Diplomacy & Politics Archive

In the last 12 months, events in Pakistan have developed at a frenetic pace. In October 2007, Benazir Bhutto returned to her homeland following years of exile and was greeted as a savior by millions of followers. Just two months later, in December, she was assassinated in an attack whose authors have still not been identified. Shortly after that, the political decline and fall of her rival Pervez Musharraf began. First the general lost the parliamentary elections, then his post as head of the army, and finally the presidency itself. Earlier this month, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, Asif Ali […]

NOT IN HARM’S WAY? — About 150 U.S. military personnel had an almost ringside seat at the Russian sweep across Georgia between Aug. 8 and 12 — an airbase near the Georgian capital, Tibilisi. Military spokesmen in the Pentagon and in Europe told Corridors that the American troops had been involved in a just-completed large-scale joint U.S.-Georgian exercise but had remained behind when the fighting erupted. More than 1,000 U.S. soldiers and marines had taken part in “Immediate Response 2008,” designed to improve cooperation in combat situations between American and Georgian forces. The exercise ended on July 31, but members […]

The U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear agreement may still have to clear the U.S. Congress, but Indian firms and industry groups are already celebrating the Nuclear Suppliers Group’s decision this month that effectively gave the agreement a green light by waiving a ban on the country engaging in nuclear trade. The U.S.-India Business Council, which has lobbied hard in support of the bilateral agreement that followed a joint statement in 2005 by President George Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, described the waiver as “a historic step forward for India and the world,” while the Confederation of Indian Industry said it […]

KOTA KINABALU, Malaysia — Philippine troops have launched surprise attacks on rebel strongholds in the country’s south as authorities brace themselves for an upsurge in violence expected once Ramadan is over. Military officials claimed at least 25 rebels were killed in weekend fighting after government troops went on the offensive in the rebel-held territory. Wire services also reported one government soldier was killed. However, independent sources said the fighting was of a much lower intensity than was seen in August, when ferocious rebel attacks left scores dead and caused 160,000 people to flee their homes as Christian villages were torched. […]

On Sept. 8, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced the most concrete U.S. punishment of Russia for Moscow’s military intervention in Georgia. In a brief press release, she related that President Bush was rescinding the proposed U.S.-Russia Agreement for Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation. She expressed regret at the decision, but described it as inevitable since, “given the current environment, the time is not right for this agreement.” Although Vice President Richard Cheney has denounced “Russia’s actions [as] an affront to civilized standards” and said they are “completely unacceptable,” the Bush administration had until this decision not penalized Russia so directly […]

WASHINGTON — Among the gravest risks to the continuing improvement of the situation in Iraq is that Sunni militias now allied with the United States will not be successfully integrated into Iraqi Security Forces or find employment in the civilian economy, say Iraq analysts and U.S. government officials. But independent observers and U.S. officials differ sharply in their assessments of the possibility of a reversal in the Sunni “Awakening,” which is almost universally credited as a significant factor in recent reductions in violence. The Awakening movement began in earnest in 2006 in Iraq’s Anbar province, when U.S. commanders took advantage […]

BANGKOK, Thailand – Just inside the barricades surrounding Bangkok’s besieged Government House, a newspaper photo spread taped to a tarpaulin shows the grisly scene that erupted there early last week: police in riot gear squaring off with gangs of protesters in red and yellow; a man shooting a slingshot into the crowd; another grimacing while blood oozes from his face and head. But more than a week after that clash between supporters of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej and the opposition People’s Alliance for Democracy, which killed one and wounded more than 40, the mood has lightened among protestors. The indecisive […]

NEW YORK — Both candidates for President of the United States agree that Iran’s pursuit of nuclear technology is a serious threat to national security, but neither has presented a serious strategy for dealing with the problem on the campaign trail. One seems to think he can talk Iran out of its nuclear program without specifying what he’d say to change the equation. The other summed up his strategy by inserting a few bombs into an old Beach Boys song. Campaign rhetoric rarely becomes policy, especially in foreign affairs, and the Iranian question is no exception. Certainly Barack Obama will […]

Although widespread fighting in Georgia has ceased, the war’s diplomatic repercussions continue to ripple throughout the region. One major concern in Washington is that Russia’s successful military intervention in Georgia will intimidate other former Soviet republics to, if not bandwagon with Moscow, at least distance themselves from the United States to avoid antagonizing a newly belligerent Russia. It is therefore no accident, as Russian Prime Minister Vladmir Putin likes to say, that U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney visited Azerbaijan last week. Cheney travelled to Baku even before arriving in Georgia and Ukraine, whose governments have been engaged in more acute […]

ON THE MARGIN — As usual, Washington’s foreign ambassadors went to the two conventions in force. Though they pay their own way, they are officially guests of the political parties, which corral them into a assigned areas to witness the proceedings, limit their access to the delegates’ portion of the floor to a few group visits, and organize programs of activities outside the convention itself. At the Republican Convention this week, the ambassadors’ schedule (interspersed with the occasional policy conference) included a visit to an ethanol production plant in Winthrop, Minn., and a tour of Minnesota Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau’s […]

Following years of promising gains since 2001, Afghanistan is in a tailspin. Not long ago, a sophisticated Taliban assault on a Kandahar prison freed 1,200 inmates, including 350 Taliban members. The attack came only weeks after Afghan President Hamid Karzai survived a fourth assassination attempt. The main forces behind the country’s downward spiral are al-Qaida and the Taliban, which have found sanctuary in the vast unpoliced region of western Pakistan known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Stabilizing the Afghan-Pakistani front of the war on terrorism will require U.S. policymakers to re-examine the fatal misconception that they face only […]

HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS PRESS IOC ON FUTURE GAMES — Human rights groups are calling on the International Olympic Committee to promise that human rights guarantees will be part of the process for awarding future Olympic Games. Reporters Without Borders, Freedom House, Students for a Free Tibet, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are among the more than a dozen groups calling for more IOC attention to human rights as a criteria for selecting host nations. The success of the Beijing Games was tempered by Chinese authorities’ ongoing human rights abuses, and many worry that the games sent the wrong message […]

For a man known as a safe but unexciting pair of hands, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda managed to make a splash this week with his unexpected announcement that he will step down as prime minister, less than a year into the job. On the face of it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise. With Fukuda’s approval ratings having plunged to the high 20s, a deadlocked Diet, 50 million lost pension records and controversial health insurance reforms, the prospects for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party were not exactly rosy ahead of a lower house election that has to be called […]

From Aug. 20-21, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visited the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi at the invitation of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Assad last visited Russia in late 2006, when he met with then Russian President Vladimir Putin. At the beginning of their Sochi meeting, Medvedev greeted Assad by remarking that, “We are grateful to Syria for its support on issues related to the well-known recent conflict with Georgia, which committed an act of aggression against South Ossetia.” Assad responded that, “we wish to once again express our support for the Russian position as regards the recent conflict and […]

TORRÉON, Mexico — Fernando Martí, the 14-year-old son of a Mexican sporting goods magnate, was kidnapped in June, strangled within a few days of his abduction, and found in the trunk of a car in the nation’s capital in August. His ordeal — along with stratospheric levels of drug violence and the recent designation of Mexico as the country that leads the world in kidnappings — has provoked a groundswell of outrage across Mexican society. Politicians, civil groups, newspaper commentators, the business community — virtually everyone drawing breath from Tijuana to Cancun agrees that Mexico’s rampant criminality must be addressed. […]

Seen from space Saudi Arabia looks like a chunk of reddish clay chiseled from a vast slab linking the Arabian Gulf in the east to the Atlantic coast of Mauritania in the west. This desert-like landscape, stretching almost 5,000 miles across the Middle East, stands in stark relief to the green, fertile lands of Turkey and Europe to the north and the central African jungles of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the south. However, looking closer, from the perspective of an airplane flying over the kingdom, one would notice that the great sand sea of Saudi Arabia […]

At an emergency Sept. 1 meeting in Brussels, European Union leaders adopted the unexpectedly stern stance of threatening to suspend negotiations with Moscow on a renewed cooperative framework agreement unless Russian troops withdraw from Georgia. The decision was amplified by the drama of the gathering, which represented the first emergency session of the EU heads of government, formally known as the European Council, since the beginning of the 2003 Gulf War. According to the statement of the Extraordinary European Council, “Until troops have withdrawn to the positions held prior to 7 August,” when they first intervened in Georgia, “meetings on […]