The Briefing

The Washington Post carried a truly revelatory story by Greg Miller in its December 29 editions, although the story perhaps failed to generate as much attention as it should have. Some of the neglect may have been a product of its publication between Christmas and New Year’s, but a larger share is surely attributable to the inconvenience of its content. The headline was “Backlash in Berlin over NSA spying recedes as threat from Islamic State rises,” but, as they say, that ain’t the half of it.

The critical detail is that the German government has been passing names, email addresses, and cell phone numbers to US intelligence in order to track and investigate German citizens who have gone to the Middle East and may have joined al Qaeda or the Islamic State — with a key question being whether they intend to return to Germany and perpetrate attacks there.

Miller’s account cited senior German and US officials anonymously, which is unsurprising given the sensitive nature of the activity. Nevertheless, it seems a fairly authoritative indication that far from having deteriorated as a result of the furor in Germany over the Snowden revelations about US snooping, intelligence cooperation between the two countries is closer than ever. Continue reading →

The Briefing

At the 2005 United Nations World Summit, member states formally embraced the “responsibility to protect,” a principle of humanitarian intervention aimed at stopping atrocities. Briefly, the principle holds that states have a responsibility to protect populations residing on their territory from genocide and lesser atrocities; if they cannot or will not act in fulfillment of this responsibility, the international community may intervene to provide protection. The intention of the principle, known colloquially as R2P, is to defeat claims that states might make about their sovereign right to non-interference in their internal affairs in order to shield their own acts of mass atrocity or their failure to stop atrocities. Continue reading →