Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Honduran President Porfirio Lobo signed a deal Sunday in Cartagena, Colombia, with the country’s ex-President Manuel Zelaya, clearing the way for Zelaya’s return to Honduras from exile. That the agreement was brokered by the governments of Colombia and Venezuela — two countries from opposite ends of Latin America’s political spectrum — and apparently without any involvement by the United States is raising some eyebrows. “A deeper reading of this has to do with the fact that Latin America has become more autonomous from the United States,” says Kevin Casas-Zamora, a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution in […]

Seventy years ago yesterday, the Royal Navy battlecruiser the HMS Hood was destroyed by the German battleship the Bismarck, striking the British national security apparatus with panic. Although the Hood was 20 years old when it faced off against the Bismarck, it was still one of the largest, fastest and most powerful warships in the world. It was also the most visible symbol of British naval power, having conducted many “show the flag” cruises during the interwar period. The loss of the Hood inspired an intense, emotional desire for vengeance on the part of the Royal Navy, as well as […]

The debate over whether President Barack Obama violated the 1973 War Powers Resolution by committing U.S. forces to Operation Odyssey Dawn, including the drama of outraged legislators condemning yet another president for disregarding this curious law, was predictable. This most recent effort, like others before it, will probably come to nothing. But the legislation itself is dangerous, and the attempts to invoke it should stop. Republicans and Democrats now have an opportunity to remove the War Powers Resolution from our national life, and they should seize it. There is an unavoidable tension in the Constitution between the president’s role as […]

Ministers from 118 countries of the group Non-Aligned Movement gather in Indonesia for a three day conference. The group was founded in the 1950s during the Cold War, by countries that did not want to side with Russia or the United States.

BEIJING — The global financial crisis catapulted China into a position of international economic leadership a decade earlier than Beijing’s strategists had intended. That significantly increased the urgency of rebalancing the Chinese economy away from the low-quality, export model toward higher-value, domestically driven growth. One consequence has been new and accelerated patterns of Chinese trade and investment abroad. For the United States, China’s largest economic partner, the implications of this new multidirectionalism are significant. But with recent figures showing that bilateral investment between the two countries is contracting, the U.S. must adapt its approach to this issue to ensure it […]

Thousands of protesters have been rallying for several days now in Georgia with the goal to overthrow President Mikhail Saakashvili. This report by the Russian government-owned news network Russia Today maintains that the opposition has vowed to take radical action by Wednesday saying that the current regime must go by then.

Since even before the controversy surrounding the killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. special forces in Pakistani territory, analysts have been assessing whether China would exploit the growing tensions between Islamabad and Washington to expand its own influence in Pakistan. The results of Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s four-day official visit to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) suggest that Chinese officials are pondering one potential option, a naval base in Pakistan, even if they do not seem eager to displace U.S. influence in Pakistan entirely. Upon Gilani’s return, Pakistan’s Defense Minister Chaudhary Ahmed Mukhtar told the press […]

Just more than a week ago at the United Nations saw the close of the Meeting of Governmental Experts on the Implementation of the Program of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects — an elaborate name for an initiative whose progress has been marred by bureaucratic chaos, slow implementation and unequal state capacities. The Program of Action, created in 2001, is a series of recommendations on small arms and light weapons, ranging from destruction of surplus arms to changing national laws to regulate the arms trade. The […]

Israel’s minister of industry, trade and labor recently led a business delegation to Brazil, seeking to boost economic ties. In an email interview, Sean Goforth, a teacher of international political economy at Coastal Carolina University and a Latin American blogger for the Foreign Policy Association, discussed Brazil-Israel relations. WPR: What is the extent of the economic and political relationship between Israel and Brazil? Sean Goforth: The two countries have a history of friendly but rarely robust relations. Ambassadors have been regularly exchanged since the 1950s, while trade flows have been low. Bilateral trade totaled less than a billion dollars in […]

In recent months, news outlets in Japan and the U.S. have reported that Mongolia is negotiating with those two countries to serve as a regional depository for spent nuclear fuel. The proposed plan would permit geographically constrained countries in the region, such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, to dispose of their spent fuel in the spacious Central Asian state. The veracity of the reporting on the negotiations is still unknown. When the story first broke in March, the Mongolian Foreign Ministry was quick to dismiss the notion that Mongolia would host Asia’s nuclear waste. The statement went on to […]

The International Monetary Fund is in an unexpected state of flux. The shocking sexual assault charges, arrest and subsequent resignation of former Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn have turned the institution’s leadership on its ear. As the surprise of last week’s events dissipates, the focus now becomes selecting Strauss-Kahn’s replacement. In the coming weeks, a highly political process will unfold behind the scenes as the Europeans wrangle with a group of emboldened emerging-market countries for the fund’s top slot. In the middle lie the Americans, who hold the key to the success of either group. If the U.S. is shrewd, it […]

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari visited Russia earlier this month for broad-ranging strategic talks. In an email interview, Rouben Azizian, a professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, discussed Russia-Pakistan relations. WPR: What is the recent history of Pakistan-Russia relations? Rouben Azizian: For decades, Moscow and Islamabad viewed each other as adversaries because of the Cold War’s impact on South Asia, Russia’s special relations with India and the U.S.-Pakistan alliance. The withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan briefly opened the door for improved bilateral relations, but Pakistan’s support for the Taliban government in Afghanistan and the presence of Chechen […]

Much of the reaction to President Barack Obama’s speech on U.S. Middle East policy last Thursday focused on his reference to Israel’s pre-1967 borders as the basis for a future two-state solution with Palestine. But Obama’s speech was far more focused on long-term realities, suggesting that he is not really willing to push for some historic Israeli-Palestinian peace plan against the background of the Arab Spring. In fact, it’s fair to wonder why he chose to expend any of his political capital on this deadlocked issue, especially since he had to know that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would reject […]

CAIRO — When the 9-year-old students at a private British school here skip down the hall for religion class, the children head in one of two directions. Muslim students shuffle into one classroom with their books on Islam, and Christian students to another with their texts on Jesus and the disciples. National policy in Egypt dictates that Muslim children study Islam and Christian students learn about Christianity. And while Christian students do acquire some knowledge of Islam through Quranic readings in standard Arabic classes, the exposure is limited. Though it might seem anecdotal, the education policy is in fact revealing: […]

Amid raging controversy over India’s land acquisition plan, rights activists accuse the government of offering a raw deal to the poor.

Facing pressure from the European Union, the Serbian political entity within Bosnia-Herzegovina backed off of plans last week to hold a referendum that would have challenged the authority of statewide institutions in the country. In an email interview, Bruce Hitchner, a professor at Tufts University and the chairman of the Dayton Peace Accords Project, discussed Bosnia’s relations with the EU. WPR: What is the current status of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s EU aspirations, on both sides? Bruce Hitchner: The European Union has strongly supported Bosnia’s eventual membership in the EU, and Bosnia-Herzegovina has signed a Security and Stabilization Agreement with the European Union, […]

Libyans in Benghazi welcomed U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech to the Arab world as he addressed U.S. Middle East policy. Like many Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, Libyans were glued to television sets on Thursday watching Obama’s much-anticipated “Arab spring” speech.