The Americas Archive

As U.S. forces draw down in Afghanistan, the United States continues to carry out targeted killings against suspected terrorist leaders in several theaters—including through the use of armed drones—and to enhance the ability of partner nations to carry out lethal operations. But U.S. drone strikes can kill innocent civilians along with their intended targets, generating backlash abroad and concerns domestically. According to reporting last week by the Washington Post, one such strike moved Congress to insert language into the $1.1 trillion spending bill that blocks Obama administration attempts to transfer the U.S. drone program from the CIA to the Pentagon. […]

In a visit to Havana this month, Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans urged the EU to improve its ties with Cuba. In an email interview, Joaquín Roy, Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration at University of Miami, director of the University of Miami European Union Center and co-director of the Miami-Florida European Union Center of Excellence, explained European Union relations with Cuba. WPR: What is the current state of European Union relations with Cuba? Joaquín Roy: Each EU member state has maintained its own pragmatic relations with Cuba—in trade, investment and development aid—since the establishment of the EU Common Position […]

After years of deadlocked negotiations and apparent inflexibility on the part of the Islamic Republic of Iran to make substantive concessions on its development of nuclear technology, some of which might be used for weapons, Tehran has recently become much more accommodating. The framework agreement reached in November in Geneva, trading cessation of enrichment and dilution of existing stockpiles of enriched uranium for sanctions relief, will go into effect Jan. 20. Is this newfound willingness to negotiate simply a result of personnel changes, beginning with the election of Hassan Rouhani as president? Not entirely. After all, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei […]

The United States has maintained large numbers of nuclear weapons on high alert for decades, ready to launch at a moment’s notice. Numerous military personnel are specifically assigned to manage U.S. nuclear weapons operations and must be ready to precisely carry out complex tasks under extreme time pressure. But the operators of these weapons are human, and the Air Force announced earlier this week that 34 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch officers had been suspended for cheating on a monthly proficiency test. The airmen were stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, which houses 150 of the nation’s 450 […]

Given budget pressures and widespread disillusionment with the outcome of the American counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, critics contend that the United States does not need a large, active-duty Army but should instead rely on other nations and reserve forces. As land power advocates and the Army’s leaders push back, debate rages. This is not simply a quibble over budget figures. Rather, it reflects a monumental strategic decision. Choices made today about the Army—and the rest of the military—will determine the options available to American presidents years and even decades from now. A recent essay by defense expert Kori […]

Climate change legislation has had a tough time in the United States. But Secretary of State John Kerry, based partially on a conviction that climate change is causing more intense storms like the recent typhoon in the Philippines, still sees the conclusion of a successful global climate pact in 2015 with full U.S. participation as an important, legacy-defining goal. Last month, Kerry stood alongside his Philippine counterpart and told reporters that “what we face today is sufficient to say that developed nations in the world need to take the lead,” predicting, among other things, a pattern of increasingly intense storms […]

As negotiations continue on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, one persistent sticking point has been public health, and in particular patent protections for pharmaceuticals. In an email interview, Frederick M. Abbott, the Edward Ball Eminent Scholar at Florida State University College of Law and an expert on international intellectual property rights, explained the public health concerns involved in trade negotiations. WPR: In what ways have public health issues arisen as points of contention in the current rounds of major multilateral trade talks, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership? Frederick M. Abbott: Issues relating to public health are perhaps the major […]

Editor’s note: This is the first of a seven-part series examining conditions in Afghanistan in the last year of U.S. military operations there. The series will run every Wednesday and will examine each of the country’s regional commands to get a sense of the country, and the war, America is leaving behind. This year, the bulk if not the entirety of international troops will leave Afghanistan; the few thousand likely to remain, pending agreement with Kabul, will mostly be concentrated on a handful of bases and serve in a training and advisory role for Afghan forces. In February, the number […]

President Barack Obama, according to pundits, is losing the Middle East. The charge recalls those leveled after Mao Zedong’s 1949 victory in the Chinese civil war, when anti-communists in the United States accused the Truman administration of “losing China.” While advocates of this position never explained how any feasible level of U.S. support could have staved off Chiang Kai-Shek’s defeat, the idea that refusing to back friendly dictators leads to preventable strategic disasters subsequently became ingrained in American thinking. It later inspired Lyndon Johnson’s refusal to disengage from Vietnam even when it became clear that the Saigon regime could not […]

The United States played an important role in facilitating the independence of South Sudan, the world’s newest country. Now U.S. leaders are watching the unfolding of an ethnic-tinged civil conflict that has already left hundreds dead and displaced around 200,000 people. Fighting broke out in the middle of last month between government forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and those allied with former Vice President Riek Machar, whom Kiir removed from office last year along with all his other ministers. Kiir accused Machar of orchestrating a coup against his government shortly before fighting began. While violence continues in parts of […]

Since President Rafael Correa came to power seven years ago, U.S. relations with Ecuador have been rocky. Most recently, in December 2013, the U.S. Agency for International Development decided to pull out of Ecuador in 2014 after the agency failed to reach an agreement with Quito over continued support of democracy promotion efforts, which the Correa administration regards as targeting the government. Just days later, the Correa government reacted angrily to a Washington Post report alleging that the CIA had offered crucial assistance to Colombia in a 2008 strike against FARC rebels in Ecuadorean territory; the U.S. had denied any […]

Mexico’s recently enacted energy reform bill marks an important first step on the long path of transforming the country’s energy sector. Now that the constitutional changes have been ratified by a majority of states, the real work of drafting the enabling legislation, creating new institutions and profoundly changing many existing ones now begins. All of this will take time, and there will be much to debate along the way. The reform’s ultimate success will depend on maintaining political support while managing public expectations during the long slog of implementation. While Mexico’s challenges in implementing the reform are complex and many, […]

With the Obama administration moving toward its sixth year, the traditional nuclear arms control process—which has for the past several decades been driven in large part by a series of bilateral and multilateral treaties—appears to be lagging as nuclear threats and fears shift and as the U.S. political scene remains gridlocked. To move its broader nuclear agenda forward, the administration is pursuing mechanisms and institutions that allow the United States to build security and technical cooperation with partner nations without a time-consuming and politically bruising treaty ratification process. Some of these mechanisms are new, like the series of nuclear security […]

Many commentators have described 2013 as a “lost year” for the Obama administration. The enthusiasm generated by the second inaugural quickly dissipated in continued stalemates with Congress, culminating in the government shutdown in October. No major pieces of legislation were passed, nor did the United States spearhead new international initiatives. Some of this can be attributed to the famed “second-term curse.” As I noted in these pages after the president’s re-election, “Every second-term president over the past 30 years—Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush—overestimated the amount of political capital their re-election generated, and each was also distracted by […]

During his campaign for president in 2008, Barack Obama promised that he would restore America’s standing in the world—in part by using his unique multicultural background to better communicate with U.S. friends and foes alike. While Obama has certainly enjoyed some foreign policy successes, there is one region in which he has so far glaringly and disappointingly fallen well short of that promise: Africa. By every conceivable metric, Africa is growing in stature and importance. More than 60 percent of Africans are below the age of 25, and the continent’s population is expected to double by 2050 to more than […]

Few countries have claimed for themselves the mantle of revolution as frequently and as fervently as Mexico. Previous efforts brought change, even revolutionary change, but failed to lift large parts of the population out of chronic poverty. That is about to change. Over the past 12 months, Mexico has launched a series of urgently needed but long-delayed fundamental reforms. Because of that, it now stands on the cusp of enormous change. The world is about to witness a country enter a phase of dazzling economic growth, with concurrent social change. The formula for tapping Mexico’s vast potential was never a […]