Diplomacy & Politics Archive

The main reason behind Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision last week to remove Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov has become clearer in recent days with the subsequent firing of Chief of Staff Gen. Nikolai Makarov and other senior defense officials and military officers in Russia’s Ministry of Defense. Taken together, the dismissals suggest that the shakeup was not due primarily to sex scandals, corrupt practices or alienation of the officer corps, as has been claimed by various observers. Rather, the purge was the result of a power struggle over who should control the distribution of the $700 billion that Putin pledged […]

A rare earth plant that is a joint venture between Japan’s Sumitomo Corp. and Kazakhstan’s state-owned Kazatomprom opened in Kazakhstan last week. In an email interview, Timur Dadabaev, an expert on Central Asia at Tsukuba University in Japan, discussed Japanese relations with Central Asia. WPR: What is the recent history of Japan’s diplomatic and trade relations with Central Asia? Timur Dadabaev: Japanese engagement in Central Asia has evolved from former Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto’s 1990s-era Eurasian diplomacy toward the formation of the current Central Asia Plus Japan (CAJ) initiative. Hashimoto’s policy of engagement was continued by his successor, Keizo […]

At the Chinese Communist Party’s once-in-a-decade leadership reshuffle currently taking place in Beijing, outgoing party General Secretary and Chinese President Hu Jintao warned party cadres that the CCP’s very survival depended on its ability to rein in corruption. But on the party’s “core interest” of Taiwan, Hu displayed noticeably less urgency. Hu’s approach to Taiwan policy, which has combined opposition to independence with an outreach to all sectors of the island’s civil society, led to spectacularly improved ties between the former arch enemies. In his address to the party congress last week, Hu reiterated calls for peaceful unification, military confidence […]

If the U.S. presidential election had only been about the economy, Barack Obama would not have been re-elected. The U.S. federal government runs a $16 trillion deficit, a historical peak of sovereign debt whose only precedent dates back to World War II. And with 23 million Americans unemployed, the unemployment rate has not decreased dramatically since the outbreak of the 2008 financial crisis. Meanwhile, with regard to the policy issues raised by the crisis itself, there has been little follow through on the numerous decisions taken by the G-20 to better contain and control financial markets. To the contrary, financial […]

Editor’s note: This is a response to WPR’s Global Insider interview with Alan D. Hemmings, “Marine Reserve Failure Undermines Antarctic Treaty States’ Credibility.” Characterizing the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) as a “failure” due to its inability to agree on marine reserves in the Antarctic is unnecessarily alarmist and a misrepresentation of the enduring robustness of this group of decision-makers. While there is a need for Antarctic marine protections, the existing process is working. The CCAMLR’s members are bound by obligations contained within the international Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources and […]

Having won re-election, President Barack Obama now faces the daunting task of reinvigorating American foreign policy. There are reasons to be optimistic. As he turns his sights to his second term, the president has the benefit of four years of executive experience and is buoyed by the political capital that comes of even the most modest electoral victories. Both could translate into a more determined hand at the helm of the ship of state, even if domestic challenges will necessarily receive the lion’s share of the president’s attention. But for the Obama administration to solidify what has to date been […]

President Barack Obama will visit Myanmar later this month, the White House announced Thursday, in a trip meant to underscore the U.S. foreign policy shift toward the Asia-Pacific. Obama is scheduled to meet with Myanmarese President Thein Sein and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the two key figures at the center of Myanmar’s dramatic re-emergence into the international community, before continuing on to Cambodia and Thailand. Two experts told Trend Lines that the visit could be a catalyst for continued reforms in a country still early in its democratic transition. “This is a symbolic visit to reinforce the message […]

Over the next several weeks, the parameters of President Barack Obama’s second-term national security and foreign policy team will begin to take shape. Both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta are expected to tender their resignations and retire from the administration. The new occupants of these posts, in turn, will change the composition of both departments through their appointments to senior policy positions. There has also been talk about a shake-up in the White House staff, as the president gears up to meet the challenges that were deferred or ignored due to the exigencies of […]

In the aftermath of the U.S. elections, a central question regarding the West’s standoff with Iran remains crucial: How serious are U.S. and Israeli leaders who assert their determination to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon? The looming question, hovering for years over the diplomatic impasse, is whether the U.S. and Israel have been bluffing when they suggest they might attack Iran if it does not desist from its nuclear ambitions. Is the mantra “all options are on the table” coming from Washington an effort to exert psychological pressure on the Iranian regime, or is it a statement of […]

On Tuesday, a Chinese court sentenced four members of a Myanmar drug gang to death for hijacking two Chinese cargo boats and kidnapping and killing 13 Chinese crewmembers on the Mekong River last year. The defendants, including two other gang members who received lesser sentences, were charged with “intentional homicide, drug trafficking, kidnapping and ship hijacking,” as reported by the Associated Press. Richard P. Cronin, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Stimson Center, said the court decision raises more questions than it answers, especially about the nine Thai soldiers who were also accused of involvement in the attack […]

Sergei Shoigu officially took over as Russia’s new defense minister yesterday, but the reasons for the sudden dismissal of his predecessor, Anatoliy Serdyukov, remain uncertain. Russian President Vladimir Putin insists that he dismissed Serdyukov to allow authorities to investigate allegations of widespread corruption in the Defense Ministry. Serdyukov, who has cracked down on corruption within the armed forces, is accused of allowing his key subordinates and family members to enrich themselves in more sophisticated ways, such as by selling off valuable Defense Ministry properties at below market prices to friendly buyers in return for kickbacks. But Russian and Western media […]

A meeting in Hobart, Australia, of countries charged with protecting marine life in the waters around Antarctica closed last week without a vote on a joint proposal by New Zealand and the United States to create a marine protected area in the Ross Sea.* In an email interview, Alan D. Hemmings, an environmental consultant and specialist on Antarctic governance and environmental management, discussed the bid to protect the Ross Sea. WPR: What is at stake in the discussion over creating a protected area in the Ross Sea? Alan D. Hemmings: At stake is, critically, the Ross Sea ecosystem — what […]

The White House has reportedly ordered the Pentagon to reposition drones for possible retaliatory strikes in Libya — the latest evidence that drones are dislodging manned aircraft from the central role they have played in U.S. warfighting since World War II. After a decade of wars that have cost billions of dollars and claimed thousands of American lives, the American people overwhelmingly support this transition to an unmanned air force. After all, unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) deliver a lethal punch at low economic cost, with zero risk to American personnel. That explains why 83 percent of the country approves […]

Though it will be at least another 12 hours before we know whether President Barack Obama or Republican nominee Mitt Romney will be in the White House come January 2013, we do already know the most important challenge the next U.S presidential administration will face: how to deal with China. Yet, the general bipartisan consensus on the appropriate U.S policy toward China makes major changes unlikely regardless of the election outcome. Democrats and Republicans typically agree on the goal of achieving a peaceful China in a prosperous Asian region that reflects U.S-supported values of human rights. They also generally reject […]

More than half of the world’s total population, currently roughly 7 billion, now lives in cities. As the world’s population increases to a projected 9 billion by 2050, so too will the trend toward greater urbanization. Urban growth is most rapid in the developing world, where cities grow by an average of 5 million residents every month. By 2050, urban dwellers will likely account for 67 percent of total population in the developing world and 86 percent in the developed world. Many of the world’s cities, and some of its biggest, may be particularly vulnerable to climate change and the […]

Education has been found to have two categories of influences. In terms of monetary influences, the higher one’s level of education, the less likely one is to be unemployed or in poverty, and the more likely one is to be advantaged in terms of income and income security. Moreover, what is true of individuals is also true of communities and nations. In terms of nonmonetary influences, education has been found to affect personal health and nutrition practices, child rearing and participation in voluntary activities. It also influences the efficiency of public communications and the degree to which adults seek new […]

This summer’s drought in the U.S. has triggered the third major food price spike in the past five years, leaving the world’s poor to wonder if global leaders learned anything from the first two. To judge by their actions so far, they haven’t. The food crisis of the past five years has indeed energized food and agricultural policymakers, bringing long-overdue attention to chronic problems, from underinvestment in smallholder agriculture to overreliance on high-input industrial production. It has seen welcome new institutions brought into being and existing ones revitalized, stimulating new investment in agricultural research and serving as a reminder that […]