Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Power is the ability to affect others to obtain preferred outcomes, and that can be done through coercion and payment or attraction and persuasion. Generally, people associate coercion with military power resources, but that is too reductive. After all, economic power resources can also be used for coercion. Even in terms of what is considered “normal” economic behavior, the boundaries are not always so clear. As Thomas Schelling has argued, “The difference between a threat and a promise, between coercion and compensation, sometimes depends on where the baseline is located.” After all, once compensation becomes an expectation, withholding it for […]

How do different-sized powers establish order among themselves? And how do larger powers compel smaller and weaker ones to do their bidding? Though abstract, these two questions have concrete applications in the real world and are among the oldest in international relations. Differential power relationships have been around since the first polities, later called states, came into existence, and over the course of history, various systems have arisen to manage them. Among the best-known examples from the classical world are the Greek alliances, also called leagues, which at times kept the peace, but also, when that failed, made wars far […]

No credible international affairs specialist would contend that the 2012 presidential election will hinge on U.S. foreign policy, given the state of the U.S. economy and the widespread social anger that one sees bubbling up across the country. What’s more, Americans — if not Beltway partisan pundits — have achieved a certain sense of consensus on foreign policy under President Barack Obama, whose leadership has displayed a palpable “give them what they want” dynamic that reflects his desire to keep overseas issues on the back burner while he focuses on domestic ones. That last part should not be mistaken for […]

Proponents and opponents alike of defense budget cuts have spilled much ink lately. The debate will spike even further over the coming months as the actual budget is submitted to Congress for passage, and as Congress’ “super committee” for identifying long-term deficit-reduction measures gets closer to its deadline that, if missed, would mandate automatic defense cuts. As with other topics, however, the Washington defense budget debate seems to be occurring in a vacuum, not taking much account of the rest of the world, nor the implications of the spending decisions on potential adversaries’ strategies. In putting the debate into its […]

The leaders of Greece’s two biggest parties are due to resume talks to agree on who should be the country’s new prime minister, after reaching a historic power-sharing deal to push through a massive financial rescue deal to prevent imminent bankruptcy.

The recent arrival of a Chinese navy hospital ship carrying doctors and medical supplies to treat the needy in Jamaica flew mainly below the radar of mainstream American media. But the People’s Liberation Army’s “Peace Ark” mission highlights the delicate balance China is seeking to strike as it tries to show off its growing global military capability and boost its influence in regions once exclusively dominated by the U.S. military, without triggering suspicion and alarm in Washington and elsewhere. “In some sense this underscores that you can’t put China in just a regional category any longer,” says Jonathan D. Pollack, […]

With Israel, the U.S. and Great Britain ramping up psy-ops against Tehran in the form of leaked strike planning, the IAEA is set to release its latest and most unambiguous report on the Iranian nuclear program to date. According to advanced word, the IAEA report offers new and convincing evidence of Iranian weaponization intentions. It is a mistake to dismiss such intelligence out of hand, as has become the habit in the post-Iraq WMD environment. After all, despite serious doubts at the time, the consensus of serious observers seems to be that the Syrian site attacked by Israel in 2007 […]

Scarcely was the ink dry on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s interview with Time magazine in which she extolled U.S. global leadership than the Palestinian bid for membership in UNESCO called into question the secretary’s optimistic appraisal of American influence around the world. Despite the claims of some pundits that a cabal of U.N. bureaucrats somehow engineered Palestine’s admission as a full member state of the organization, the ultimate responsibility lies squarely with the governments that cast their votes in Paris on Monday. Given the importance and sensitivity of the Palestinian question, it is highly unlikely that UNESCO ambassadors were […]

Thailand’s worst flood crisis in decades has spawned a political battle now threatening the fragile government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who came to power this summer as the nation’s first female prime minister. Prior to the flooding, Yingluck’s election appeared to represent a long-awaited respite from the paralysis that has defined Thai politics in recent years — a paralysis that often resulted in violent clashes between the “Red Shirt” supporters of Yingluck’s brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and nationalist “Yellow Shirts” in central Bangkok. However, the natural disaster, and particularly the fight over how best to respond to […]

The governments that emerge in the aftermath of the uprisings in the Middle East will face a challenge as daunting as any faced by the men who ruled for decades before them: They must urgently improve living standards for the millions who now demand change — and they must do it in the wake of unrest that has caused already-dismal economic conditions to worsen even more. Despite the loud calls for democracy and freedom, the real engine of the Arab revolts has not been philosophical or political. Above all, the popular revolutions have been motivated by a pressing need for […]

The past month has seen an unusual flurry of diplomacy between the U.S. and Pakistan, with relations going from troubled to tense to partially reconciled. The row began when outgoing Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Haqqani Network was a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, the ISI. The Pakistani government and military responded by denying any such links and strongly cautioned against U.S. unilateral action inside Pakistan. The U.S. then took steps to lower the temperature, dispatching U.S. Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Marc Grossman, followed by a high-profile […]

An estimated 240,000 people have been displaced by flooding in Cambodia, and concerns are growing about the onset of disease.

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou recently said that he would not conduct peace talks with mainland China without first holding a referendum. In an email interview, Richard Bush, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of its Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, reviewed the status of peace talks between China and Taiwan. WPR: What is the recent trajectory of cross-Strait relations, in terms of attitudes toward a final peace settlement? Richard Bush: Ever since Chiang Kai-shek and his armies were defeated on the Chinese mainland and retreated to Taiwan, the China-Taiwan relationship has been fraught with a degree […]

As the leaders from the 20 largest developed and emerging economies gather this week in Cannes, France, observers will catalogue the difficulties in forging consensus around decisive steps to remedy global ills. To be sure, a roomful of the world’s most powerful leaders are bound to disagree about the causes and consequences of global economic instability and the arc of global order. But this G-20 summit will highlight another central challenge to coordinated international action: the rise of democratic powers that are ambivalent about the prevailing international order and have yet to decide whether to bolster it, replace it or […]

After a campaign plagued by corruption allegations and violence — 41 candidates were murdered during recent months — the outcome of Colombia’s municipal elections last weekend paints the picture of a nation polarized between left-leaning pragmatists in urban centers and conservative elites clinging to countryside power. Perhaps most striking was the rise of Gustavo Petro, a former leftist guerilla, who was elected mayor of Bogota after running on an outspokenly “anti-corruption” platform. Petro’s victory, which comes on the heels of an intense public-works corruption scandal that landed the Colombian capital’s former mayor, Samuel Moreno, in jail in September, is particularly […]

As Arab League officials await a formal response from the government of Bashar al-Assad, Syrian State TV has announced a deal between Damascus and the Arab League. Among the points in the plan is an immediate end to the violence, which means Syrian troops should be taken off the streets.

Burmese workers have found themselves trapped in Thailand’s ongoing flood disaster. Many entered the country illegally and now have no money or identity documents, exacerbating an already difficult humanitarian crisis surrounding the floods.