North America Archive

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) program, under new pressure from congressional budget-cutters, continues to draw criticism that its underlying concept is flawed. The massive, ambitious FCS program would unite a large number of Army vehicles and weapons systems through a common computerized network, in theory allowing for better interoperability and coordination of troops in the field. The problem: “The whole concept doesn’t work,” according to Winslow Wheeler, a defense analyst at the Center for Defense Information in Washington. The Army heartily disagrees with this viewpoint, as does The Boeing Co., which is one of two main […]

Editor’s note: Corridors of Power is written by World Politics Review Editor-at-Large Roland Flamini and appears every Monday. This week’s edition appears Tuesday due to Monday’s Memorial Day holiday in the United States. A GHOST AT THE COMMITTEE — Randall Tobias will not be present when the U.S. Congress takes up foreign aid appropriations after Memorial Day, but he will certainly be there in spirit. Tobias resigned as head of USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, following that rather bizarre Washington madam scandal, in which he was the only publicly identified alleged high-profile client. But it is largely the […]

VILLA CARDAL, Uruguay — The 1,200 inhabitants of this isolated rural town could not care less about a feud between U.S. tech companies Intel and AMD. But recently it began a social experiment that could impact not only its development but also the fortunes of several U.S. corporate giants. Eight-year-old Nahuel Lema and his 135 classmates at Number 24: Italia, the only primary school here, took home new laptops May 10 thanks to a partnership between the Uruguayan government and One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a United States’ non-profit born out of the MIT Media Lab. Nahuel’s mother, Grisela, sat […]

WASHINGTON — Reparing and strengthening commercial ties between the U.S. and European defense industries requires more U.S. action and less talk, says Thomas Enders, chief executive of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., Europe’s largest defense contractor. “Concrete steps,” rather than mere talk, should be the order of the day, Enders last week told a Washington audience that included many U.S. government officials and European diplomats. High on the action agenda, Enders said, should be reform of International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), a set of U.S. government regulations that controls the import and export of defense-related articles and […]

Editor’s note: Corridors of Power is written by veteran foreign correspondent and WPR editor-at-large Roland Flamini, and appears every Monday. AFTER WOLFOWITZ — A senior World Bank staffer says that while the squalor of Paul Wolfowitz’s arrangements on behalf of his innamorata got all the publicity, it wasn’t the main grievance inside the agency. “The bank is not Sodom and Gomorrah, but it’s not monastic either,” the source said, “and it has its share of romantic relationships.” What riled the staff more was (1) Wolfowitz’s reliance on a team of close political advisers whom he brought in from the Bush […]

OAXACA, Mexico — The grim images of tear gas and street battles that were streaming out of Oaxaca late last year nearly dissuaded Spanish-language student Hermann Ingjaldsson from coming to the southern Mexican state, where a teachers’ strike had descended into a revolt against the governor. “I looked it up on YouTube and it didn’t look good,” the native of Iceland recalled one quiet evening while poring over his notes. At the urging of a Mexican friend, he came anyway and found the reality entirely different from the unfavorable videos shot in the colonial city and state of the same […]

“St. Lucia is a sovereign state; an independent nation; we’re a democratic country, therefore what is the fuss all about? China or Taiwan, which one should it be? Which one should we tie? We must tie-one. I say we must tie-one.” — Edmund Estaphane, St. Lucian MP, speaking to parliament, April 30 SHENZHEN, China — Two different tussles took place in the Caribbean in the months of March and April; both involved the island-nation of St. Lucia to some degree, and both had such an air of inevitability that the final result elicited few gasps of surprise. One was the […]

Promoting America in the Muslim world is surely a good idea. Launching a TV station devoted to that purpose? That would seem to be a good idea, too. In practice, however, the station, founded in early 2004, has struggled from the outset to dispel the notion that it is a U.S. propaganda outlet — a tough task, given that it is financed by the U.S. Congress. Calling it “Alhurra,” which translates into Arabic as “the free one” — not such a good idea. When taxpayers foot the bill, “free” is at best a metaphor. And for some among its audience […]

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — A domestic political scandal that has tarnished the reputation of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is undermining support in the U.S. Congress for aid to the United States’ closest ally in Latin America, as well as threatening a proposed U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement. Uribe was in Washington last week to lobby for continued U.S. aid and ratification of the proposed free trade agreement (FTA) as the so-called “parapolitics” scandal, which implicates some Colombian politicians and high-ranking military officers in dealings with paramilitary groups, continued to gain momentum at home. So far, an investigation into the scandal by the […]

WASHINGTON — In recent months, federal and state homeland security officials have become increasingly concerned that terrorists and other groups might attempt to imitate the insurgents in Iraq and employ chlorine-bombs and other chemical weapons within the United States. Even before insurgents in Iraq began detonating trucks carrying bombs combining conventional explosive with industrial chlorine, U.S. government and non-government experts had identified the United States as potentially vulnerable to terrorist attacks against chemical plants or rail tankers transporting toxic chemicals such as chlorine. In their “National Planning Scenarios” (pdf file), analysts at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) identified a […]

Last week’s two-day summit between President George Bush and Shinzo Abe, who was making his first visit to the United States as Japanese prime minister, provided an opportunity to take stock of the profound changes occurring in the bilateral security relationship. Despite Japanese-American differences over several regional security issues, the two countries have continued to strengthen their bilateral defense ties in several dimensions.<<ad>>Under the auspices of their bilateral Security Consultative Committee (SCC), the two governments have engaged in a major effort to restructure their defense alliance. For several years, the SCC has been issuing joint statements articulating the two countries’ […]