Diplomacy & Politics Archive

BURMA CONVICTIONS RAISE CONCERNS — Burma’s ruling military junta has come in for another round of criticism and condemnation over the recent convictions of participants in 2007’s pro-democracy demonstrations. On Tuesday and Friday of last week, authorities convicted a total of 60 activists on various charges, including forming illegal organizations and illegal use of electronic media, sentencing some to as many as 65 years in prison. Human rights advocates and world leaders have expressed concern about the trials, which represent a spike in the Burmese regime’s ongoing crackdown on dissent. U.S State Department officials openly challenged Burmese authorities in public […]

President-elect Barack Obama will inherit an Iraq that has experienced substantial improvements in security, but remains rife with unresolved internal issues. If not handled carefully, Iraq's fragile progress could dissolve and the country could become a dangerous foreign policy minefield for yet another American president. Here are the top 10 issues the next administration must address: 1. Determination of Objectives: The Bush administration invested vast resources in the hopes of achieving maximalist aims in Iraq. Though the results in Iraq have clearly fallen short of those aims, the Obama administration needs to formulate a policy that is more comprehensive and […]

LONDON — Until recently, Europe’s politicians held their noses when they spoke of the United States. Now they are falling over each other to associate themselves with the president-elect, to attach themselves to the most attractive, most popular and soon-to-be most powerful man on the planet. Everyone wants a piece of Barack Obama. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has more reason than most to seek Obama’s favor. Under former Prime Minister Tony Blair, Britain was regarded as Washington’s closest ally in the war against Iraq, the war against the Taliban and what was once called the war against terrorism. Brown […]

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — An uncomfortable silence filled the officers’ mess at the Macarena military base in southern Colombia as the lunchtime news broadcast the purge of 27 high-ranking army officials. “That’s not going to be the end of it,” said one army colonel as he shook his head in disbelief. He was right. Several days later, Colombia’s veteran top army commander, Gen. Mario Montoya, resigned. The firing of the army officers — including three generals — earlier this month followed a government probe into the disappearance of 11 men from Soacha, a poor neighborhood outside of Bogotá. The young men […]

Only eight months after losing Kosovo, their cultural and historical heartland, Serbs seem strangely passive these days. At this time last year, as negotiations over Kosovo’s final status reached an impasse, Serbs felt bitter and humiliated by the pariah-status they were dealt by the international community. So their initial reaction to Kosovo’s declaration of independence — and its quick recognition by Western capitals — this past February was predictable: amidst a crowd of 100,000 peaceful protesters (more than 1% of the population), a few hundred “extremists” attacked and ignited several embassies of Kosovo-friendly governments, including that of Kosovo’s strongest ally, […]

AMMAN, Jordan — The front page of Wednesday’s Jordan Times featured a photograph of a helmeted Israeli soldier pushing a grimacing young Palestinian’s face into the ground, with one fist pressing hard against the jaw of his youthful victim and the other one twisting the Palestinian’s arm behind his back. The previous Sunday’s paper had a picture of a bloodied little boy, with a caption explaining the child was a Palestinian “beaten up by Jewish settlers.” Every day, it seems, the paper brings another shocking image of Israeli brutality, with captions that describe a black-and-white scenario of utter evil against […]

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — The war in the Democratic Republic of Congo entered a complicated phase last week, with allegations that Angola and Zimbabwe had either deployed troops in the mineral rich Central African country, or had mobilized them in a bid to bolster President Joseph Kabila’s army. Last month, Kabila requested that Angola — which boasts one of Africa’s strongest armies — back him against the predominantly Tutsi rebels led by renegade Gen. Laurent Nkunda in the volatile eastern province of North Kivu. Officials within the United Nations peacekeeping force in the province’s capital of Goma have also confirmed […]

In late October, U.S.S. Kearsarge, a 40,000-ton amphibious assault ship, arrived off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago laden with hundreds of doctors, nurses and engineers, and tons of medical supplies. The tiny developing country was the fifth stop in Kearsarge’s four-month tour of Latin America, advancing a new Pentagon strategy for creating security through good deeds. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates calls it “soft power” — and it’s all the rage in a military exhausted by five years of hard combat. The Navy’s three-dozen amphibious ships, with their extensive medical facilities, along with its two specialized hospital ships, are […]

With the U.S. presidential election finally decided, attention has now turned to just how President-elect Barack Obama will handle American foreign policy. As a candidate, Obama often displayed the clearsighted vision of a foreign policy realist, while embracing the rhetorical flourishes of an idealist. In WPR’s latest biweekly feature issue, two prominent foreign policy analysts examine the challenges and opportunities that await The Obama Presidency. In Wilsonian Idealist or Progressive Realist? Nikolas Gvosdev, former editor of the National Interest, considers the kinds of “80 percent solutions” the Obama administration might be forced to consider, and whether it will be willing […]

LIMA, Peru — Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim met last week with his Iranian counterpart in Tehran, where the two diplomats discussed expanding bilateral economic ties. Trade between Iran and Brazil quadrupled between 2002 and 2007, and if Iran gets its way, it will further increase as much as five-fold, from $2 billion to $10 billion annually. The move reflects the fact that while Washington’s attention has been focused in recent years on Iraq and the War on Terror, Iran’s influence in Latin America has quietly but steadily grown. In addition to Brazil, Iran has signed dozens of economic agreements […]

Just hours after President-elect Barack Obama’s election victory, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev used his first state of the nation address before both houses of the Russian parliament to declare that Russia would deploy short-range Iskander missile systems in Kaliningrad “to neutralize if necessary the anti-ballistic missile system in Europe.” Medvedev also said that Russian electronic equipment would jam the U.S. systems and that he had canceled plans to dismantle three missile regiments deployed in western Russia. Kaliningrad, a Baltic Sea port which lies between NATO members Lithuania and Poland, hosts a major Russian military base. The Iskander surface-to-surface missile has […]

How is President-elect Barack Obama planning to shape the foreign policy of his administration? Is he a Wilsonian idealist? A progressive realist? Some mix of the two? How Obama will define his foreign policy still remains somewhat of a mystery. Between now and when he actually begins his term of office, I expect that his rhetoric about U.S. foreign policy and America’s place in the world will become more expansive and lyrical. After all, this is to be expected. American chief executives traditionally use the post-election period, culminating in the Inaugural Address, as a time to appeal to our loftiest […]

YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia — Early Sunday morning, the Indonesian government executed three men convicted of the 2002 Bali Bombings, ending a controversial period of postponements, court appeals and international media attention. Now, counter-terrorism officials and the public are braced for possible retaliatory attacks that the men — who operated under Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the al-Qaida-linked terrorist group held responsible for most of the bombings that hit the country from 2000 to 2005 — had promised. The 2002 Bali bombings killed over 200 people and remain the deadliest terrorist attack after 9/11. The executions, the first of Muslim extremists carried out under […]

As far as foreign policy goes, Barack Obama comes to the presidency totally unburdened by his past (this is truly his first act in the international political theater) and unusually credentialed as a presumed agent of future change (e.g., his biracial background alone), so he’s a relatively free agent, ideologically speaking. That’s a huge asset as he follows the highly ideological Bush-Cheney administration, because he encounters a world of labeled players, most of whom are eager to come in from whatever “cold” standing vis-à-vis the United States that their current designation implies. That doesn’t mean these regimes necessarily seek our […]

FROM SUCCESSFUL CANDIDATE TO PRESIDENT-ELECT — Amid the global euphoria — to say nothing of the often grudging admiration for the United States — following Barack Obama’s landslide victory, European ambassadors in Washington were already cautioning their governments that the new president will be no pushover. One ambassador said Friday, “On many major issues, there’s not a lot of difference in substance between an Obama administration and a McCain administration. However, where McCain could have been unpredictable, the Obama leitmotif has been mending international fences, so we can expect him to be tough, but hopefully open to reason.” While it’s […]

To hear some people tell the story, anti-Americanism will end now that Barack Obama has been elected president, bringing with him a traditional American respect for foreign cultures, international law, and multilateral diplomacy. The Bush legacy will fade from view, and Americans will once again be beloved around the globe, especially in Arab countries. The world, however, is not so simple. Anti-American riots first filled the streets of foreign nations more than a century ago, as the United States became a global power. They continued through the Cold War and beyond. Anti-American terrorism is not new, either. While some argue […]

SKOPJE, Macedonia — Kosovo’s regional recognition can be considered almost completed with Macedonia’s and Montenegro’s acceptance of its statehood early last month. In what was obviously coordinated action, the governments in Skopje and Podgorica recognized Kosovo on Oct. 9, following resolutions by the parliaments of the two countries recommending recognition. Belgrade was enraged by the move and promptly expelled both countries’ ambassadors, a measure it had not taken in response to previous recognitions. The coordinated Podgorica-Skopje action means that Kosovo is now recognized by all of its neighbors, with the exception of Serbia. Belgrade considers Kosovo part of its integral […]