Attention to the Unseen

Rachel Bronson writes: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement on Friday that the United States is suspending the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty should worry everyone. The I.N.F. is a landmark treaty and it has made the world a safe place. It was the first nuclear agreement to ever outlaw an entire class of weapons. The Trump administration has dismissed the I.N.F. as irrelevant because Russia has abrogated its commitment to it by developing a treaty-busting cruise missile of its own….

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Joseph Cirincione writes: John Bolton relishes in targeting nuclear arms treaties. He is very good at it. The U.S. national security adviser’s latest hit is the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, but his list of victims goes back decades. He had a hand in either the U.S. withdrawal or repeal of Richard Nixon’s Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Bill Clinton’s Agreed Framework with North Korea and Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. Now he has helped put the knife into Ronald Reagan’s landmark…

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Ahmed Rashid writes: On Thursday, the Taliban appointed Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who founded the movement with Mullah Mohammad Omar in 1993, as the chief negotiator in the peace talks with the United States, being held in Qatar. Mr. Baradar, who was also appointed as deputy to the Taliban chief Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, is expected to travel soon to Doha to join the peace talks with the American peace envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad. Mr. Baradar is revered among the Taliban as…

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Vincent Intondi writes: On February 6, 1968, Dr. King, stepped up to the pulpit to warn against the use of nuclear weapons. Addressing the second mobilization of the Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam, King urged an end to the war and warned that if the United States used nuclear weapons in Vietnam the earth would be transformed into an inferno that “even the mind of Dante could not envision.” Then, as he had done so many times before, King…

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Anshel Pfeffer writes: The escalation in the conflict between Israel and Iran in the skies over Syria in the past 24 hours has brought their secret war of the last two years well and truly into the open. On Sunday, Israel carried out a rare daylight series of airstrikes in the Damascus area, followed by an Iranian attempt to fire a mid-range missile toward northern Israel. Overnight Monday, at 1 A.M., Israel not only launched a second, much wider series…

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The New York Times reports: The American military has started withdrawing some equipment, but not yet troops, from Syria as part of President Trump’s order to wind down that battleground against the Islamic State, two Defense Department officials said on Friday amid continuing confusion over plans to disengage from one of the Middle East’s most complex conflicts. The officials said the number of American troops might actually increase slightly in Syria, to help protect the final process of pulling out…

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Haaretz/Reuters reports: A military operation against the Kurdish YPG militia, which Turkey has pledged to carry out in northern Syria, is not dependent on a U.S. pull-out from the region, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday. “If the [pullout] is put off with ridiculous excuses like Turks are massacring Kurds, which do not reflect the reality, we will implement this decision,” Çavuşoğlu said, referring to Turkey’s threat to launch an incursion into Kurdish controlled Syria. In an interview…

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The Guardian reports: The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has vowed the US and its allies will “expel every last Iranian boot” from Syria as he sought to reassure Middle Eastern nations it was not withdrawing from the region despite Donald Trump’s call for troops to return home. In a keynote speech delivered in Cairo, pitched as the centrepiece of his nine-country regional tour, Pompeo called for a common stand against Tehran. “It’s time for old rivalries to end,…

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The Guardian reports: Turkey has asked Washington to hand over its bases in Syria as the Trump administration appeared to reverse plans to withdraw from the country’s north-east on Tuesday, jeopardising Ankara’s plans to launch a widespread military operation targeting Kurdish groups. The fresh row between the two Nato allies broke out as the US national security adviser, John Bolton, visited Ankara to row back on a surprise announcement by Donald Trump in December that US forces would leave Syria…

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Christopher Phillips writes: For Syria’s embattled president, Bashar al-Assad, 2018 ended well. Alongside President Trump’s announced withdrawal of U.S. troops from eastern Syria, several Arab states indicated they were willing to reconcile. In December, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir became the first Arab leader to visit Syria since the civil conflict broke out in 2011. Soon afterward the United Arab Emirates, previously opposed to Assad, announced it was restoring ties with Damascus, with Bahrain and Kuwait indicating they could soon do…

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