WPR Blog Archive

Use of the death penalty is on the decline globally, with the majority of sentences handed down and carried out by a handful of hardcore holdout countries, Amnesty International said in a report (.pdf) released Tuesday. According to the report, “Death Sentences and Executions 2009,” countries that carried out the most sentences include China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the United States. In some places like China and Sudan, executions are applied extensively as a means to intimidate government opponents. China remains the world leader in carrying out death penalty sentences, executing more individuals that the rest of the world […]

I had the pleasure of participating last Friday in France 24’s panel discussion week-in-review program, The World This Week. The other participants were Matthew Saltmarsh of the International Herald Tribune, Paul Taylor of Reuters, and Esther Leneman of the French radio station, Europe 1. You’ll have to sit through a patch at the beginning where we all struggle to find something intelligent to say about the Catholic Church’s child sexual abuse scandal. (Saltmarsh got called on first since, uh, well . . . Let’s just say that Judah and Esther are giveaways, and Paul apparently is of the Tribe as […]

What’s wrong with this picture? Eight years after the U.S.-led invasion, with the phased American military withdrawal already underway and following elections this month that the Obama administration hopes will mark the closing chapter of U.S. involvement in Iraq, there are still more Iraqi refugees leaving their country than returning to it. According to the latest report from the U.N. High Commission on Refugees, released last week, 24,000 Iraqi refugees sought asylum in the industrialized nations in 2009. But that’s not counting those who crossed into Syria or Jordan, who have in the past tended to be more numerous but […]

I’ve been trying to gather my thoughts about why I felt so underwhelmed by Friday’s announcement that the U.S. and Russia had agreed to terms on the START follow-on treaty. Certainly, the optics work well for both sides. President Barack Obama gets a foreign policy feather to go along with health care reform in his victory cap. And Russian President Dmitry Medvedev gets to show what the good cop in Moscow’s good cop/bad cop routine looks like. And arriving at the upcoming NPT conference with the treaty in hand certainly helps Obama avoid a major embarrassment. But I’m not convinced […]

To follow up a bit on Friday’s post about the EU’s latest “non-solution solution” to the Greek debt crisis, I’d add that in choosing pragmatism over theology, the decision is pretty consistent with the history of European construction. If the distant horizon of European integration has historically been defined by Europhile “theologians,” actual construction has always been driven by pragmatists. Part of that has to do with the nature of political compromise. But part of it also has to do with the the role that crisis has played in driving European construction. And although crisis often provokes religious thinking, it […]

The EU once again agreed to support Greece in a vaguely outlined but yet-to-be-determined way. I’ve actually lost track of how many symbollic expressions of support that makes, but three sounds right. This time, however, not only did German Chancellor Angela Merkel win out on her insistence to include the IMF in any eventual bailout, she also managed to hold on to a future veto for actually implementing the agreed-upon mechanism. What’s more, she got a commitment in writing to explore ways of strengthening oversight of EU member states’ budgetary discipline, which is being described as “economic governance,” but represents […]

If you’re familiar with the conventional wisdoms of the Indian national security community, you’ll know that it is characterized by a heightened sensitivity to anything remotely resembling U.S. support — let alone favoritism — shown to Pakistan. And not surprisingly, the same holds for Pakistani national security thinkers regarding elements of the U.S.-India strategic relationship — in particular, the U.S.-India civil nuclear cooperation agreement. So what you end up with is that the Pakistanis put a request for the same kind of agreement on the agenda of the first U.S.-Pakistan strategic partnership dialogue. And because U.S. Secretary of State Hillary […]

In news out of Zimbabwe, the country’s finance minister, who is also the opposition MDC party’s secretary-general, escaped unharmed from a car crash involving a truck. You’ll recall that last year, opposition leader and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was involved in a similar accident that took the life of his wife. Tsvangirai walked away with minor injuries. The news here is the timing of the accident, which comes on the heels of a visit by South African President Jacob Zuma, newly invested in mediation efforts to implement Zimbabwe’s long-stalled power-sharing government. I’ve followed some of Zuma’s interventions in the Off-the-Radar […]

My recent prediction that Germany would be the big loser from the Greek debt crisis might have been premature. Although in all fairness, with this story pinballing back and forth every 10 minutes or so, any prediction is simultaneously premature and outdated the moment it is uttered. Be that as it may, although German Chancellor Angela Merkel is certainly emerging as the “bad guy” in this game of Greek poker, she’s not necessarily losing. In fact, her approach seems to be to nod her head, Yes, to each new proposal, while uttering the word, No. Guarantee EU support for Greece? […]

Once again, the continuing back and forth on an EU-U.S. bank data-sharing deal is illustrative of some potential post-Lisbon shifts in the EU’s wish list. In particular, it looks like reciprocity is the new transparency: Last month, the European Parliament blocked a provisional deal between the European Union and Washington to permit the continued exchange of such data. The move by Parliament was partly a bid to assert new powers to decide issues concerning European security jointly with E.U. governments. But the move also reflected deepening unease in Europe over the way personal data are increasingly used by companies and […]

Writing at East Asia Forum, Tokyo University’s Takatoshi Ito argues that China’s housing bubble is worse than what’s being let on and that the measures Chinese authorities are taking will not be adequate for a soft landing. In particular, he traces China’s resistance to allowing the yuan to appreciate to a misreading by Chinese authorities of Japan’s “lost decade”: Many Chinese officials tell us that they believe the origin of Japan’s stagnation for the 20 years after its [1980s] housing bubble burst lies in its failure to stand up to US pressure for the yen to appreciate . . . […]

Over at European Goestrategy, James Rogers illustrates his paper on EU member states’ overseas military installations (.pdf) with a video that graphically drives his point home: As the video shows very clearly, these military stations cover the world. They could surely form the cornerstone of any future European Union ‘forward presence‘ or ‘global posture’ as part of a yet-to-bemaritime geostrategy. And so long as Britain and France hold onto them, these overseas military facilities could become even more of an asset than they already are for Europeans, especially if the world becomes increasingly multipolar and more competitive — not least […]

As the United Nations spearheaded efforts to mark World Water Day on Monday, scarcity was at the top of the agenda. And with an increasing number of communities around the world lacking sufficient water supplies, the push to classify access to potable water as a basic human right is gaining ground among a variety of stakeholders. “Water challenges are most obvious in developing nations, but they affect every country on earth. And they transcend political boundaries. As water becomes increasingly scarce, it may become a potential catalyst for conflict among — and within — countries,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary […]

Simmering tensions along Cambodia’s border with Thailand has prompted Prime Minister Hun Sen to deploy a series of new initiatives to bolster his country’s military. The moves range from an old-fashioned show of muscle in the form of missile tests and military exercises, to corporate sponsorship of the armed forces that has angered humanitarian groups and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Analysts said the moves can be traced to the periodic border clashes between Thai and Cambodian troops near the ruins of the 11th-century temple, Preah Vihear, where a military standoff has resulted in occasional bloodshed since mid-2008. Hun Sen declared that […]

South African authorities have accelerated plans to enact legislation targeting human trafficking activities ahead of the upcoming FIFA World Cup in June and July, amid warnings from rights advocates that trafficking incidents will rise before and during the competition. Justice Minister Jeff Radebe submitted the Prevention and Combating of Trafficking in Persons bill to parliament this week, according to Reuters. The law would combine various pieces of existing legislation, compelling Internet providers to report suspicious activity and empowering South African courts with extra-territorial jurisdiction to pursue perpetrators. Radebe expects the new law to come into effect within a month. The […]

When the Roman Catholic Church in America faced its wave of pedophilia cases involving priests seven years ago, the Vatican in effect told the U.S. church hierarchy it was a solely American problem, and that the Americans would have to deal with it. But what the Vatican refers to as the delictum gravius (grave sin) has turned out to be not just an American aberration. The rash of cases of sexual misconduct by priests now coming to light in several European countries — in particular Germany and, more notoriously, Ireland — reach right up to the Vatican’s doorstep: A couple […]

Child labor remains one of the world’s most persistent human rights problems, pitting rights advocates, governments and companies against tradition, the needs of impoverished families and criminal groups. Over the last few decades, rights advocates have pressured governments and private-sector actors to crack down on child labor. Individual companies and industries have responded to the calls with various measures, including enacting codes of conduct and severing ties with suppliers. Two recent stories demonstrate the strength and weaknesses of the existing strategies. Apple recently reported that audits of its supplier factories turned up violations of labor laws and the company’s internal […]