Asia-Pacific Archive

Since taking office in May 2008, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has made improving ties among the former Soviet republics that form the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) a foreign policy priority. Nonetheless, recent weeks have yielded further signs of Moscow’s flailing leadership within the group. Only five of the 10 heads of state, invited personally by Medvedev, participated in the latest annual informal CIS summit, held on July 18. The centerpiece of the event, as in past years, was attendance at the annual President’s Cup horse race at Moscow’s Central Hippodrome. Humorists blamed the large number of no-shows on Medvedev’s […]

Has Washington forgotten about India? After increased engagement and improved bilateral ties under two successive American presidents, several commentators have wondered if President Barack Obama is undervaluing relations with New Delhi. With the new administration’s attention centered on developing a partnership with China, stabilizing Afghanistan and Pakistan, re-engaging Russia, and containing Iran and North Korea, it’s unclear whether India will be a strategic priority for the United States. That Washington has been primarily focused on the U.S.-China relationship is understandable. Leadership from today’s superpower and tomorrow’s great power are seen as essential for addressing transnational threats. U.S. Secretary of State […]

Last week’s major policy address by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was as noteworthy for the strategic concepts she dismissed as for the ones she embraced. Clinton provided Americans with a strong sense of how she plans to conduct U.S. foreign policy: not merely as “the indispensable nation” that assumes international leadership, but rather as the global rule-set convener that aggressively builds partnerships across a strategic landscape pulsating with rising players — both state-based and transnational. In doing so, Secretary Clinton explicitly rejected the emerging — and yet painfully antiquated — conventional wisdom that portrays a world inevitably divided into […]

The Nabucco project gained some momentum in mid-July with the signing of an inter-governmental agreement between countries involved in the natural gas pipeline proposal. If completed, the pipeline would unlock reserves from the Caspian region and potentially the Middle East, thus providing the European gas market with sources of supply outside of Russia. The purpose of the agreement, signed by representatives of the European Commission, Austria, Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey, was to outline a legal framework for transiting gas through the system, and to address other issues such as tariff levels and access to the pipeline network. The signing was […]

WARDAK, Afghanistan — The small Afghan police and army outpost in this small district center looks like a war zone. The buildings are bullet-pocked and burnt, there is a burnt-out vehicle out front, and a rather nasty-looking machine-gun nest overlooks the road. Tired-looking Afghan policemen are milling about among the buildings. The appearances don’t lie: The center, originally built for civilian purposes, is a war zone. The 50 Afghan policemen and army troops stationed here come under attack by the Taliban almost every afternoon at 5 o’clock. The shooting goes on until about 9 p.m. After that, there is no […]

For some reason, my thoughts keep coming back to this brief passage from Hillary Clinton’s speech yesterday, following her discussion of NATO: At the same time, we are working with our key treaty allies Japan andKorea, Australia, Thailand, and the Philippines and other partners tostrengthen our bilateral relationships as well as trans-Pacificinstitutions. We are both a trans-Atlantic and a trans-Pacific nation. It’s little more than a boilerplate reiteration of a geopolitical reality that dates back to the turn of the 20th century. But it comes at a time when many of our Asian allies have begun to wonder whether our […]

Thomas P.M. Barnett flags an article on a subject I’ve been keeping an eye on recently. According to the WSJ, global migration patterns have reversed, with immigrants increasingly returning to their countries of origin as a result of the global downturn, in addition to actual immigration slowing down. I’d initially expected the reverse to be true, at least in terms of the latter phenomenon. According to the WSJ, the reason why fewer people are setting out for the “lands of opportunity” is that they might just find more opportunity at home. I’ve been doing some reading recently on informal economies, […]

The cliché that you must “protect the population” in order to win a counterinsurgency has now become entrenched in conventional wisdom. This is especially so of the war in Afghanistan, where civilian casualties have become a deeply polarizing issue. It has become so important that, during a recent trip to Helmand Province, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the new commander of U.S. and NATO-led troops in Afghanistan, declared that Coalition forces must make a “cultural shift” in Afghanistan, away from their normal combat orientation and toward protecting civilians. But protecting the population requires knowing where it lives. Here, the Army’s conventional wisdom […]

Given all my griping about the war in Afghanistan, I thought I’d pass along two recent articles that offer a more positive outlook on the chances for a successful outcome there. The first is by Peter Bergen in the Washington Monthly (via Matthew Yglesias), the second by Fotini Christia and Michael Semple in Foreign Affairs (via Thomas P.M. Barnett). Bergen attacks what he calls the twin myths that Afghanistan is unconquerable and ungovernable. He argues that both can be accomplished with the current military footprint (augmented by increased Afghan security forces), combined with an expanded and internationalized civilian footprint. Essentially, […]

KARACHI, Pakistan — There has been a perceptible shift in the battle against militancy in Pakistan. The massive army operations that recently concluded in the Swat valley, the largest ever conducted by Pakistan against the Taliban, are but one facet of it. For the first time, the government is also winning the propaganda war. Ordinary citizens and political parties from across the spectrum — including religious ones — have rallied around the army. At a series of government-organized religious conferences in May, scholars denounced the Taliban as a perversion of Islamic teachings. While stopping short of apologizing for their role […]

When ethnic disturbances broke out in western China last week, bringing the worst violence the country has seen in years, international reaction proved curiously mild. The violence in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province, resulted in the deaths of at least 184 people, with some putting the number much higher. The events alarmed China’s leadership, prompting President Hu Jintao to suddenly leave the G-8 summit in Italy. As for the rest of the world, the sense of alarm, if there was one, seemed rather muted. World leaders remained eerily quiet or spoke in tones strikingly deferential to China, despite pleas […]

WARDAK, Afghanistan — The new Afghanistan strategy is supposed to be all about winning hearts and minds. But this small combat outpost high in the Hindu Kush mountains seems to be mostly about fighting. The outpost, manned by Delta Rifle Company* of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division, has been mortared or rocketed seven times in the last two days. They also got involved in a major firefight between the Taliban, Afghan security forces and private security contractors protecting the supply trucks heading up the main road towards Kabul. To be fair, overall violence levels in Wardak province have dropped […]

It’s pretty tough to argue with conventional wisdom, but Richard Weitz does a good job of it in his WPR column today when it comes to the G-8. Weitz points out that the arguments for enlarging the G-8 to a G-14 or a G-20 are mainly based on economic and demographic shifts. That overlooks the significant security component to the G-8 format, an area in which the eight member nations do, in fact, represent the principle global leaders. I wish I’d had Richard’s column to rely on last Friday, during the France 24 program, The World This Week, because I […]

I wish I could claim “the Erdogan Factor” as my own invention, but Yigal Schleifer coined the term to explain what just put the kibosh on Turkey’s moderate response to the Xinjiang riots: Speaking to reporters live on NTV television last Friday, Turkish PrimeMinister Recep Tayyip Erdogan — who has a habit of doing away withdiplomatic niceties — said: “The incidents in China are, simply put,tantamount to genocide. There’s no point in interpreting thisotherwise.” So much for a moderate response. I personally find Erdogan’s inability to bury his emotional reactions with “diplomatic niceties” compelling, and would almost argue for a […]

Critics of the Group of Eight (G-8) tend to focus on economic issues in challenging the format’s continued relevance. Citing the decreasing share of the economic resources and clout at the group’s disposal, commentators often advocate replacing it with a G-14, a G-20, or some other, more inclusive body. Such a focus, however, neglects another important aspect of the work conducted by the G-8: Since the 1980s, the group’s annual meetings have given rise to important international security initiatives, which have been sustained and further developed over time. The G-8 structure has also proven sufficiently flexible to incorporate additional partners […]

World Politics Review managing editor Judah Grunstein appeared on France 24’s panel discussion program, The World This Week, on Friday to discuss the riots in Xinjiang, the G-8 summit and Obama’s visit to Kenya, along with Anthony Bellanger of Courrier International, Billie O’Kadameri of Radio France International, and Elie Masbounji of l’Orient le Jour. Part One can be seen here. Part Two can be seen here.

What a difference a year makes. That’s the gist of this Journal du Dimanche article by Pierre Servent regarding the morale of the French military this Bastille Day compared to the 2008 vintage: Last year, the army’s morale was as low as its socks: the announcement of drastic manpower cuts, the drama of Carcassonne, the resignation/firing of the army chief of staff, the controversial presence of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. [. . .] But what, then, happened between July 14, 2008 and July 14, 2009 to explain this change? One word: Uzbin. (Translated from the French.) Uzbin is the valley […]