WPR Blog Archive

If you’ve got some time to spare, drop what you’re doing and click through to this New Yorker audio slideshow of portraits of heads of states from the U.N. General Assembly last September. Every photo is accompanied by a short audio commentary by the photographer, Platon. I’ve gone through a handful — Mexico’s Félipe Calderon, Israel’s Benyamin Netanyahu, Korea’s Lee Myung-bak and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez — and it’s pretty fascinating. Kind of like popcorn — hard to keep your hand from going back to the bowl for more.

BruceR offers some typically thoughtful suggestions for operationalizing Maj. Jim Gant’s “One Tribe at a Time” approach, which I tore to shreds here, but have since seen increasingly mentioned as playing a major role in the Obama administration’s strategy discussions. Here’s Bruce’s jumping off point: You can’t rebuild Afghanistan using Gant’s methods, true, but I thinkit’s really being looked into more as another method of keeping theenemy hopping in areas where a sustained government or ISAF presence isuneconomical at present. And that’s not a totally crazy idea. If the alternatives are Predator strikes and SOF kinetic ops involvingblack-painted helicopters and […]

A law under consideration by Ugandan authorities to criminalize homosexual behavior and punish it with severe penalties is drawing fire from the international human rights community, gay-rights advocates and Western governments. “Certain provisions in this bill are illegal; they are also immoral. They criminalize a sector of society for being who they are, when what the government should be doing instead is protecting them from discrimination and abuse,” Kate Sheill, an Amnesty International sexual rights expert, said in a press release. Officials from countries including the U.S., the U.K., Canada and France have publicly opposed the law. Rights groups were […]

Another thing about Giovanni Grevi’s notion of an interpolar world is that it seems very consistent with the Obama administration’s emphasis on a “multipartner” world.Significantly, in this context, the major objective in internationalrelations shifts from advancing individual interests toward identifyingcommon ones, in order to convince the increasing number of players thatnow wield de facto vetos to lift them. Obama seems to get the importance of this kind of consensus-building, even if his knee-jerk criticsdon’t. The most recent case in point is China’s vote at the IAEA to censure Iran, which is apparently a direct result of Obama’s allegedly “deliverables-free” China […]

This Giovanni Grevi paper (via Sven Bishop) from last June, titled, “The Interpolar World: A New Scenario” (.pdf), is a little gem worth reading in full. Grevi manages to distill quite a few of the contemporary interpretations of the changing geopolitical landscape into a thought-provoking argument for what he calls “interpolarity.” Grevi maintains that a number of trends will prevent emerging powers from truly coalescing into the poles of a multipolar order. Principal among them is the increasing interdependence of the global order. But another is the way in which asymmetries, both military and political, have shifted the balance of […]

The EU has filled the post-Lisbon positions that could eventually help transform it into a true global power in the strict sense of the term. But it still lacks a long-term vision of what it hopes to accomplish in order to drive that transformation. That’s the gist of this Sven Bishop post at European Geostrategery, anyway, and I think he’s absolutely right in the diagnosis — especially with regard to the specific areas where the EU needs to come up with some answers: The EU Neighborhood concept, enlargement (read: Russia policy), various regional objectives, global and institutional objectives, and crisis […]

I try to keep some distance between the personal and the professional here on the blog. But in thinking about everything I have to be thankful for this year, WPR is pretty high up on the list. Over the course of the past few years, it’s been a central focal point in my life, and it’s very gratifying to know that it has also become a daily fixture for so many readers. In the sense that WPR has become a meeting point for so many people with a passion for international affairs, it has also become a community. And so […]

Three posts of interest to China naval gazers (as opposed to a Chinese navel gazers), two from the Federation of American Scientists, here (filled with juicy links) and here, and one from Arms Control Wonk’s Jeffrey Lewis. In a nutshell, China’s navy has made some impressive progress. But their latest-generation nuclear-powered and nuclear warhead-capable submarines are too noisy to pose a credible second-strike deterrent given U.S. and Japanese anti-sub capabilities. That makes it, according to Lewis, “a very impressive submarine — for the 1960s.” He also raises some questions about China’s strategic approach to their use. Hopefully we’ll never get […]

The Northern Caucasus remains in trouble and Russia is not quite sure what to do about it. The region, notoriously ruled by clans, has seen a steady rise in violence, with Dagestan (gearing up for a change in leadership) and Ingushetia increasingly stealing the spotlight from the better-known bloody insurgency in Chechnya. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has suggested a government post in charge of the region, however that looks more like a propaganda move than one that will actually garner results. Though Medvedev’s solution seems to be superficial, the motivation for it is real. The leader has acknowledged that an […]

– China’s defense minister gets face time with Kim Jong-Il on the third day of his visit to North Korea. – A high-ranking Chinese military envoy was in Moscow for discussions with Russia’s defense minister. – A high-ranking Chinese political envoy was in Quito to discuss deepening ties with Ecuador. Among the deals signed was a credit line for Ecuador to purchase Chinese military aircraft. That’s pretty remarkable, given the extent to which Ecuador’s military has historically been U.S.-trained, equipped and oriented. (Little-known fact: There’s a small but visible Chinese expat population spread throughout Ecuador. Second little-known fact: Ecuadoran-style Chinese […]

I’ve had a thought about last week’s EU appointments bouncing around in my head for the past few days, and finally have a moment to get it onto the blog. One of the more common refrains in criticism of the relative timidity of the appointments has been, “Ten years of haggling for this?” What that overlooks, though, is that, although the Lisbon Treaty is indeed the result of 10 years of haggling over the next phase of European construction, it was already in itself a wildly disappointing outcome for federalist Europhiles dreaming of a United States of Europe. And as […]

Being an opposition party leader in a country where the media doesn’t pay attention to the opposition is frustrating. So when Georgia’s former Foreign Minister Salomé Zourabichvili had the chance to speak at her alma mater, Columbia University, in New York, her searing criticism of the Georgian government came as no surprise. Zourabichvili’s political adversary, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, also attended Columbia, but that is where the similarities between the two end. As the leader of the political party, The Way of Georgia, Zourabichvili is fighting to stop what she believes to be the demise of the Georgian state under […]

– The unofficial U.S. ambassador to Taiwan said that Chinese Preseident Hu Jintao was more interested in “scoring points” on the Tibet issue than on Taiwan in his talks last week with President Barack Obama. – China and South Korea will be expediting negotiations for a free trade agreement. It’s pretty surprising that the EU already beat the U.S. to a FTA with South Korea. But if China does, too, that would be incredible. A number of obstacles remain, though, including U.S. opposition. – Islamabad unveiled a package of political and economic reforms aimed at tamping down separatism in Balochistan. […]

– According to the People’s Daily, “Chinese experts” say China is not taking sides in the Kashmir dispute. The comments come in response to a Kashmiri separatist leader applauding the U.S.-Chinese joint declaration’s reference to promoting India-Pakistan reconciliation. I suspect President Barack Obama will also walk this back at the first opportunity during Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit. – Meanwhile, in a CNN interview in advance of his visit to Washington,Singh ruled out redrawing Kashmir’s borders, drawing a protest from Islamabad. – China’s defense minister traveled to North Korea in the latest of a series of high-level defense meetings […]

Here are a few of this week’s highlights from WPR’s video section: PresidentBarack Obama held one of his now-classic town hall meetings in Shanghaiwith Chinese students. The twist? Carefully picked attendees andquestions. In this video, Jim Lehrer interviews human rights experts who saythe Internet, a topic Obama made sure to mention in his talk with thestudents, is the key to human rights in China. Former Secretaryof State Henry Kissinger says the Obama administration has made greatgains for U.S.-Russian relations in this interview with Russia Today. IraqiVice President Tariq al-Hashemi has brought a much anticipate electionin Iraq to a halt. In […]

– China’s foreign minister visits Japan for the first time since the DPJ took power. – China and Vietnam agree to boost economic ties. – China and Burma agree to establish railroad and banking links to facilitate resource flow. – Remarks by President Barack Obama in Korea reflect how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have transformed U.S. forces stationed there — like the Army reserves back home — into an operational, as opposed to a strategic, reserve. – The leader of the Hurriyat, a Kashmir political coalition advocating for self-determination, declared his support for the U.S.-China joint declaration regarding […]

Raúl Castro has failed to improve Cuba’s respect for individual freedoms, Human Rights Watch charges in a new report. Rights advocates had hoped that Raúl would improve the island nation’s rights posture after taking over from his brother, Fidel. But that has not been the case. “In his three years in power, Raúl Castro has been just as brutal as his brother. Cubans who dare to criticize the government live in perpetual fear, knowing they could wind up in prison for merely expressing their views,” Jose Miguel Vivanco, HRW’s Americas director said in a press release. According to the report, […]