Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Last month, newly minted Chinese President Xi Jinping toured Africa promising more investment, stronger people-to-people ties and a more dynamic trading relationship with the continent. Considering that China’s trade with Africa totaled nearly $200 billion last year, this visit was more than mere window-dressing. India also has been staking out an aggressive strategy of engagement in Africa, building on its historical ties to Eastern Africa. Last year, Indian trade with the continent neared $70 billion. Where does this leave Japan? For years, Tokyo maintained an impeccable reputation across the continent as a result of its generous supply of overseas development […]

The U.S. has recently made two high-profile moves to cooperate with the International Criminal Court, which the U.S. has not joined and is barred by domestic law from supporting financially. In an email interview, Harry Rhea, assistant professor of criminal justice at Florida International University and author of the book “The United States and International Criminal Tribunals: An Introduction,” discussed U.S.-ICC cooperation and how the U.S. can bolster the court without joining it. WPR: Do recent U.S. moves to cooperate with the court — transferring Bosco Ntaganda to The Hague and including ICC suspects in the Rewards for Justice program, […]

Policy discussions about peacekeeping frequently get bogged down in technical details, such as the wording of United Nations resolutions, rather than tackling big strategic questions. This has been true of most commentary on the U.N. Security Council’s decision in late-March to mandate an “intervention brigade” to “neutralize and disarm” armed groups in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). There has been a lot of talk about the council’s unusually aggressive language, and less about the new brigade’s role in the complex political struggle for access to the DRC’s natural resources. Peacekeeping experts are excited that the council has directed […]

Leaders from Serbia and Kosovo, who came together in Brussels earlier this week for the last of eight rounds of formal talks mediated by the European Union, failed to come to an agreement on the status of northern Kosovo. Kosovo, a former Serbian province, declared its independence in 2008, but Serbia has never recognized it as an independent state. Ethnic Serbs in northern Kosovo reject the authority of the government in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital. Marko Prelec, director of the International Crisis Group’s Balkans Project, told Trend Lines in an email interview that there is still time to strike a deal […]

Experts are debating what precisely are the motives behind North Korea’s recent spike in belligerent rhetoric and posturing, with answers ranging from the opinion that “war talk” is an attempt by the North’s young leader, Kim Jong Un, to solidify his hold on power to the worry that the regime is losing its grip on reality. What is more certain, however, is the set of assumptions guiding Pyongyang’s strategic calculus. Whether the North Korean leadership’s assessments are accurate or not — and what steps the other powers in the region take to correct them — may help determine how this […]

Former U.S. envoy William Stanton’s recent tough-love message to Taiwan reflects a long-standing concern in Washington over Taipei’s commitment and ability to defend itself in the event of a Chinese attack or invasion. Stanton, who retired last summer after three years as America’s unofficial ambassador to Taiwan but chose to stay in the country, raised the subject of Taiwan’s military budget in a speech to the World Taiwanese Congress in Taipei last month. He emphasized that he was speaking for himself, not the U.S. government, but his words echoed similar American complaints going back a decade or more. “I worry […]

When North Korea surprised the international community by detonating a nuclear device in February, America’s at the time brand new secretary of state, John Kerry, drew a link between Pyongyang and Tehran. Failure to respond decisively to North Korea’s provocation, Kerry warned, risked emboldening Iran. Kerry was suggesting that the impact of the North Korean crisis on Iran would come as a result of the conclusions Tehran might draw about its own nuclear program from closely observing international reactions to North Korea’s. But it is likely that the impact of the North Korean situation on the diplomatic standoff with Iran […]

On Tuesday, Hamas re-elected Khaled Meshaal as its political leader, extending his nearly decade-long leadership of the Palestinian militant Islamist group. Hard-liners in the Gaza Strip, which Hamas controls, have been critical of Meshaal and his efforts to bridge divides with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads the rival Palestinian group Fatah. Meshaal had previously said he would step down, and there were also reports that Hamas members in Gaza might try to force him aside. But Hamas’ internal political decision-making committee, the Shura Council, gave him another term, reportedly at least in part because of international pressure, including […]

Turkey and Israel are moving toward reconciliation at the same time that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has declared a cease-fire in its armed struggle with the Turkish state. Combined, the two developments have paved the way for Ankara to achieve its longstanding goal of becoming a regional energy transit hub, but ongoing disputes with Cyprus and Iraq mean that further progress remains uncertain. On March 24, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized on Israel’s behalf to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the deadly Gaza flotilla raid by Israeli forces in 2010. The apology is expected among other […]

During the 1990s, the U.S. Department of Defense concluded that it was in a “strategic pause.” With the Soviet Union gone and no equal threat on the horizon, the Pentagon had the luxury of doing things like building a “futures” industry to think big thoughts about long-range changes underway in the security environment and the nature of armed conflict. But today strategic futurists face hard times. As the defense budget shrinks, money and time for forecasting and analysis are hard to come by. There is no doubt that cuts in defense spending are needed, but if thinking about the future […]

In mid-March, three suspected militants were killed by Russian forces in the North Caucasus, a region that has long been a site of Islamist and separatist violence, beginning with the Chechen wars in the 1990s. In an email interview, Domitilla Sagramoso, a lecturer in security and development at King’s College London who specializes in conflict, security and development in Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia, explained the roots of the ongoing violence in the region and the evolution of Russia’s response to it. WPR: What is the immediate background and current extent of the insurgency in Russia’s North Caucasus? Domitilla […]

On March 8 in Caracas, Raúl Castro, looking somber, stood in a place of honor beside Hugo Chávez’s casket during the late Venezuelan president’s state funeral. Castro was no doubt pondering what Chávez’s death means for Cuba’s ambitious economic reform program — or “updating” of the economic model, as Cubans prefer to call it. Not long after Chávez’s first election victory in 1998, he and Fidel Castro signed the first of what would become more than 100 bilateral cooperation agreements. By the time Chávez died, Venezuela was providing Cuba with some 110,000 barrels of oil daily at subsidized prices, worth […]

On March 24, Pakistan’s former president, Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a coup in 1999 and resigned nine years later to avoid impeachment, ended years of self-imposed exile and returned to Pakistan vowing to contest presidential and parliamentary elections set for May. In an email interview, Colin Cookman, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress specializing in Pakistan and Afghanistan, discussed what’s at stake in the elections. WPR: What are Pakistan’s major political factions and parties as the country heads into the elections? Colin Cookman: Dozens of political parties and hundreds more independent candidates are likely to […]

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai was in Qatar this weekend to talk with the emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, and other officials about establishing an office of the Afghan Taliban insurgents in Doha. Proposals for such an office, designed to create conditions favorable for peace talks, have been under discussion for more than a year. But Karzai is seeking further safeguards to prevent the Taliban from using the office as a propaganda front or mobilization center. In addition, Karzai has insisted that the insurgents must recognize his government, among other preconditions for entering talks. For their part, members of the […]

Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan became acting president in February 2010 following the incapacitation of his predecessor Umaru Yar’Adua. Elected in his own right in April 2011, Jonathan now stands near the midpoint of his first full term in office. His People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which has won every election since Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999, dominates the executive and legislative branches of the federal government and governs 23 of Nigeria’s 36 states. The advantages of incumbency and party dominance will likely assure Jonathan another term when Nigeria votes again in 2015. Yet insecurity, corruption and stalled policy implementation have provoked […]

In recent weeks, the Republic of Belarus has been attempting to break out of its near isolation from the European Union and end a period of tension that began after Belarus’ December 2010 presidential election. Following the arrests of more than 700 protesters in Minsk’s Independence Square after the election, the EU revived its travel sanctions on leading Belarusian political and judicial figures, headed by President Alexander Lukashenko. In response to the EU’s actions and its demand for the release of all political prisoners, including former presidential candidate Mikalai Statkevich, Belarus moved measurably closer to Russia. Belarus is a full-fledged […]

In 2012, Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace ranked Zimbabwe the fifth most likely country to fail — putting it in greater danger than Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti. World leaders frequently describe Zimbabwe under the leadership of President Robert Mugabe as a pariah state. The United States, the European Union and Australia have all imposed sanctions against the Zimbabwean government for not respecting democracy and human rights, and the United Nations has proposed sanctions against Zimbabwe repeatedly. The country has lost many of its onetime allies and has found itself shunned by many in the international community. Despite all […]