Diplomacy & Politics Archive

The defense ministers of Brazil and Turkey met in Brazil last month, where they signed a letter of intent to improve bilateral military ties and increase technology transfers. In an email interview, Oliver Stuenkel, an assistant professor of international relations at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, discussed the military relationship between Brazil and Turkey. WPR: What is the extent of the current defense relationship between Brazil and Turkey in terms of military-to-military relations and defense-industrial ties? Oliver Stuenkel: The defense relationship between Brazil and Turkey is still small and incipient, yet in 2003, Brazil and Turkey signed an […]

A series of recent crises in West Africa have put the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in the spotlight, demonstrating the organization’s potential to shape West African politics, but also the limitations on its ability to do so. In Mali, one domino after another has fallen since a Tuareg-led rebellion began in the north of the country on Jan. 17. Junior military officers seized power in the capital, Bamako, on March 22. Tuareg rebels seized control of three major cities in northern Mali and declared independence for the territory they call the “Azawad” on April 6. In nearby […]

Violence clashes broke out during the weekend in Nepal at the start of a three-day general strike aimed at influencing the drafting a new constitution in the South Asian nation. World News Videos by NewsLook

A bomb intended for former Colombian Interior Minister Fernando Londono instead killed two of his bodyguards and injured scores of bystanders in Bogota on Tuesday. According to media reports, the bombing was the first with seemingly political motivations to hit the capital in nearly a decade. Rebels from the guerilla group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are the most likely culprits behind the attack, but two experts who spoke with Trend Lines warn that the Colombian government must not react by focusing too much of its attention on the FARC while ignoring the many other threats to Colombia’s […]

BEIJING — Senior leaders from China, Japan and South Korea met in Beijing last weekend for a trilateral summit, where they signed an eye-catching agreement to work toward establishing a free-trade zone, the latest in a flurry of trilateral economic deals in recent months. But despite these developments, the geopolitical situation in Northeast Asia remains fragmented, and a multilateral architecture capable of containing latent regional threats is some way off. Recent months have brought a series of initiatives to increase economic integration among the three countries. In March, Tokyo announced it would invest in Chinese sovereign bonds for the first […]

The narrative that U.S.-Russian relations are set on a downward path with the return of Russian President Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin has received a major shot in the arm with this week’s “summit-gate” saga. Aware that the inability to reach any accord between Russia and the United States over the contentious issue of missile defense would overshadow the NATO summit in Chicago, the Obama administration deliberately changed the location and timing of the G-8 summit, originally scheduled in Chicago immediately after the gathering of the Atlantic alliance, to the presidential retreat at Camp David the weekend before. This change […]

The agricultural ministers of China, Japan and South Korea signed an agreement last month to work together to improve food security and increase agricultural trade. In an email interview, Roehlano M. Briones, a senior research fellow at the Philippine Institute for Development Studies and research fellow of the Asia Pacific Policy Center, discussed East Asian cooperation on food security. WPR: What are the major food security priorities for China, Japan and South Korea, respectively? Roehlano M. Briones: Let me answer this question from the viewpoint of policymakers. For China the major food security priority is to ensure that the population […]

Advocates of the G-8, what few are left of them, might be forgiven for having a case of the “told ya so’s” this year. The importance many observers have attached to tomorrow’s gathering of G-8 leaders at Camp David in Maryland seems to vindicate those who defended the summit format against charges of irrelevance over the past few years. Certainly, the G-8 is no longer the control room of the global economy that it once was. The shift of the global economy’s dynamic center of gravity to Asia, unlocked by globalization and accentuated by the global financial crisis, has made […]

It seems like Argentinean President Cristina Fernandez increasingly has the world lined up against her, but there’s no reason to feel sorry for her. Fernandez is the librettist of her own drama, and she is carrying out an international populist performance worthy of her famed predecessor, Evita Perón, updated for the anti-globalization, Occupy generation. In the process, the Argentinean leader is taking her country on a sharply different path from the one chosen by other booming South American economies, moving Argentina down a perilous road. She is also driving foreign investors, as well as many domestic ones, away from Argentina. […]

The United States is training a growing force of African troops as part of a wider strategy to fight al-Qaida-affiliated militants in Somalia. Boot camps where contractors hired by the U.S. State Department provide training to Ugandan soldiers made headlines earlier this week. According to recent reports, U.S. contractors will train three quarters of the 18,000 African Union troops deployed to Somalia, and the U.S. government has spent $550 million over the past several years on training and equipment. Politics is what leads to the use of private contractors instead of the military in many African conflicts and crises, such […]

Debt-stricken Greece must hold fresh elections after talks on forming a new government broke up without agreement Tuesday, prolonging a tortuous crisis which could see Athens exit the troubled euro zone. World News Videos by NewsLook

An important challenge for U.S. diplomacy during the upcoming NATO summit is to ensure that the lack of a decision to enlarge NATO does not become a defining outcome of the gathering. Most NATO summits do not invite new members. Indeed, there have been only three enlargement summits since 1989. But even at summits where new members were not invited to join, NATO leaders have emphasized that the alliance maintains an “open door” to new members, and the Chicago summit should be no exception in this regard. Perhaps nowhere is this more relevant than in the case of Georgia, which […]

While the prospect of a country withdrawing from the eurozone was once considered unthinkable, the possibility of a Greek exit from the economic monetary union has now become a focus of the European Union debt crisis. The success in recent parliamentary elections of parties opposed to the austerity measures that Greece must enact to receive EU bailout payments has left Athens in a political impasse. As a result, some observers have begun to take seriously a scenario whereby Greece will be forced to exit from the single currency and default on its debts. And as no country has ever left […]

Abe Selig, an analyst with Stratfor, explains how the upcoming May 20 NATO summit in Chicago and the recent assassination of a Taliban official are complicating the U.S. goal of withdrawal from Afghanistan. World News Videos by NewsLook

On May 2, the United States and Afghanistan signed a new Strategic Partnership Agreement after months of negotiations. In the accord, the United States pledged to support social and economic development, provide security assistance and promote regional cooperation for 10 years beyond the planned 2014 withdrawal date for all U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan. Under the terms of the agreement, the United States will not seek permanent military bases in the country, but can receive access to Afghan facilities. In return, the Afghanistan government committed to strengthen accountability, transparency, the rule of law and human rights for all Afghans, male […]

While attempts to frame Algeria within the Arab Spring narrative have proved unrealistic, some observers thought the country’s May 10 parliamentary elections could present an opportunity for substantive political change. European and American officials lauded President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s invitation to international organizations to send election observers, as well as recently passed “reforms,” as progress toward democracy, likening these moves to Morocco’s top-down reform process enacted at the onset of the regional uprisings. But Algeria’s ability to avoid the upheaval that has swept North Africa over the past year has less to do with a proactive leadership and more to do […]

In April, three major Brazilian energy companies announced plans to increase investment in Peruvian natural gas. In an email interview, Thomas Andrew O’Keefe, president of Mercosur Consulting Group, discussed Latin America’s intraregional energy ties. WPR: Historically, how strong has intraregional cooperation been on energy issues in South America, and how is that changing? Thomas Andrew O’Keefe: Intraregional cooperation on energy issues went through a boom period in the 1990s, when there was a widespread regional consensus on letting the market set energy prices and permitting the private sector to take a lead role in developing new pipelines and connecting electricity […]