North America Archive

In Iran, hundreds of thousands of citizens are bravely defying state laws barring protest, with reports emerging of students and demonstrators being beaten and even shot. President Barack Obama has muted his response so far, taking note of the violence, while taking pains not to feed historical Iranian perceptions of U.S. meddling. Some have criticized him for not taking a stronger stand, echoing widespread charges that Obama downplays human rights more generally in his foreign policy approach. The critics are right: Obama has prioritized stability and the shoring up of U.S. power over the vocal advocacy of human rights. But […]

I actually had the idea for this post last week. But the news that members of the Iranian soccer team wore green wristbands during their World Cup qualifier against South Korea to signal their support for opposition protests back home made it even more timely. So the following is a list of the Top 5 all-time sporting events with international relations overtones. It's admittedly U.S.-centric, both in choice of matches and sports, meaning that if you're looking for cricket matches that changed the shape of global history, you'll have to look elsewhere. Rankings are based on a combination of drama, […]

To mark a visit by Swedish parliamentarians to the U.S. Navy command ship Mount Whitney, the destroyer Forrest Sherman flew a huge Swedish flag and blared music by the Swedish pop band ABBA from its loudspeakers. It was a moment of levity that belied the deadly serious politics underlying a 12-day, Baltic military exercise. BALTOPS 2009, involving 11 European nations and the U.S., risks provoking Russia, at a time when the Obama administration is working hard to restore U.S.-Russian relations. When the annual exercise was conceived in the 1970s, it focused on preparing NATO nations and their allies for war […]

In his April 5 disarmament speech in Prague, President Barack Obama endorsed constructing “a new framework for civil nuclear cooperation, including an international fuel bank, so that countries can access peaceful power without increasing the risks of proliferation.” An international uranium fuel bank seeks to address one of the fundamental problems with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) — namely, that it allows countries to acquire sensitive nuclear technologies that they can then rapidly convert from civilian to military use. According to the most common interpretation of the treaty, states can develop extensive uranium-enrichment and plutonium-reprocessing capabilities while a member in […]

A few days after President Barack Obama stood on the podium at Cairo University sending a message of reconciliation to Muslims around the world, voters in Lebanon went to the polls and delivered a stunning blow to Hezbollah, the so-called Party of God. The victory by the U.S.-backed March 14 against the Iran-backed March 8 alliance came as a surprise to just about everyone. Since Lebanon is a microcosm of the Middle East, the vote had important regional resonance. But Lebanon is also a Rorschach test, so interpretations of the results reflected the multiplicity of views about what the most […]

MEXICO CITY — Federal officials used the word “historic” to describe the May 26 arrests of 28 local officials, including 10 mayors, in the western state of Michoacán. Those detained were allegedly linked to La Familia, a drug cartel known for running extortion rackets, producing methamphetamines and corrupting municipal governments. Opposition politicians and some political observers, meanwhile, expressed disquiet with the arrests and questioned their timing. The sting operation — which netted mayors from the three main parties, including a pair from President Felipe Calderón’s National Action Party (PAN) — came barely five weeks before the July 5 midterm legislative […]

The chief of staff of the French Air Force, Gen. Stéfane Abrial, has just been nominated to the commanding officer position for NATO’s Allied Command Transformation (via Jean-Dominique Merchet). The command is one of two that France secured in return for fully reintegrating NATO’s military command. Three quick thoughts. First, according to his official bio (.pdf), Abrial spent a year as a student officer back in ’73 at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and another at the Air War College at Maxwell AFB in ’91. He’s also spent some time at NATO headquarters in Brussels. So part of this assignment […]

Much remains uncertain regarding the nuclear arms control treaty currently being negotiated by the Russian and American governments. But the parties have evidently decided not to try to address “non-strategic” nuclear weapons in the agreement. When asked about the issue at an April 6 conference on nonproliferation, two U.S. and Russian officials intimately involved in the negotiations said they favored excluding the issue from the immediate START follow-on talks. The latest Russian-American negotiating session that occurred last week in Geneva appears to confirm this decision. Rose Gottemoeller, the new assistant secretary of state for verification and compliance and the chief […]

As the World Health Organization agonizes over whether or not to declare the H1N1 flu virus an official pandemic, I can’t help but think of the American national security establishment’s continuing struggle over the definition of threat in a post-9/11 world. In both instances, we see institutions with worldwide responsibilities coming to grips with an increasingly interconnected global landscape. And although that global landscape, according to all the available data, suffers less catastrophe, it nonetheless appears to present far greater potential for such catastrophes to unfold with seemingly uncontrollable consequences. By “less catastrophe,” I mean that in a world of […]

In his comprehensively titled tome, “Diplomacy,” legendary U.S. statesman Henry Kissinger laid out the two competing schools of thought that have guided American foreign policy in its rise to power. The first was realist, embodied by Theodore Roosevelt, based on power and obsessed with the zero-sum game that guides the core of international relations. The second, touted by Woodrow Wilson, was idealist, based on cooperation and unflinching in its belief in the power of ideas. To Kissinger’s consternation, though he believed that realism was the right way through which to view the world, he says that it was actually Wilson’s […]

I’m not the only one who sees a short expiration date on our NATO allies’ commitment to Afghanistan now that the war has been “Americanized.” Here’s Jari Lindholm: I’m no apologist for ISAF ineptitude, but let’s be honest: for eightyears, Europeans have been covering America’s ass in the north. Whathappens when they pull out is anybody’s guess. Make no mistake, though:now that they’ve been handed an excuse on a silver platter, they will leave. Lindholm leaves some room open for the French to stay, and I’d go as far as to say it’s unlikely they’ll leave. There hasn’t really been […]

Yesterday afternoon, the stage was set: President Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a Muslim, had traveled to Cairo to give his long-awaited speech to the Islamic world, in an effort to repair the damage done to America’s image in the region by recent U.S. foreign policy. Judging by U.S. reactions, the speech was a huge success. But will the other half of the equation, the president’s Arab and Muslim target audience, follow the White House’s carefully crafted script? Though it is still too early to say with certainty, the U.S. could be in for a disappointment. To understand more […]

Great Michael Wolff piece (via Laura Rozen) on the Obama administration’s vice-like grip on image control and media management in general. I’ve noticed the same thing in trying to find open source White House photos of the president to accompany WPR articles. There’s almost nothing available outside of the carefully stage-managed “slide shows.” (Does no one else remember that slide shows were once code for boring presentations that primarily interested the person who insisted on subjecting unsuspecting guests to them? Does no one else agree that that has not changed just because they’re now delivered over the internet?) I never […]

Watching President Obama’s speech yesterday was both a moving but also a frankly discomforting experience. The fact that he was speaking in Egypt and said absolutely nothing supportive or reassuring to the Egyptian people who have been suffering for decades under Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorial whims and repression suggests Obama may have good manners but is still not willing to say “in public” what he undoubtedly knows in private. If anything Obama’s presence and demeanor in Cairo will likely reinforce Mubarak’s legitimacy and undermine Obama’s message that America now stands for change. What’s new about America’s self-serving support for […]

When Air Force One landed in the sands of the Arabian Peninsula yesterday with President Barack Obama aboard, my mind traveled back to Nov. 4, last year. On the day Obama was elected president of the United States, I was in Amman, Jordan, listening to jaded Arab men declare that nothing would change in the Middle East, no matter who lived in the White House. Fast forward exactly seven months later, and the Arab world is abuzz with excitement. President Obama has traveled to the Middle East to prove my Jordanian interlocutors wrong, and to demonstrate that the relationship between […]

When U.S. President Barack Obama meets with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo tomorrow, they may want to focus some attention on the most enduring but unexamined component of the U.S.-Egypt relationship: military cooperation. Over the past 30 years, military cooperation has yielded great benefits for both countries. But that cooperation now shows signs of strain, and a course correction is in order. Operationally, the U.S. enjoys privileged access to Egypt’s air space and waterways. That meant expedited permission for more than 35,000 over-flights and 850 naval transits from 2001 to 2005. Strategically, Egypt has largely supported — or else […]

Despite being a lifelong camper, a one-time vegetarian and a dedicated, if lazy, supporter of environmental causes, I’ve also always been a GM man. (With the exception of the ’72 Dodge Dart that I owned for the three weeks it took me to find my beloved ’81 Oldsmobile Delta 88, nicknamed “The Penthouse.”) So obviously, the recent news has been tough. Still, I don’t think anything could be more emblematic of the shift in global geopolitics than Hummer going Chinese. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Hummer fan. In fact, the only thing I find more ridiculous than a […]