Diplomacy & Politics Archive

YALA, Thailand — After more than five years, Thailand’s Muslim insurgency shows no signs of abating. But neither is there any sign of it expanding or joining the ranks of international terrorism. Instead it remains localized, which is where the Thai government hopes it will remain. Some security analysts had been concerned about the possibility of connections to al-Qaida-linked extremist groups, especially the Indonesian-based Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). JI was responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people on the resort island, and is dedicated to establishing an Islamic state encompassing Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, the southern Philippines and […]

TOKYO — Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) knew that this weekend’s general election was going to be tough. But despite consistently dismal polling, many members likely didn’t expect quite the pummeling they took. The opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) on Sunday romped to a landslide win, taking more than 300 seats in the 480-seat House of Representatives. The victory brought more than 50 years of almost uninterrupted rule by the LDP to a dramatic end, and has left the DPJ not only holding power for the first time, but also as the biggest party in both houses of […]

One thing I’ve discovered from writing columns over the years is that they’re a great way to elicit invitations to sit down and talk with various players in the national security establishment. All you have to do is mention somebody’s office and you’re likely to get an e-mail from their public affairs officer eager to set your thinking straight. And so it was last week that I had the chance to converse with Ambassador John Herbst, three years in the job now as the State Department’s Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization. I earned the invitation by describing the CRS job […]

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has deliveredhis revised strategy for the war, saying the situation is “serious” but U.S. andNATO forces can succeed.

Among the more than 20 top posts at the State Department that have yet to be filled is the director of foreign assistance. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice created the post in 2006 to consolidate responsibility for the country’s nearly $30 billion foreign aid budget. What follows is a letter to the still-to-be-named nominee. To the incoming director of foreign assistance, As you well know, for more than six decades, foreign aid has played an indispensable role in the conduct of the United States’ foreign affairs. Today, 154 countries benefit from some kind of financial assistance. Along with defense […]

President Barack Obama came to power with a not-so-secret plan to reshape the Middle East. His team envisioned a fundamental realignment in the region, with an eye towards resolving a host of longstanding conflicts that made it a global focal point of political instability. A key element of that plan centered on one country: Syria. By reconstituting Washington’s relationship with Damascus, the reasoning went, Obama would manage to radiate improvements outward to a host of regional disputes. Seven months into the Obama administration, Washington’s efforts to pry Syria from its tight alliance with Iran and persuade it to start working […]

Earlier this month, Interpol publicized the results of a first-of-its-kind operation in West Africa aimed at freeing children trafficked to cocoa- and palm-plantation owners. The operation resulted in the arrests of eight people on charges of illegal recruitment of minors and the rescue of 54 children — aged 11-16 — from seven countries. “With Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire producing around three-quarters of the world’s cocoa, it is believed that hundreds of thousands of children are working illegally in the plantations across these two countries alone. The trafficking of children is often camouflaged by the cultural practice of placing young children […]

Get a .pdf version of this report. Since gaining its independence from the Soviet Union, Poland has looked to play an active role in the regional security environment. Two interrelated foreign policy spheres preoccupy Polish policymakers. First is the country’s Atlanticism, incorporating NATO membership and a close relationship with the United States. Second is the country’s European Union membership. Since having successfully acceded to NATO (1999) and the EU (2004), Poland has been expected to take up its share of the security and defense burden. In consideration of its new security responsibilities, the Polish armed forces as well as Polish […]

World Politics Review’s new special report on the Afghanistan warcompiles news, analysis and opinion from WPR’s pages to provide insightinto the situation on the ground, as well as the strategic questionsfaced by U.S. and coalition policymakers. Non-subscribers can purchase individual copies at the Scribd store, while subscribers can download the report free from our document center. Not a subscriber? Sign up for a four-month free trial. (The four-month trial offer expires Sept. 30). Below is the report’s table of contents: -Introduction from the WPR Editors -ABU MUQAWAMA ON AFGHANISTAN: AN IN­TERVIEW WITH ANDREW EXUMBY JUDAH GRUNSTEIN July 29, 2009 Policy […]

In the course of private meetings with Kenyan officials on her recent African trip, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressed for the dismissal of the Kenyan chief of police, the attorney general and other government figures she said were linked with corruption and the country’s recent post-election violence. According to the Kenyan paper the Nation, quoting a government minister who was present at one such meeting, Clinton presented the Kenyan government with a list of “violence and corruption suspects,” promising to name, shame and ban them from visiting the United States, the Nation reported. Among older Africans, that would […]

Tension between Muslims and Buddhists in Thailand’sdeep south have escalated in the wake of a recent Mosque shooting. MarkOltmanns reports for World Politics Review.

Editor’s Note: The following is a letter to the World Politics Review editor from Simon Shercliff, first secretary for foreign security and policy at the British Embassy in Washington. To the Editor: It’s important that I set the record straight on David Axe’s World Politics Review column entitled “Afghanistan Could Portend British Pull-out” and his subsequent and related blog post on Wired’s Danger Room, both of which wrongly argued that the 200th British soldier killed last week in Afghanistan could potentially weaken the U.K.’s resolve and long-term commitment to Afghanistan. No one can doubt the U.K.’s commitment to this mission. […]

In one of the most quoted aphorisms in international relations, the Prussian political philosopher Carl von Clausewitz said that “war is merely a continuation of politics.” In other words, for every war that has been waged, we can point to political aims underpinning its waging. Take some recent examples. In large part, the 1991 Persian Gulf war was about exerting power: It sought to prevent an invasion of Saudi Arabia and oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait. However, in Vietnam, the end goal was political influence: The war was fought to keep the south from falling to the communists. The examples […]

The small piece of land on the eastern Mediterranean known as the Gaza strip has seen its share of violence over the decades, with a series of conflicts fought along its narrow alley ways and on its sandy beaches. The latest round of fighting, gun battles that left two dozen men dead last weekend in a mosque in southern Gaza , opened yet another chapter in Gaza ‘s troubled history. Unlike other recent clashes, the fighting this time did not pit Israelis against Palestinians. It did not involve loyalists of the rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas competing for power. […]

Tunisian authorities continue to permit and encourage rights abuses under the guise of fighting terrorism and promoting national security, Amnesty International charges in a new report. “The government portrays Tunisia as a country where the rule of law prevails, but that is far from the reality. In practice, the Tunisian authorities continue to carry out arbitrary arrests and detentions, allow torture and use unfair trials, all in the name of the fight against terrorism. This is the harsh reality behind the official rhetoric,” Malcom Smart, director of AI’s Middle East and North Africa Program said in a statement. The report, […]

Whether it is better to continue the quest for Mideast peace with small steps, or go for a “grand bargain,” is a question that has been hotly debated for quite some time. Earlier this year, two preeminent experts on the subject, Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, offered President Obama their advice about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and they repeated the core of their argument in a recent New York Times op-ed piece that was published under the ominous title “The Two-State Solution Doesn’t Solve Anything.” Particularly the longer of the two pieces made for rather surprising reading, because Agha and Malley […]

On Thursday morning, a bomb exploded in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan, injuring a British soldier. Two days later, the soldier died at a hospital in Great Britain. He was the 200th U.K. fatality in the eight-year-old Afghanistan war. British newspapers marked the milestone with a flurry of grim news reports. And in short order, fighting claimed four more British troops. Great Britain has around 9,000 troops in Afghanistan — the biggest national contingent, after the U.S. British forces are concentrated in the restive south, especially in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates […]