WPR Blog Archive

– Chinese President Hu Jintao kicked off a state visit to Malaysia, pledging to deepen strategic cooperation between the two countries. Hu is the first Chinese head of state to visit the country in 15 years. – China’s Health Ministry will step up regulation and licensing of medical practitioners, after a high-profile case of medical malpractice involving unlicensed medical students. – As part of its independent “space program,” Iran has announced plans to launch a second research satellite in 2011. – Macau, the Las Vegas of Asia, is running out of potable water. The city has 10 days of drinking […]

Migrant workers in Bahrain continue to suffer widespread abuse at the hands of employment sponsors, despite laws against such practices. Rights advocates are calling on the government to do more to prevent the abuses, and to help migrant workers access services when they do occur. “Withholding wages and confiscating passports appears to be rampant, but the authorities do nothing to stop it. There is no system to make sure these vulnerable migrant workers can actually recover both their passports and wages, let alone to punish the abusive employers,” Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director for Human Rights […]

The big winner from yesterday’s frosty meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu? Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. With the Palestinian peace track once again derailed, that leaves Syria as the only credible peace player in town. That’s the guiding logic behind a diplomatic fact-finding report just delivered to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, anyway. The advantage of an Israel-Syria deal preceding the Palestinian track being that Hamas would almost certainly be forced to adapt to the changed landscape in ways that would favor intra-Palestinian reconciliation and facilitate a subsequent Israeli-Palestinian deal. It’s in that context that […]

No sooner does Jack Lang, the newly appointed French envoy to North Korea, touch down in Pyongyang than all hell breaks loose. I had a feeling this would happen. Good thing President Barack Obama just decided to send his own presidential envoy, Stephen Bosworth, to North Korea to straighten things out. Here’s hoping Bosworth gets a chance to debrief with Richard Holbrooke and George Mitchell before he heads off. I’m sure those guys have useful tips on how this whole special envoy thing is done.

Le Figaro reports that China is now the number one foreign operator in the Iraqi oil sector. I’m struck by the way in which markets we open, whether by war (Iraqi oil, Afghan copper) or diplomacy (Indian and UAE nuclear energy), are exploited by our friendly competitors (China and France, respectively). That explains why no real American empire is possible so long as we remain committed to the liberal market. It also shows how even an ideologically driven interventionism can be compromised by the adherence to the liberal global trade order. If democracy promotion in Iraq results in a net […]

Hugh White argues that the first step to winning the Cold War was losing the Vietnam War. If so, it adds even more significance to the arrival yesterday in Da Nang, Vietnam, of Cmdr. H.B. Le as the commanding officer of the USS Lassen. Le left Vietnam in a fishing boat in 1975, at the age of five. Something to ponder for those who argue that losing isn’t an option. White’s piece, which offers five other thought-provoking observations, is the most insightful thing I’ve read so far on the fall of the Berlin Wall (admittedly not a lot, since I’ve […]

“We need partners. We need allies — and our natural ally is Europe,” former Ambassador Nicholas Burns said to the audience at a European Institute at Columbia University event. During his speech, part of the Donald and Vera Blinken lecture series, Burns addressed Europe’s critics.”It’s so fashionable to say that Europe is tired,” he said. And in some respects, he conceded, Europe is tired. Burns, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, said that Europe has not been prepared to lead in the 21st century due to a lack of consistent centralized leadership. “Europe needs to begin to speak […]

– South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak rules out a North-South summit without an end to the DPRK nuclear program. – The EU and India set ambitious goals for bilateral trade, but a long-negotiated free trade deal is still being held up by disagreements over EU demands on regulatory standards (a major component of EU soft power). At the same summit, the two sides signed a civil nuclear agreement on fusion research. – Another Indian free trade agreement, this one with South Korea, is set to take effect now that South Korea’s parliament just ratified the deal. Trade between the two […]

One of the less-noticed, second-order effects of the Obama administration’s decision to scrap Eastern European-based missile defense is the way in which it has increasingly isolated Great Britain in terms of the European defense discussion. The “Russia wedge” equation traditionally pitted New Europe and Britain’s Atlanticism against Old Europe’s EU defense. But Poland had already started hedging its bets with greater support of EU defense before the missile defense decision. In its aftermath, that shift has become even more pronounced. That leaves Great Britain on the outside looking in, with the major winner for now being France. It also makes […]

In the runup to the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Le Figaro has a slideshow on the walls that have yet to come down. One thing I’ve always found fascinating about humankind is that our ingenuity for building walls is matched only by our ingenuity for finding ways to bypass them. Whether it’s around, over, under or through, we manage to get to the other side. Good thing, too.

Good governance? Twenty-seven titles.Infrastructure reconstruction? The new Yankee Stadium.Legitimacy? The pinstripes. Nuff said. And still, this insurgency known as Red Sox Nation survives. Proof that some minor irritants, an empire is better off learning to live with than trying to destroy. Update: Plus, winning hearts and minds!!

An Italian judge has convicted 23 Central Intelligence Agency officers of participating in the kidnapping and rendition of an Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003. The trial marked the first time the controversial anti-terrorism tool, known as extraordinary rendition, was challenged anywhere in the world. “The message of this important ruling — to nations, governments, institutions, secret services, etc. — is that we cannot use illegal instruments in our effort against terrorism. Our democracies, otherwise, would betray their principles,” the lead prosecutor, Armando Spataro, told the Los Angeles Times. All of the Americans were tried in absentia, and it is […]

More bad news for the A400M: South Africa just cancelled its order of eight of them. That’s also bad news for African peacekeeping missions, though, of which there aren’t any shortage these days. In the meantime, South Africa upgraded its fleet of 1963-vintage C130Bs. (Nothing a little duct tape can’t fix, I imagine.) What if one day someone threw a war and nobody could get to it?

A paper by Maj. Jim Gant, titled, “One Tribe at a Time” (.pdf), has been getting all sorts of attention since it ran on Steven Pressman’s site a few weeks back. I finally got down to reading it last night after Andrew Exum flagged it as an alternative to COIN in Afghanistan. Where to begin? The paper is a collection of nativist mythologies that have run as a theme throughout the West’s imperial age. Last of the Mohicans? Lawrence of Arabia? Dances with Wolves? They’re in there. So is an element of Stockholm Syndrome, for that matter. The problem arises […]

This is a new feature we’re going to experiment with here on the blog, with the help of our intrepid editorial assistant, Kari Lipschutz. The idea is to catch significant news in the foreign English-language media, before it shows up in Western outlets. So, yes, it amounts to yet another news roundup. But we’re going to try to justify it by delivering not so much breaking news as developing news. In the context of Chaos Theory and the Butterfly Effect, we’re trying to catch the butterfly before it becomes a monsoon. So with that in mind, here goes: – Is […]

Vatican and Italian officials from across the political spectrum have lined up to denounce a decision by the European Court of Human Rights to penalize the government over the presence of crucifixes in Italian classrooms. The ruling could force a review of religious symbolism in public schools across Europe. “The crucifix is a universal symbol of love, meekness and peace. Preventing it from being displayed is an act of violence against the deep-seated feelings of the Italian people and all persons of goodwill,” Claudio Scajola, a member of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Freedom People party, told The Guardian. The Strasbourg-based […]

I learned a couple interesting things from this Latin American Herald piece on U.S.-Bolivian relations. The first is that Philip Goldberg, the former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia who was kicked out for allegedly spying, was since nominated by President Barack Obama as assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research. Independent of the merits of the charges against Goldberg, that’s kind of funny, no? The other thing I learned is that the negotiations toward re-establishing diplomatic relations with Bolivia are progressing well enough for Bolivian Evo Morales to adopt a relatively conciliatory tone. That’s good news, as far as I’m […]