Domestic Politics Archive

Historic treaty ushers in long-anticipated era of U.S. southward expansion. AUSTIN, Texas — Meeting in the New Texas statehouse on the 195th anniversary of Texas’ declaration of independence from Mexico, official representatives from the Tejas Confederation, the Northern Alliance of Mexican States, and the United States government signed a comprehensive treaty that will immediately “re-admit” the Tejas states of El Norte and Gulfland to the American union, and submit to Congress formal pleas for new statehood on behalf of all five Northern Alliance members — Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila and Nuevo Leon. If all Alliance members are ultimately accepted […]

JAKARTA, Indonesia — As a country often referred to as an example of a moderate Muslim-majority state in the region, Malaysia has been raising eyebrows worldwide lately. A string of incidents has recently underlined tensions between the Muslim majority and the Christian and Hindu minorities, and otherwise painted the country with more Islamic colors. These have included Muslims protesting against Hindu temples by parading in front of one carrying a cow’s head; fathers converting their children to Islam without informing the mother; housewives sentenced to whippings for daring to drink a beer; and pop concerts being banned. But more worrisome […]

We are on the verge of repeating a pair of mistakes we made two decades ago, literally across the world from the scene of our errors in 1989. One lesson of the fall of the Berlin Wall was that states, or empires, can be much weaker than they appear. The revelation of Soviet vulnerability caught many American policymakers flat-footed. Another lesson was that careful strategic thinking is necessary for the United States to exploit shifts in the balance of power. While there were some successes in navigating the emergence of a post-communist Russia and independent former Soviet republics, the United […]

Since August, the Yemeni government has been engaged in an offensive against insurgents in Yemen’s northern Saada region — the sixth it has waged there since June 2004. President Ali Abdullah Saleh has long accused Tehran of aiding the Houthi rebels, portraying the local conflict as part of a larger regional struggle against Iran. Earlier this month, that conflict escalated dramatically when Saudi Arabia bombed Houthi positions along the Saudi-Yemeni border, following a Houthi attack on Saudi border guards. While evidence of direct Iranian involvement remains questionable, Hassan Firouzabadi, chief of Iran’s General Staff recently remarked, “Saudi Arabia’s effort to […]

BRUSSELS — The designation last week of two relatively unknown figures for the highest posts in the European Union led to widespread criticism across Europe. At a heads of state meeting in Brussels on Thursday evening, the 27 member states of the EU designated BelgianPrime Minister Herman Van Rompuy as president of the European Council, and Britain’s EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton as high representative for common foreign and security policy (HR). Van Rompuy is credited with putting an end to a lengthy political crisis between Belgium’s francophone and Flemish communities that virtually left the country without a government for […]

It is a strange kind of republic in which presidents serve for life. It is an even stranger one in which rulers inherit power from their fathers. Yet, that is the direction in which the Arab Republic of Egypt is headed. Egypt has experienced hereditary rule for millennia, from the pharaohs who began their reign 5,000 years ago to most (but not all) of the dynastic rulers who have called Cairo home for the last thousand years. The dissolution of the Egyp­tian monarchy in 1952 marked a turning point in Egyptian politics, ushering in military control and eliminating privileges that […]

The following op-ed has been adapted from the Project for National Security Reform’s recently released report(.pdf), “Turning Ideas Into Action.” It is the second of three that WPR will be featuring. The first can be found here. The third will appear tomorrow. U.S. national security missions are shifting, broadening, and becoming increasingly interdisciplinary. Yet, the structures and processes for addressing these missions have not evolved accordingly. An increasing number of missions now require interagency approaches. But because of the excessively rigid structures and processes of the current national security system, the White House is compelled to take charge of most […]

BANGKOK — Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s recent appointment of Thailand’s former premier, Thaksin Shinawatra, as an economic adviser was the diplomatic equivalent of precision bombing, whose shockwaves have sent relations between the neighboring Southeast Asian nations into a tailspin. But as the dust settles, observers say it is unclear who actually benefited from the increased tensions between Thailand and Cambodia. Thaksin — who was ousted by a military putsch in September 2006 and has been a polarizing figure in Thai politics ever since — is on the run from a two-year jail term for corruption handed down by Thailand’s […]

Gripped by simmering cross-border tensions, a dysfunctional democracy and collective unease over the health of the monarchy, Thailand has seen its status as a major power in Southeast Asia and its influence in the wider region cast under a harsh light recently. The most recent political shockwaves to roll through the Bangkok establishment emanated from ousted Thai leader Thaksin Shinawatra, who having fled a jail term for corruption, continues to goad his enemies from exile — this time by accepting a job offer from the Cambodian government as an economic adviser. At a carefully stage-managed press conference last week, with […]

Observers might disagree about what to call the situation in tiny Ingushetia, a federal republic in Russia’s North Caucasus wracked by an increasingly bloody Islamist insurgency. But whether the violence that has claimed hundreds of lives in the past few years qualifies as a civil war, a colonial war, a war on terror, or just persistent instability, one thing almost everyone agrees on is that Ingushetia increasingly displays the features of a failed state. Perhaps nowhere is that more evident than in the small territory’s dysfunctional security forces. Deteriorating relations between Russian federal authorities and the local police in Ingushetia […]

It remains uncertain whether Iran will ultimately accept or reject the agreement that nuclear negotiators in Geneva drafted late last month to send Iran’s stockpiled enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment. But the deliberations in Tehran have made one thing clear: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is under enormous domestic pressure from all sides to reject the P5+1 deal. It would be a mistake, however, to view this pressure in the vacuum of the nuclear issue. In fact, the opposition to striking a deal with the West offers a revealing glimpse of what the future holds for Iran’s fractured political landscape. […]

Last month, two rounds of high-level meetings on the future of Bosnia took place at the military base of Butmir, on the outskirts of Sarajevo. The meetings recalled similar talks held almost 15 years ago, at another military base in Dayton, Ohio. Those talks ended Bosnia’s raging civil war, and the Dayton Peace Accords of 1995 laid the foundations of the post-war Bosnian state. The current efforts to revise the country’s constitutional foundations, and hence make it more functional, have already been called “Dayton 2” by commentators. For now, though, they are unlikely to repeat the success of the original. […]

In eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the annual arrival of the holiday season brings with it the sinking realization that no matter the developments of the preceding 12 months, the end of the year will be accompanied by more violence, more sexual assault and more displacement of the civilian populations living in the shadow of the darkly beautiful volcanoes in the Kivu provinces. This year’s tragedy is tinged peacekeeper blue. The world’s largest and most expensive U.N. peacekeeping mission, MONUC, has now conducted nine months of joint operations with the Congolese army, the FARDC. But that dismal and undisciplined force […]

BRUSSELS, Belgium — With Czech approval of the Lisbon Treaty removing the last obstacle for the treaty’s ratification, a race in Brussels has begun between the European Commission and the European Council to secure influence over the new European External Action Service (EEAS). The new body is among the institutions introduced by the treaty, and reflects the European Union’s attempt to integrate its foreign policy departments. It will combine tasks currently undertaken by the Commission’s Directorate General of External Relations and the institutions of the Council Secretariat in charge of foreign policy. The integration of elements from the Commission and […]

China’s fifth generation of leaders is coming of age at a critical juncture in the history of the People’s Republic of China. Slated to assume power in 2012-2013, they will face both opportunities and challenges. Despite the current global economic and financial crisis, most projections of China’s continuing rise have it assuming the No. 2 spot in the international pecking order by that time, with further enhanced economic and political influence, but also heightened expectations and demands for Beijing to take the lead in global and regional affairs. At the same time, domestic issues, from ethnic unrest to growing income […]

Last month, Republicans bashed President Barack Obama for not meeting with the Dalai Lama during his swing through Washington, portraying the president as caving to pressure from Chinese “tyrants” who hold trillions of dollars in U.S. debt and view the Tibetan spiritual leader as Public Enemy No. 1. “You can bet the Chinese are using their influence in ways we do not even know about,” warned Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, the Republican co-chair of the Congressional Tibet Caucus. “This goes way beyond the Dalai Lama. The U.S. has permitted China to have a one-way free trade policy for decades, and now […]

On Oct. 1, the People’s Republic of China celebrated the 60th anniversary of its founding, most notably with an air show and military parade along Beijing’s Orwellian-sounding Avenue of Eternal Peace. The event showcased China’s arsenal of indigenously made fighter aircraft, tanks and newer-generation Dongfeng missiles, capable of delivering nuclear warheads to targets over 11,000 kilometers away. This was hardly the first time an authoritarian government has used a military review to impress its citizens and outside observers. And China has used non-martial events to display its national pride, confidence and strength. In many ways, last year’s Beijing Olympics served […]