Diplomacy & Politics Archive

On Tuesday, Venezuela was formally admitted as the fifth full member of Mercosur, the South American trading bloc that was founded in 1991 by Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. While the accession of Venezuela, which has one of the largest proven oil reserves in the world, will improve regional economic integration, it is also likely to deepen divisions among the group’s members. Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told Trend Lines that Venezuela’s admission to Mercosur was long overdue, having been held up in recent years by the Paraguayan legislature for reasons that were also […]

A new cabinet in Egypt has been sworn in during a ceremony more than a week after President Mohammed Morsi named political novice Hesham Kandil as prime minister. The new government is Morsi’s first since taking office in late June. This report produced by the Chinese government-owned Xinhua news agency examines the new cabinet. World News Videos by NewsLook

There are several reasons why American presidential candidates include overseas trips as part of their campaigning. First, and particularly important for those aspirants who lack significant foreign policy experience, it allows American voters to get a preview as to how the candidate might represent the United States on the global stage by interacting with foreign leaders and communicating with international audiences. In 2008, then-Sen. Barack Obama’s jaunt across the Atlantic, especially his “rock star” rally in Berlin’s Tiergarten and his visit to U.S. troops in Iraq, was quite successful in positioning the junior senator from Illinois as a plausible world […]

Though overshadowed by recent news coverage focusing on Iraq’s still-fragile security situation, the country’s political stalemate remains a matter of concern. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki refuses to share power with his rivals. But while Maliki’s relative influence is large, he is constrained by Iraq’s parliamentary and federal systems, a gift of the now-departed Americans. Meanwhile, his opponents are weakened by divisions over ethnicity, region, ideology and competing personal ambitions. As a result, they have been unable to remove Maliki from office or force him to yield back the powers he has steadily accrued during his six years as prime minister. […]

Inch for square inch, no country in the Middle East wields as much influence as the minuscule and fabulously wealthy Emirate of Qatar. The emirate measures less than half the size of New Hampshire and sits on a most inhospitable piece of land. But its audaciously assertive leadership has leveraged Qatar’s two assets, money and location, to turn the tiny peninsula into a major player. Qatar has become a key mover of events in the fast-changing Arab world. Until recently, Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani has exercised his influence by strategically deploying money and diplomatic resources. Now, he has decided […]

Officials in India are working to identify what caused the electrical grid failures that led to two massive blackouts Monday and Tuesday. Two experts who spoke with Trend Lines emphasized that the grid failures should also be seen as an opportunity for the country to figure out how to invest and innovate in the power sector so that it can meet the growing needs of the population. “The underlying issue is that there is not enough generation supply to meet the load demand,” said Anjan Bose, a professor in the College of Engineering & Architecture at Washington State University. And […]

When the United States led an international coalition in a military intervention against the regime of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi last year, I was among those who argued the campaign was not in the vital interests of the United States. Libya, a country of just 6 million people and around 3 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, was simply not important enough to risk the lives of U.S. servicemen — or any more treasure, given what the United States had already spent in Iraq and Afghanistan. My own experiences in both of those countries as a soldier have […]

A common theme in international relations debates today centers on the need to move beyond stovepiped bureaucracies and policy solutions to more effectively respond to the interconnected challenges of a world defined by the forces of globalization. In particular, numerous governmental and multilateral strategic policy directives over the past few years have emphasized the importance of combining efforts that build defense and security capacity with projects to further development needs. While widespread and pragmatic implementation of this powerful rhetoric remains a relative rarity, recent efforts by the Japanese government offer a good example of one way forward for this kind […]