Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Among developing countries, Brazil is increasingly seen as a model for social development. Its achievements over the past two decades are impressive. The share of the population living in extreme poverty fell from 16.4 percent in 1995 to 4.7 percent in 2009. Inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient fell more than 10 percent in the same period, to 0.53, where 0 represents perfect equality of income distribution and 1.0 perfect inequality. Growth has been an important driver for these trends, particularly because over the past decade Brazil’s growth has been distinctly pro-poor: Personal income among the poorest 10 percent […]

By most measures, the income gap between urban and rural households in China is one of the largest in the world, with urban residents’ incomes more than triple those of their rural counterparts. Not surprisingly, then, improving rural incomes has become the main target of social welfare policies in China today, though it is too early to tell whether such policies will be enough to reduce the rural-urban income gap. The new social policies have also been introduced in the context of two long-term demographic trends of great significance: China’s high-speed urbanization and the rapid aging of its population. China’s […]

Earlier this month, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) held one of its most important summits in years. The SCO faces the task of managing the instability engendered by the Arab Spring and the ongoing NATO military drawdown in Afghanistan. In addition, the organization has the potential to substantially shape the broader China-Russia relationship. Yet besides its traditional joint declarations and bilateral leadership meetings, the summit, which took place in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on Sept. 13-14, was noteworthy mainly for its limited achievements. The most important participant was China’s new president, Xi Jinping, who was attending his first SCO summit. Xi reaffirmed […]

This month, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy offered to hold talks with Catalonia but did not offer a vote on independence for the Spanish region whose citizens have long sought greater autonomy. In an email interview, Elisenda Paluzie, a professor of economic theory at the University of Barcelona, explained the state of the Catalan independence movement. WPR: What is the state of the Catalan independence movement in terms of its degree of organization and level of popular support? Elisenda Paluzie: On one hand, there is an important grassroots movement for independence, which has strong popular support and is very diverse […]

BERLIN—In national elections on Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), performed even better than their own polls suggested they would. The CDU and its Bavaria-based sister party, the Christian Social Union, won 311 seats in parliament. The Social Democratic Party won 192 seats, the Left Party 64 and theGreen Party 63. But Merkel’s victory comes at the price of losing her Free Democratic Party (FDP) coalition partner as the third-term chancellor works to form her new government, most likely in a coalition with the Social Democrats. The FDP failed to win the 5 […]

The terrorist assault on Nairobi’s Westgate mall comes amid a lengthy military campaign by Kenyan forces to root out the militant group al-Shabab from southeastern Somalia. That intervention has proved more difficult than Kenyan officials initially predicted and sparked fears—now apparently realized—of terrorist blowback within Kenya. This background note reviews WPR’s extensive coverage of the Kenyan intervention and Somalia’s state of governance and security. Al-Shabab’s Looming Threat in Kenya After Somalia Intervention, Kenya Faces War Within, by Charles Wachira, Dec. 12, 2012: In the wake of its intervention into Somalia, Kenya has feared a backlash at home. Kenya Gets Pro-Active […]

Only a diehard optimist would argue that there will be a sustainable cease-fire in Syria by the end of this year. While Russia and the Western powers are still bickering over the precise terms for the destruction of the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons, brutal fighting persists on the ground. The army and rebels continued to clash last week, and the rebels have also been battling one another, with radical Islamist and more-moderate factions struggling over the northern town of Azaz. This sort of fratricidal combat reinforces the fear, previously voiced by United Nations officials, that Syria could fragment into another […]

Iran’s new president, Hasan Rouhani, is scheduled to address the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday and plans to use the occasion to reach out to world leaders about restarting talks on Iran’s controversial nuclear program. As U.S. President Barack Obama and his administration consider how they should react to the friendlier diplomatic face put forward by Rouhani and his team, they will need to contend with five popular myths about U.S. policy toward Iran’s nuclear program. 1. It’s Iraq all over again. No. For anti-war activists, simply invoking the Iraq War is an easy way to avoid making a fresh judgment […]

An accord on electoral reform reached this week between Cambodia’s long-ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) and the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) ended three days of protests in the capital but did not convince the CNRP to drop its threat to boycott the opening session of parliament next week. According to the current vote tally from Cambodia’s July elections, which were widely considered flawed, the CNRP won 55 seats in Cambodia’s 123-seat legislature, the bulk of them from Phnom Penh and its nearby provinces. While falling short of a majority, the number represents an unprecedented gain of 22 seats […]

HAMBURG, Germany—In the days leading up to Germany’s general elections Sunday, colorful campaign posters seem to be wrapped around every roadside tree trunk and street lamp. The face of Chancellor Angela Merkel, staring straight into the camera with a red blazer and a slight smile, is paired with the words “Kanzlerin für Deutshland,” or our chancellor for Germany. But while international observers are watching Germany during an election that has major implications for Europe and the world, it is not clear whether German voters themselves are sufficiently interested in the stakes to head to the polls at a high rate. […]

An exchange of gunfire and rockets over the Central African Republic’s northwestern border with Cameroon has heightened fears that the troubled African nation could fall back into full-blown conflict. In recent days, fighting between the Seleka rebel alliance and militias loyal to ousted President Francois Bozize have put towns and rural settlements in northwestern Ouham prefecture under siege. More than 100 civilians have been killed in the clashes; whole villages have been burned to the ground; and thousands have been displaced from their homes by the fighting. At the epicenter of the violence are the river towns of Bossangoa and […]

One of the unavoidable realities in any U.S. administration is that the president himself can only focus on 10 or so pressing foreign policy issues at any given time. Immediate crises and pressing national security threats tend to dominate that list, which has the unfortunate effect of making the top echelons of the U.S. foreign policy apparatus reactive rather than proactive. Thus, most of the attention of the Obama administration’s national security team over the past several weeks has been focused on the crisis in Syria, to the detriment of matters that may be less immediately urgent right now but […]

Global attention has been focused on Syria in the past few weeks, but the most influential country in the Arab world—and historically the one whose political developments tend to be echoed in neighboring countries—remains Egypt. And Egypt is, essentially, being redesigned. The new Egypt could end up looking a lot like the one that existed before the 2011 uprisings. It could also still become something closer to what the pro-democracy revolutionaries aspired to. But it could turn into something entirely different. How Egypt’s story turns out will be greatly influenced by this, the third chapter of the tumultuous era that […]

In 2011, Algeria had serious misgivings about international intervention in Libya, which Algiers feared would result in many unintended consequences, few of them good for Algeria or the region. Those misgivings have since proven correct. Libya itself has collapsed into violent chaos, while weapons flows out of Libya in 2011 and 2012 fueled a Salafi jihadi insurgency in northern Mali that eventually resulted in Bamako losing control of the entire northern half of the country. And in Tunisia, a new Salafi jihadi threat has emerged on Algeria’s borders. Although Algeria initially stuck fast to its long-standing principle of noninterference, its […]

New U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power is living up to her reputation as a staunch defender of human rights, and in the process is testing the limits of U.S. diplomacy within the bounds of international law. Power came out swinging Monday in a statement about Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s decision to seek a visa to attend the U.N. General Assembly, which opened yesterday in New York. “Such a trip would be deplorable, cynical and hugely inappropriate,” she said, adding that Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court, ought to turn himself over to the ICC […]

As the United States, Russia and Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria engage in a complicated diplomatic dance, Washington remains fixated on Syrian chemical weapons, leaving what may be a more important issue—America’s relationship with the Syrian rebels—muddled. The U.S. supports one rebel faction but not enough to allow it to win outright, fearing that doing so will inadvertently help extremists affiliated with al-Qaida or taint the United States with the misdeeds of its rebel allies. This is simply the latest example of the confusion and uncertainly that has long characterized America’s dealings with militias. Although the U.S. military itself grew […]

Despite India’s graduation from outlier to tepidly accepted member of the global nuclear order, one area of New Delhi’s nuclear activities continues to raise alarm: its undersea nuclear deterrent. India unveiled its first nuclear submarine, the INS Arihant, in July 2009. Though the ship was largely indigenous, Russia helped in designing the miniaturized nuclear reactor. Just last month, the nuclear reactor in INS Arihant went critical, clearing the way for its final operational trials in the Bay of Bengal. India has designs to produce four to five nuclear submarines by the end of this decade. When integrated with nuclear-tipped sea-launched […]