Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao traveled to Germany late last month, where he met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and signed several major trade deals. In an email interview, Gudrun Wacker, a senior fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, discussed China-Germany relations. WPR: What is the recent history of China-Germany diplomatic and trade relations? Gudrun Wacker: When Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao came to Germany in June, he was accompanied by 13 cabinet ministers for the first-ever German-Chinese intergovernmental consultations. Germany has conducted such talks with very few countries in the world. These consultations reflect the importance of […]

A former resident of Addis Ababa returning today after an absence of five years would find the city almost unrecognizable. In that time, Ethiopia has transformed itself economically, and nowhere is that transformation more on display than in its capital. In terms of infrastructure and housing, Addis Ababa has blossomed from perhaps Africa’s worst example of urban planning into a grid of paved streets and multilane ring roads, with corresponding glass-walled high rises and luxury villas comparable to Johannesburg, South Africa. The Ethiopian government has used its unlimited power to bulldoze whole neighborhoods, evicting residents with little notice or compensation […]

The American embassy in Baghdad — already the world’s largest — has been expanding as the U.S. transitions from a military to a civilian-led mission in Iraq. On Sunday, the United States opened on a consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil.

Here lies the space shuttle. She kept the U.S. human spaceflight program alive after the euphoria of the Apollo missions. She led the way to reusable space flight. She provided jobs for armies of engineers and technicians. She also made human spaceflight seem routine — and in the end, that’s what killed her. But as with the retirement of the Apollo program — which was accompanied by less hand-wringing and fewer tears shed than that of the shuttle — it is time, not to mourn the shuttle’s passing, but to support the innovation that NASA and, more importantly, American industry […]

The sense of ideological triumphalism with which China recently celebrated the 90th anniversary of Communist Party rule echoed a flood of recent books and analyses in the West that have readily embraced that same sentiment. Nevertheless, there is a growing mountain of evidence that suggests China’s “unprecedented” economic accomplishments are far less impressive than popularly imagined. And with the region’s “demographic dividend” already shifting from China to both India and Southeast Asia, there are plenty of reasons to believe that Beijing — and the world — is just one financial crisis away from finding the “superiority” of state capitalism revealed […]

Since the 1980s, the Kurdish separatist group Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK), labeled as a terrorist group by Turkey, the European Union and the United States, has been one of the main threats to Turkey’s domestic security. The PKK lost momentum after the group’s leader, Abdullah Ocalan, was captured in 1999. But since 2003, the turmoil resulting from military operations in Iraq has facilitated the creation of a new safe haven for PKK bases in the Qandil mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan. In the past few years, clashes between Turkish security forces and PKK militants have been interrupted only by sporadic and […]

DENPASAR, Indonesia — The appointment by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of his own brother-in-law as the new chief of the army has highlighted a trend that sees Indonesia’s political leaders keen to maintain personal control of the security apparatus, while remaining averse to pushing for civilian democratic control. Gen. Pramono Edhie Wibowo, the younger brother of first lady Ani Yudhoyono, was sworn in on June 30. Now 56, Pramono graduated at the top of his class at the Indonesian military academy in 1980, and his background includes commanding the Siliwangi Military District in West Java as well as stints […]

Nearly five months after the downfall of Hosni Mubarak’s regime, thousands of Egyptians converged on Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday to urge the nation’s new military rulers to speed up democratic reforms.

Ecuador’s June 28 extradition to Colombia of Fabio Ramirez Artunduaga, the leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia’s (FARC) 48th Bloc, marks a significant step in the restoration and normalization of ties between the two South American neighbors. Acting on months of intelligence work by Colombian and Ecuadorean officials, Ecuadorean police arrested Ramirez during a sting in Quito, a world away from the jungles where his bloc operates. Citing his status as an undocumented foreign national, Ecuadorean courts promptly announced Ramirez’s extradition to Colombia. Within 48 hours of the arrest, Ramirez was in custody in Colombia. One year ago, […]

An ongoing effort by the Central African Republic to disarm rebel groups highlights the prominent role that disarming former combatants plays in peace agreements. In an email interview, Robert Muggah, research director of the Small Arms Survey and a research fellow at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, discussed the process of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration. WPR: How significant are disarmament initiatives in post-conflict scenarios, and are there any scenarios in which they are counterproductive? Robert Muggah: Disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) is currently a fixture of the stabilization and peacebuilding landscape. The vast majority of the roughly […]

Thailand is set to have its first female Prime Minister in Yingluck Shinawatra, younger sister of ousted former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Her victory as leader of the opposition Pheu Thai party has raised hopes that women can play a larger role in the country’s male-dominated politics.

After seven years of debate and impasse, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a 46-nation group of nuclear technology suppliers, agreed at a meeting last month in the Netherlands to revise the guidelines for trade in enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technology. The move was immediately criticized in India by the media and opposition parties as a reversal of the NSG’s 2008 waiver allowing the transfer to India of sensitive ENR technology, which can be used for the production of both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. The NSG’s original guidelines dated from 1978, three years after the group was formed in response to […]

MAE SOT, Thailand — On June 9, deadly clashes broke out in northern Myanmar between the country’s army and the ethnic minority Kachin Independence Army (KIA). The fighting reportedly erupted after Myanmar’s military moved to secure the Tarpein Hydropower Project, a Chinese-built dam that came online in January. The plant, which sits on a tributary of the Irrawaddy River close to rebel-held areas, has since suspended its operations, and the clashes have spread to surrounding regions, pushing Myanmar’s strategic borderlands to the brink of civil war. Rights activists say the Myanmar army’s offensive has brought a range of rights abuses, […]

When the generals in Myanmar orchestrated their pseudo-democratic pageant last November, the exercise was labeled a “sham” by most of the world. Some in the West, however, speculated that despite the deeply flawed elections, the long-ruling junta might still redeem itself and allow real democratic progress in the wake of the polls. So far, however, the optimists are being proven spectacularly wrong. In the months since the vote, the country has marched in the direction of civil war and intensified oppression rather than toward democratic reconciliation and real reform. The election may, in fact, have made matters worse. Myanmar’s new […]

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is known for a ubiquitous and theatrical presence in his nation’s media. So his sudden extended absence for the past month initially created something of a vacuum. As the news broke that he was in a Cuban hospital under treatment for cancer, however, that vacuum was quickly filled by speculation over who might take charge of the nation’s decade-old socialist revolution should Chávez turn out to be gravely ill. According to Christopher Sabatini, senior director of policy at the Americas Society and Council of the Americas, the sudden lack of leadership that became evident in the […]

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak is currently on a three-country tour of Africa. In an email interview, Gabriel Jonsson, an associate professor of Korean studies at Stockholm University, discussed trade and diplomatic relations between South Korea and Africa. WPR: What is the recent history of South Korea’s diplomatic relations with Africa? Gabriel Jonsson: Although South Korea began to establish diplomatic relations with African countries starting in the early 1960s, relations with Africa have been less active than with any other continent. In 2006, President Roh Mu-hyon became the first South Korean head of state to visit Africa since 1982. Roh […]

The Republican Party’s increasing divisions on foreign policy have now moved beyond Tea Party-inspired financial grumbling to find their way into the race for the GOP presidential nomination. Could the party’s 2012 nomination turn on foreign policy? If so, it would echo the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, in which foreign policy played an unusually strong role: Barack Obama is president of the United States today in large part because he opposed the Iraq War in 2003, compared to Hillary Clinton, who had been in favor of the war. However, supporters of a noninterventionist turn in the GOP are likely to […]