Gian P. Gentile

Este archivo solo abarca los artículos del autor incorporados a este sitio a partir del 1 de noviembre de 2006. Para fechas anteriores realice una búsqueda entrecomillando su nombre.

A woman walks past graves in the Lychakiv military cemetery in Lviv, Ukraine, on June 1. Yuriy Dyachyshyn/AFP via Getty Images

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Over the past 16 months, perhaps the most discussed aspect of Washington’s policy toward Ukraine has been whether or not the U.S. Congress will continue providing Kyiv with weapons. The question has dominated the news and opinion pages for good reason: There is a loud but vocal minority, particularly among Republicans, that has promised either to increase scrutiny of Ukraine aid or to cut it off entirely. After this month’s deal on the debt limit, these calls have only intensified. The threat of an end to aid has raised the stakes for Ukraine’s nascent counteroffensive, too. Given that the United States is far and away the largest and most important military donor to Ukraine, any move to curtail military supplies would have profound consequences for the war.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

In late February 2006, al-Qaeda destroyed the Askariya Shiite shrine in Samarra. During the previous two months that my cavalry squadron had been operating in Iraq, my main focus was the technical training of the Iraqi national police and combined operations with them against Sunni insurgents in west Baghdad. Before Samarra, it did not seem important which areas of Baghdad were Shiite or Sunni or that the police battalions I operated alongside were almost completely Shiite. Before Samarra, I assumed that Iraqi citizens saw the national police as the security arm of the elected, and thus legitimate, government and that the officers had the people's support against insurgents.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

I learned as a tactical battalion commander in Baghdad's Amiriyah district last year that government legitimacy was exponentially more important than the number of coalition and Iraqi army forces patrolling the streets, the number of coalition advisers with Iraqi army and police units, or money spent improving services. Indeed, legitimacy of the government of Iraq as seen through the eyes of all Iraqis -- Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds -- is the necessary condition for peace based on reconciliation.

In Amiriyah we were neither winning nor losing; we were in stasis. Between August and November last year, I substantially increased the number of combined American and Iraqi army patrols there and the capacity of the American adviser team that worked with a local Iraqi army battalion.…  Seguir leyendo »