Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Americans can be brutally effective against another nation that relies on conventional military power. The Confederacy, Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union all found this out. They “fought fair,” so the United States was able to out-spend them all and eventually win. But Americans are not so adept against enemies that do not fight fair, whether dispersed, amorphous organizations not easily crushed through military action, hostile ideologies or cultures, or systemic instability. Impatient for quick results when none are available, the United States gravitates to short-term problem solving, teetering from crisis to crisis. That is where we are today. Critics […]

In recent media interviews, representatives of both the Pakistani government and the Pakistani Taliban have signaled willingness to engage in peace talks with the other side. In an email interview, Sadika Hameed, a fellow at the Program on Crisis, Conflict and Cooperation at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, explained the prospects for the talks. WPR: What are the factional interests—on the part of the national and provincial governments, the militants and others—in holding peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban? Sadika Hameed: Many political parties campaigned in the elections held in May on the basis of talks with the […]

Nearly 1,000 people died in military detention in Nigeria in the first half of 2013, Amnesty International reported Tuesday, citing a senior officer in the Nigerian army. The detainees’ deaths occurred in the context of Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan’s offensive against the Islamist movement Boko Haram, which is waging a violent insurgency in the country’s north. In May, Jonathan declared a state of emergency in several northeastern provinces, authorizing security forces to round up hundreds of prisoners, many of whom were shot or suffocated in detention, according to Amnesty. Nigeria has employed similarly heavy-handed tactics against Boko Haram since the […]

Late last month, Mexico’s opposition insisted on electoral reforms before it would support the ruling party’s efforts at energy reform. In an email interview, John Ackerman, a professor at the Institute of Legal Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), explained the need for and obstacles to electoral reform in Mexico. WPR: What did the conduct of Mexico’s most recent elections indicate about the need for the electoral reform? John Ackerman: The last two presidential elections, in 2006 and 2012, demonstrated that Mexico is far from establishing a trustworthy institutional democracy. During both elections, there were widespread accusations […]

Two men died in an explosion in Addis Ababa yesterday in what the Ethiopian government described as a failed attempt to build a suicide bomb. The government’s claim that the two men were Somali nationals raises the specter of attacks by the militant group al-Shabab within Ethiopia. According to Catherine Cheney’s report for Trend Lines in the wake of last month’s al-Shabab attack on a Kenyan mall, Ethiopia’s military intervention into Somalia has made it a potential target for terrorism. Ethiopia . . . has kept troops in Somalia near the Ethiopian border since 2006. “It’s not clear how many […]

The Nobel Committee’s decision to award this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is welcome news. The organization is struggling with difficult missions in Syria and elsewhere, with a frozen budget and obsolete equipment, and the prize will provide a needed boost to the organization’s profile. Unfortunately, the peace prize will not make the many challenges the OPCW faces any easier. Even with the elimination of the Syrian, Libyan and eventually Russian and U.S. chemical weapons arsenals, the threat of chemical weapons use is likely to persist. The OPCW lacks the authority […]

Tainted by scandals and controversies, some bordering on the absurd, Azerbaijan’s presidential election is now over. In a country where the monopolistic ruling party can easily manipulate everything from the voter registries to the list of international election observers, the incumbent’s victory by an 80 percent margin should come as no surprise. After all, elections in autocracies like Azerbaijan mean little in terms of domestic power struggles. But what will President Ilham Aliyev’s third term mean to the outside forces, such as the U.S. government, that can engage his regime on a more level playing field than can his domestic […]

On Sept. 16, 2013, European and African nations reached an agreement called the New Deal Compact, pledging $2.7 billion to help Somalia build peace and consolidate its government. In an email interview, Aisha Ahmad, an assistant professor of international relations and comparative politics at the University of Toronto who also serves as chief operating officer of the Hawa Abdi Foundation, a nongovernmental relief organization in Somalia, explained the New Deal and the requirements for its success. WPR: What is new in the New Deal for Somalia? Aisha Ahmad: Representatives from across the European Union and Africa signed the New Deal […]

Last weekend’s dispatch of U.S. special operations units on missions into Tripoli, Libya, and Barawe, Somalia, to capture leading terrorist figures, building on earlier operations such as the 2011 mission that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, reflects an ongoing shift in the Obama administration’s willingness to risk U.S. casualties as well as deal with possible diplomatic incidents in order to go after high-value targets in the war on terror. It is a marked contrast to the unwillingness during the Clinton administration, prior to 9/11, to countenance possible losses or to insert American operatives on the ground in […]

The Oct. 7 decision of the Supreme Court of the Maldives to annul the results of the presidential election held a month prior appears to be an attempt to avert the predictable win of ousted President Mohamed Nasheed, a liberal Muslim fighting a lonely battle against powerful conservative forces. Nasheed secured 45.45 percent of the vote, just short of an outright victory. The second-place candidate, Abdulla Yameen, the half-brother of former longtime dictatorial President Maumoon Gayoom, received 25.35 percent. The other two candidates, resort tycoon Qasim Ibrahim and incumbent President Mohamed Waheed got 24 percent and 5 percent of the […]

After months of halting but positive movement, the peace talks between the government and Colombia’s largest rebel group, the FARC, may have hit a roadblock. That obstacle, as WPR’s Frida Ghitis wrote last week, is Colombia’s fast-approaching elections. Ghitis warned that the electoral schedule is casting a shadow over the negotiations: “As the clock runs down to the May 2014 presidential election, the prospect of peace hangs in the balance for the country. Colombians are getting restless, taking a decidedly unfavorable view of the president and becoming increasingly suspicious of the secretive process.” Over the past week, signs have emerged […]

The U.S. Department of State announced on Wednesday that it would be “recalibrating” its aid to Egypt, holding back the delivery of $260 million, most of it military assistance, from the $1.5 billion annual U.S. aid package for Egypt. By delaying the delivery of military systems including tanks, missiles and aircraft, and suspending some cash assistance to the Egyptian government, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is hoping to push Egypt down a path toward civilian governance through free and fair elections. But the two experts who spoke with Trend Lines do not believe that the move will achieve […]

As the central drama of the just-concluded United Nations General Assembly played out, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the final speaker of the session, performed a supporting but crucial role. He came on stage as the mood spoiler, the man who disrupted the central narrative of a new, nonthreatening Iran under President Hasan Rouhani ready to reconcile with the world. Netanyahu told the world to wake up and realize that Iran’s new image was all a fiction. The prime minister’s stern words elicited a wide range of responses, including harsh criticism. In Israel, many found the address jarring. There was […]

Two weeks ago a 7.7 magnitude earthquake hit Pakistan, killing more than 300 people and leaving thousands homeless. This came on the heels of floods in August that affected almost 1.5 million people. India, for its part, has not suffered any major natural disasters recently but is facing a larger challenge of continued economic slowdown. Its growth rate has dropped for two quarters in a row in 2013, reaching 4.4 percent, and it has faced a major currency crisis as well. Afghanistan, meanwhile, faces the prospects of even more fundamental challenges to regime stability and state cohesion after the U.S. […]

Speaking today at a discussion hosted by the New America Foundation, former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband put his thumb on a sensitive issue for Washington. Much as their leaders might secretly wish it, the West’s governments can’t simply take a decade off of foreign policy to focus on rebuilding at home. “You’ve got to do the internal and the external at the same time,” he said. Yet that kind of multitasking is precisely what has eluded President Barack Obama as he and his administration struggle to put out the fiscal fires started by House Republicans. Perhaps the most prominent […]

Over the weekend, members of special mission units under the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command carried out raids in Somalia and Libya, capturing a senior al-Qaida operative in the latter country. While these attacks often come across as lightning strikes in the media, no detail is spared in terms of coordination and preparation. Trend Lines spoke with three experts about the disconnect between how these operations appear versus how they operate. “The events this weekend were both significant and insignificant,” David Maxwell, associate director of the Center for Security Studies and the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University, told Trend […]

As American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan wound down and the conflict with al-Qaida shifted away from large-scale, protracted military operations, President Barack Obama announced a major adjustment in American strategy (.pdf), stating that the United States “will of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region.” Today there is growing criticism that this rhetoric has been backed by little substance and that what became popularly known as the “pivot” to Asia is stalled. In part this is due to the persisting political dysfunction in Washington that hinders all serious initiatives, but it also reflects deeper, more intractable strategic factors that offer […]