Domestic Politics Archive

BEIJING — At its recent plenary session in Beijing on Oct. 14-18, the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee rubber-stamped the country’s latest five-year economic plan, oversaw the further emergence of a new generation of political leaders and issued a number of significant policy announcements. Taken together, these events signal a changing political tide in Beijing and the ascendancy of the CCP’s Maoist-influenced “Princeling” faction in the run-up to the 2012 leadership transition. The Princeling faction is so named because many of its key figures are the sons of revolutionary heroes. The Princelings effectively represent the CCP’s traditionalist wing, littering their […]

Editor’s note: This article is the second in a two-part series. Part I focused on the impact of budget cuts on the British navy. Part II focuses on the implications for U.S. national security policy. As part of government-wide cuts meant to rein in decades of deficit spending, in October the U.K. Ministry of Defense announced an initial 8 percent reduction in its roughly $63 billion annual budget. The Royal Navy will suffer the deepest cuts, with around one-quarter of the fleet — as measured by tonnage — to be decommissioned and future purchases of ships and planes delayed and […]

Editor’s note: This article is the first in a two-part series. Part I will focus on the impact of budget cuts on the British navy. Part II will focus on the implications for U.S. national security policy. It was an event worthy of the British Royal Navy’s 500-year history. On June 3 at Portsmouth Naval Base, hundreds of dignitaries and citizens gathered to celebrate the commissioning of HMS Dauntless, the second of six high-tech Type 45 destroyers now entering service. A band played, the crew marched in parade and the ship’s captain, Richard Powell, read the traditional “commissioning warrant.” There […]

The Nobel Committee’s decision to award jailed Chinese democracy activist Liu Xiaobo the 2010 Peace Prize came just days before China’s Communist Party elite anointed political princeling Xi Jinping as President Hu Jintao’s clear successor, highlighting the two Chinas that now seem to be passing one another like ships in the night. One China is propelled from below by a coastal workforce that is increasingly self-confident in its skills and accomplishments and growing income. The other, larger China is managed from above by political leaders who increasingly worry over the nation’s social stability as they grow more self-defensive in their […]

The ebullient celebration in Brazil over Petrobras’ historic $70 billion share-issue last month was bitterly received in Mexico City, where the state-owned oil company Pemex is mired in debt, inefficiency and ongoing political wrangling. With little having changed since Mexican President Felipe Calderón sought to reform the country’s energy sector two years ago, the contrast between Petrobras’ successes and Pemex’s failures has reignited discussion of Pemex’s future and renewed the public’s interest in the beleaguered Mexican oil giant. Once Latin America’s largest company, Pemex has persistently lost profits and market share to other state-led oil companies, including PetroChina, Russia’s Lukoil, […]

Few would have expected it to be possible a few months ago, but Kyrgyzstan managed to hold a free, fair, and surprisingly non-violent and trouble-free parliamentary election this weekend. In an assessment widely shared by regional experts, David Trilling, writing at EurasiaNet, concluded, “Kyrgyzstan’s parliamentary elections couldn’t have gone better.” Turnout exceeded 50 percent of the country’s 2.8 million eligible voters and produced sharply divided results that will force political leaders to compromise to form a coalition government. Five political parties, out of the 29 that participated, overcame the 5 percent threshold required to receive seats in the 120-member parliament. […]

In the first light of dawn on New Year’s Day 1994, indigenous campesinos wearing ski masks and toting assault weapons stormed major towns in the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas. By midday, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN, in Spanish) had introduced itself to the world as the new face of social revolution. The nature of this face — or more accurately, the lack thereof — immediately distinguished the movement. Black balaclavas, worn at all times in public, along with the rugged attire of the indigenous population, captivated the lenses of the world’s media. So did the eloquent dispatches […]

At 11:30 on the evening of Jan. 31, 2010, Jesús Enríquez and a group of close friends, all stand-out student-athletes at both the high-school and college level, were celebrating Jesús’ 17th birthday when four trucks packed with two-dozen heavily armed gunmen roared onto their block in Ciudad Juarez, closing off the street and blocking escape. The assassins descended from their vehicles and opened fire on the house, slaughtering 15 people and leaving another 14 injured in a matter of seconds. The majority of those killed were under the age of 20. The presence at the time of more than 10,000 […]

An agreement reached between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Moqtada al-Sadr on Oct. 1 broke the logjam that had held up the formation of an Iraqi government since the March 7 parliamentary elections. Two Shiite Islamist parties boycotted the joint press conference Maliki and Sadr held to announce the deal, but both have emphasized that they remain part of the Shiite-dominated National Alliance (NA) of which Maliki is now formally the candidate for prime minister. Yet while the prospect of another Shiite-dominated government has raised concerns of renewed sectarian conflict, the arrival of senior Kurdish leaders for negotiations in […]

MEXICO CITY — Top diplomats from 14 Latin American countries and the United States will gather in Mexico City today for a conference on transnational crime and migration issues. The conference’s host will be the Mexican secretary of internal affairs, José Blake Mora, whose Interior Ministry coordinates the Mexican National Institute of Migration (INM). The problem of organized crime and migration has become increasingly urgent this year after a series of incidents in which undocumented migrants fell victim to violence in Mexico. The incidents have become a source of international embarrassment for Mexico. While loudly protesting Arizona’s immigration law SB […]

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina — Bosnia’s elections on Sunday offered little reason to expect any normalization for the divided country in the near future. The country’s ethnic Serb entity re-elected leaders who have called for independence and denied genocide, while many Croats backed parties supporting further division along national lines. Despite a rise in support for moderate parties, these recalcitrant nationalists may impede the reforms envisaged by the international community to reverse several years of backsliding. The electoral arrangements themselves offer insight into Bosnia’s complex political arrangements, established by the 1995 Dayton Accords that ended the country’s civil war. The […]

BOGOTÁ — Colombia hailed the death last month of a top rebel commander as the most significant blow against the guerilla insurgency in its 46-year history. Jorge Briceno Suarez, known as Mono Jojoy, was the No. 2 leader of Colombia’s largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). “The symbol of terrorism in Colombia has fallen,” said Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who ordered the air strike on the jungle guerrilla camp. Mono Jojoy was a veteran leader who was considered invincible. He masterminded a series of fatal attacks on southern towns and military bases during the 1990s […]

JOHANNESBURG — Public meetings held throughout Zimbabwe, intended to seek input for the drafting of a new constitution, have been suspended due to violence, evoking memories of the country’s bloody 2008 presidential election and boding ill for the prospects of free and fair elections scheduled for next year. In the latest twist in Zimbabwe’s ongoing political crisis, the Constitutional Parliamentary Committee suspended the outreach exercise late last month, following violence in most parts of the country, particularly the capital, Harare, and the second-largest city, Bulawayo. Two deaths and dozens of injuries were reported. The army and supporters of President Robert […]

With most U.S. political analysts — Charlie Cook, Larry Sabato and Stuart Rothenberg among them — now predicting that the Republicans will take back control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, the likelihood that Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi will be replaced as speaker of the house by the current Republican minority leader, Rep. John Boehner, is becoming more likely. But while this would mark a tectonic shift in American domestic politics, it might not lead to any immediate revolution in how the administration conducts foreign affairs. After all, the Democrats, under then-Minority Leader Pelosi, swept into power […]