despite the end of the Cold War, which provided a clear rationale for their alliance for four decades, Ankara and Washington still need each other, perhaps more so because they now face multiple and unfamiliar threats, not least those posed by terrorism.

The most important source of discord between Turkey and the United States is the war in Iraq. Ankara fears that Iraq will break up as a result of the war and that a separate Kurdish state will arise, creating even greater disorder and stoking separatist sentiment in Turkey’s southeast, and increasing paramilitary and terrorist attacks by the Kurdish separatist organization, the PKK. Washington, for its part, feels betrayed by the Turkish parliament’s rejection of its request to open a second front from Turkey’s territory against Saddam Hussein’s army in the run-up to the 2003 war. But more fundamentally, the Bush administration is preoccupied by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and seems to have relegated Turkey to the back burner—or so it appears to many Turks.