Diplomacy & Politics Archive

British Prime Minister David Cameron has asked European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso to gather evidence on whether the additional checks Spain has imposed on its border with Gibraltar are politically motivated. Cameron’s request is part of an escalating dispute between the United Kingdom and Spain over Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory surrounded by Spanish territory. Spain, which claims sovereignty over Gibraltar, a small peninsula off Spain’s southern coast, cited concerns over smuggling as the reason it was imposing additional checks at the border. In separate email interviews, Pawel Swidlicki, research analyst at Open Europe, and Alejandro Baron, a researcher […]

Russia has been sending some confusing signals on Iran in recent weeks. Rumors began to circulate that Russian President Vladimir Putin would be heading to Tehran to meet with newly inaugurated President Hasan Rouhani—with some even predicting that Putin would “drop in” on Iran this week after completing his visit to Azerbaijan to confer with Azeri President Ilham Aliyev. Stories were also released that Russia was reconsidering its unilaterally imposed boycott on selling advanced S-300 air defense systems to Tehran, or at least replacing them with another variant, the Antei-2500 system, as a way to get Iran to drop its […]

Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series. Part I looked at the domestic politics of Australia’s upcoming elections. Part II examines the foreign policy issues at stake. Bipartisanship is generally the hallmark of Australian foreign policy, and this election is no different. As a result, no matter who wins September’s polls, the focus of Australian policy will remain how best to capitalize on the trading benefits flowing from the economic rise of Asia, while navigating carefully through the security uncertainty that such growth brings to the stability of the region. A particular challenge will be how best […]

President Barack Obama’s statement this morning on Egypt aimed to send a message of moral condemnation to Egypt’s military government, which only yesterday conducted a bloody crackdown against its political opponents. Yet the president’s moral messaging was compromised by the linguistic dance that accompanied it. Beyond the cancellation of annual military exercises, the only significant policy outcome was Obama’s continued resistance to the use of the word “coup” to describe the overthrow of a democratically elected government—for good or ill—by the Egyptian military. Obama’s maneuvering harkens back to the Rwandan genocide, when the Clinton administration famously refused to use the […]

Next month, Sri Lanka’s northern province, which until four years ago was the site of a devastating war between the central government and ethnic Tamil separatists, will hold its first postwar provincial elections. In an email interview, Alan Keenan, senior analyst and Sri Lanka project director at International Crisis Group, discussed the trajectory of Sri Lanka’s politics and governance since the end of the civil war. WPR: How has the end of the war affected the political standing of Tamils in Sri Lanka? Alan Keenan: The political standing of Tamils has been weakened since the end of the war, despite […]

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series on Australia’s upcoming elections. Part I looks at the domestic politics of the elections. Part II will examine the foreign policy issues at stake. When a desperate Australian Labor Party (ALP) ousted the incumbent prime minister, Kevin Rudd, in June 2010, replacing him with Australia’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, no one foresaw that the ALP would be relying on Rudd to bring the party back from political oblivion in 2013. But in June of this year, with polls predicting the ALP would be decimated in the September election, […]

Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has won the presidential election against Soumaila Cisse in Mali, the West African country that made headlines in the past year and a half for its military coup and an international intervention to oust Islamist rebels. But while Cisse conceded Monday night in a peaceful conclusion to an election that some feared was coming too soon, many barriers remain in the way of the fulfillment of Keita’s campaign promise of unifying the country. Andrew Lebovich, Sahel consultant with the Open Society Initiative for West Africa and an expert on Mali, said Keita, who was prime minister from […]

Revolutions are difficult to gauge in their early stages. They are born out of dissatisfaction with the status quo and a growing feeling that deep change is needed. Most of the time such dissatisfaction ends with modest reform. But in rare instances, it can turn into true revolution and alter the course of history. Because revolutions are driven by thousands, even millions, of individual human decisions, predicting their outcome is difficult. Even the revolutionaries who start them are often surprised by the result. Today a revolution may be brewing in American security policy. More and more Americans are dissatisfied with […]

Over the past three decades, Brazil and Argentina’s rapprochement paved the way for the two largest economies in South America to end their economic and military rivalry and commence a promising effort to institutionalize the process of regional integration in South America.* The Common Market of the South, or Mercosur, was the chief creation of that initiative and was quick to embrace Uruguay and Paraguay. Last year Venezuela became Mercosur’s fifth member, and the bloc is expected to become even bigger as Ecuador and Bolivia seek membership in the near future. But bigger does not necessarily mean better or stronger. […]

Having discussed Russia’s policies toward Iran in my last column, I thought it would be instructive to analyze China’s policies toward the Islamic Republic to highlight the similarities and differences in their approaches, which are often overlooked. Beijing shares many of Moscow’s concerns, both regarding Iran’s nuclear program and the West’s reaction to it. But Chinese policymakers are often more timid than their Russian counterparts in defying Western preferences, even as they are at times bolder in seeking advantage from the crisis. During the past decade, China has joined Russia in opposing Iran’s efforts to acquire sensitive nuclear technologies but […]

At a joint press conference with his Indian counterpart Salman Khurshid in Ankara last month, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu described Khurshid’s visit to Turkey—the first by an Indian foreign minister in 10 years—as “historic.” The visit can be seen as part of an effort to visibly raise the profile of India-Turkey relations, which have been characterized by steadily expanding common ground on the geoeconomic front. India is now Turkey’s second-largest Asian trading partner, and Turkey is seeking more bilateral high-level exchanges as a precursor to expanded people-to-people contacts. For India, whose president will visit Turkey in the coming months, […]

The official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported earlier this month that China was considering relaxing its one-child policy for some families. In an email interview, Therese Hesketh, a professor at the Center for International Health and Development at University College London, explained the one-child policy’s impact and alternative policy options. WPR: What prompted the latest move to consider relaxing the one-child policy? Therese Hesketh: When the one-child policy was introduced in 1979, the government claimed it would last for one generation only. It is important to note that the one-child rule applies to less than half the population: Only urban […]

There will be many eulogies for Sergio Vieira de Mello in the weeks ahead. Next Monday, Aug. 19, marks the 10th anniversary of the death of the charismatic Brazilian United Nations official in Baghdad. The veteran of humanitarian and peacekeeping missions from Sudan to Timor-Leste had reluctantly taken the post of U.N. special representative to Iraq after the U.S. and its allies toppled Saddam Hussein. When a suicide-bomber killed him and 21 of his colleagues in an attack on their lightly guarded headquarters, U.N. officials were traumatized. He remains a totemic figure for the organization today. His admirers will doubtless […]

China’s rapid economic growth over the past 30 years has transformed the world’s most populous country almost beyond recognition and reshaped the international economic and geopolitical landscape, forcing huge shifts in global international trade and investment flows. This growth is now slowing, meaning many of the key dynamics that have accompanied China’s rise are themselves evolving. While many observers are nervous about the Chinese slowdown and its implications, a more balanced, less inflationary and less resource-intensive model of economic expansion may bring more sustainability to China’s development story and allow Beijing to fundamentally rebalance its relations with international partners. The […]

Characterized by false dawns, blind alleys and abrupt turnarounds, the tortuous mediation of Madagascar’s constitutional crisis has once more stalled. The Special Electoral Court’s ruling to allow the current unelected transition president, Andry Rajoelina, to stand in the presidential election, along with Lalao Ravalomanana—the wife of ousted President Marc Ravalomanana—and another former president, Didier Ratsiraka, remains a sticking point for most of the international community, which currently refuses to recognize a presidential poll should any of these three win. Logistically, the election cannot now take place on Aug. 23 as planned, and only the most optimistic stakeholders envision completing two […]

Seven years ago, the dominant Democratic narrative explaining the decline in America’s standing in the world was due largely to Republican incompetence in foreign policy matters, with the Iraq War presented as Exhibit A. If Democrats returned to power, it was intimated, the United States would regain its international position. American allies, starting with the Europeans, would fall in line to support U.S. security initiatives; multilateral institutions would work because Democrats would demonstrate their superior negotiating techniques; and when it came to dealing with “difficult” regimes like China or Russia, Democrats would show the “cowboys” in the George W. Bush […]

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) moved to rein in the Turkish military last week by blocking the promotion of a high-profile commander, Gen. Bekir Kalyoncu, and instead forcing the general’s retirement. Turkish media described the move as being tied to what is called the Ergenekon case, in which military officials are accused of trying to overthrow the government. Kalyoncu’s forced retirement, combined with the life sentence handed to former military chief Gen. Ilker Basbug in the Ergenekon case, underscored the shifting state of civil-military relations in Turkey, which is marked by a […]