WPR Blog Archive

The top 10 most popular World Politics Review stories from the past two weeks (Nov. 17-30): 1. U.S. Military Fumbles Requests for Nonlethal Weapons in Iraq, Afghanistan2. One Cold War Was Enough: Russia Needs Our Help, Not Our Condemnation3. Kosovo’s Divided City of Mitrovica Warily Awaits Independence4. Considering Saudi Arabia: When Realpolitik Yields Dubious Rewards5. Turkey and Azerbaijan Strengthen Economic, Security Ties6. With Attack on Gaza Protestors, Hamas Loses Hearts and Minds7. The Annapolis Middle East Peace Conference at a Glance8. U.S. Foreign Policy Commission Touts Need for ‘Smart Power’9. The Italian Government’s Plans for Romanians: The Return of Collective […]

We’re back from our brief vacation, and to get the week started, here’s a brief rundown of our offerings on the day’s major international story: the peace conference at Annapolis. Roland Flamini has a brief guide to the key issues and main participants that will shape the conference. Vera Zakem takes a look at the pivotal role Syria could play in Middle East peace. Last week, Frida Ghitis argued that the best thing the Annapolis conference has going for it is low expectations. For more background on the conference from other news and opinion sources, search our Media Roundup archives. […]

World Politics Review will not publish Friday, Nov. 23, or Monday, Nov. 26. We’ll be taking a break on the occasion of the U.S. Thanksgiving Day holiday. Until Tuesday, then, here are some ideas to pass the time: 1. Check out our searchable Media Roundup archives to bone up on any issue. Need to do some research on Somalia, or catch up on the news regarding the Annapolis conference? The MR archives search is the best free research tool on the Web. The search box is on the top right of the Media Roundup page. 2. Read the top five […]

WPR contributors David Axe and Daria Solovieva are both en route to Somalia as we speak, where they’ll be filing stories in the coming weeks on the difficult security and humanitarian situation there. Today we published the first dispatch of their trip, written from Nairobi, in which they provide a good overview of the situation in the Horn of Africa country. What particularly caught our eye is this paragraph, about the dire humanitarian crisis in Somalia (bolding added): Somalia now represents the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa, even worse than the one in Darfur, according to U.N. World Food Program […]

Opinionjournal.com has an interesting interview by David Rivkin Jr. with Henry Kissinger. We would suggest reading the whole thing, but here’s an excerpt: . . . He pointed out that the world we have known for 300 years now–the “Westphalian” international system that arose after Europe’s wars of religion and is based on the nation-state–is “collapsing.” This may be a much more profound shift than the move from dynastic to national motivations following the 1814-15 Congress of Vienna (about which Mr. Kissinger has written) and a more serious challenge to international stability than that posed by states such as Nazi […]

In this week’s Rights & Wrongs, Juliette Terzieff reports that the United Nations is concerned about a brave new world in which human clones are the victims of discrimination: U.N. REPORT EXAMINES RIGHTS OF FUTURE CLONES — Human beings created from cloning procedures in the future will potentially face abuse, prejudice and discrimination, and the world should act now to address the looming situation, says a report from the United Nations University. The world community should act now to either ban human cloning or legislate mechanisms to protect clones’ human rights, recommends the study, titled “Is Human Reproductive Cloning Inevitable: […]

El Pais, Spain’s largest newspaper, in a sidebar to an article on the recent OPEC meeting, quoted a recent piece by Frida Ghitis on the consequences of high oil prices for states that subsidize fuels. Here’s a translation of the sidebar: The Paradox of High [Oil] Prices It is unquestionable that high petroleum prices benefit producers. Yesterday’s statements by the Iranian president and the lack of interest in increasing production shown by OPEC members make that clear. Nevertheless, some experts warn of unpredictable consequences for those countries that, like Iran and Venezuela, subsidize fuels. The more oil prices rise, the […]

D.C.’s Politico newspaper, which does a good job of covering lobbying, has an interesting story about three West African clergymen lobbying the U.S. Congress to reduce subsidies to American farmers, which hurt African farmers by depressing prices: In a meeting with Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), they got lucky. Domenici doesn’t speak French, and the African bishops don’t speak English. But Bishop Jean-Noel Diouf of Tambacounda, Senegal, had learned Italian as a student in Rome. He took the opportunity to make the African case to the Italian-American lawmaker in that language. The West African clergymen, who came to Washington under […]

In a recent commentary piece, WPR Contributing Editor Richard Weitz argued that the hybrid AU-U.N peacekeeping that is in the process of standing up in Darfur is likely to fail in its mission: Although Western governments sought to secure passage of a strong mandate for UNAMID, the Sudanese government succeeded in watering down the text. To take but one example, although the resolution finally approved on July 31, UNSCR 1769, does reference Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, it lacks a provision requiring disarmament of the Janjaweed militia responsible for some of the worst violence. In addition, the text allows […]

Last May, the Romanian actress Laura Vasiliu was in Cannes, France. The star of Cristian Mungiu’s film “4 months, 3 week, 2 days,” Ms. Vasiliu was there for the Cannes Film Festival, where Mungiu’s film would be awarded the prestigious Palme d’Or. Tuesday night, Ms. Vasiliu was in Turin Italy, where at two in the morning the door to her hotel room was broken down by Italian carabinieri. The Italian police had somehow managed to confuse Ms. Vasiliu with a child trafficker. They searched her room and were reportedly preparing to arrest her, when they finally recognized their mistake and […]

From this week’s Corridors of Power: KING: 1, CHAVEZ: 0 — Predictably, the blogosphere had a field day with Spanish King Juan Carlos’s finger-wagging “Why don’t you shut up?” to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in the middle of the Ibero-American summit in Chile. The incident itself was pure political theater, and the sound bite of Chavez interrupting Spain’s Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and thus earning the royal rebuke seemed to be everywhere. YouTube had a gladiator video game-like scene in which a computer generated Juan Carlos in a Roman tunic slashed Chávez with his sword and sent him […]

In a fascinating piece in the Nation, Kristen Gillespie examines the complex nature of the ideological biases that shape the coverage at the Arab world’s most popular news channel. She reports on an Al-Jazeera that is sectarian — favoring a Sunni point of view in its coverage of Iraq, for example — increasingly Islamist, and also, perhaps paradoxically, a force for democracy in the region: Al Jazeera’s programming breaks down into roughly four categories:newscasts, which tend to be fairly balanced; talk shows and relatedprograms, to which viewers call in; documentaries; and reports fromcorrespondents in the field. The last category is […]

Reuters reports: SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Yahoo Inc has agreed to settle a lawsuit brought on behalf of several Chinese dissidents for the Internet company’s alleged involvement in providing information the Chinese government used to prosecute the men, according to court papers filed on Tuesday. . . . Yahoo agreed to cover the yet-to-be-agreed upon legal costs incurred by defendants. It’s unclear whether the legal costs are all Yahoo will pay. If so, that seems like quite a good deal for the company. Still, it took a tongue-lashing from Congress to spur the settlement. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom […]

World Politics Review has always tried to live up to its name by covering the globe — and doing so even when a certain issue or region is not currently making the headlines. However, we have also from time to time focused specifically on U.S. foreign and national security policy, in recognition of the importance of the subject for our audience and in an effort to take advantage of our home base in Washington, D.C. Lately, we have begun to try to step up our coverage of U.S. policy without sacrificing our global scope, so we thought we’d take a […]

Yesterday, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, led by Tom Lantos, slammed Yahoo’s disclosure of the identity of journalist Shi Tao to the Chinese government. Lantos also criticized the company’s failure to acknowledge its role in the disclosure when questioned in a 2006 House hearing. Shi used his Yahoo email account to forward a Chinese government memo prohibiting journalists from covering the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. After Yahoo disclosed his identity to Chinese authorities, Shi was jailed with a 10 year sentence for revealing state secrets. Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, and General Counsel Michael Callahan appeared to represent […]

Boston University’s Andrew Bacevich takes Tuesday’s prize for the most thought-provoking opinion piece. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed, Bacevich provides his recipe for a new realist American foreign policy: Given that Bush’s version of global war has proved such a costly flop, what ought to replace it? Answering that question requires a new set of principles to guide U.S. policy. Here are five: * Rather than squandering American power, husband it. As Iraq has shown, U.S. military strength is finite. The nation’s economic reserves and diplomatic clout also are limited. They badly need replenishment. * Align ends with means. […]

U.S. aid to Pakistan has totaled $9.6 billion since October 2001, according to State Department Deputy Spokesman Tom Casey. Casey said Monday that State Department lawyers are examining whether any existing legislation requires suspending aid as a result of the Pakistan government’s recent actions in declaring a state of emergency and suspending the country’s constitution. The State Department also will review the overall U.S. aid relationship with Pakistan in light of recent events, regardless of legal requirements, Casey said. “We obviously are going to have to assess what’s happened here, but it’s hard to see how if these measures remain […]