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Before President Barack Obama embarked on his 10-day Asian trip, his longest overseas visit since taking office, he highlighted the tour’s economic objectives. But given that government leaders generally exert more control over political-military decisions than over economic trends, the strategic goals of Obama’s trip are perhaps more important and certainly worth examining. Obama has already completed the first and longest leg of his trip in India. Some Indian leaders who place great stock on status and symbolism grumble that despite enthusiastic rhetoric, the Obama White House has effectively downgraded the U.S.-Indian partnership compared to his predecessor. Unlike the Bush […]

South Korea is set to host the G-20 leaders’ summit in Seoul on Thursday and Friday, the fifth such gathering since the onset of the global financial crisis. While past summits have focused on coordinated stimulus, global financial regulation and reform of the major international financial institutions, this week’s meeting is gearing up to be known as the “trade and currency summit.” It is also likely to be more tense and contentious than any of its predecessors, whether leaders admit it publicly or not. This is especially true when it comes to the ongoing economic prize-fight between the G-20’s two […]

For much of the last half-century, the U.S. has failed to engage the nations of resource-wealthy Latin America in any strategic manner. This lack of attention to our closest neighbors, and some of our strongest allies, is dangerously short-sighted given U.S. dependence on Latin America as a source for our energy. Currently, more than one-fourth of America’s imported oil comes from Latin America, which is estimated to hold 13.5 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves. In 2009, the U.S. imported 11 percent of its crude oil from Mexico, 9 percent from Venezuela, 3 percent from Brazil and 2 percent […]

The rapid economic growth of the People’s Republic of China has fueled a demand for energy that has now outstripped domestic sources of supply. As a result, China can no longer sustain its economic expansion without importing massive quantities of energy. To compensate for the projected underproduction of domestic energy sources as well as further increases in anticipated energy consumption, the Chinese government has pursued a subtle energy security strategy that includes three major components: first, reforming the domestic energy sector to maximize production and attract foreign direct investment; second, expanding China’s energy mix to reduce the nation’s dependency on […]

On the morning of Jan. 1, 2009, Russia’s state-owned gas-export monopoly Gazprom halted natural gas deliveries to Ukraine. Gazprom blamed the disruption on Kiev’s refusal to pay its debts on past deliveries and its unwillingness to accept an increase in its gas prices. Although Gazprom continued to transit gas through Ukraine for delivery to other European countries, by Jan. 5, five European Union (EU) member states, including Poland, Hungary and Romania, had announced that they were experiencing gas-supply disruptions. On Jan. 7, Russia shut off all gas deliveries through Ukraine, accusing Kiev of siphoning off gas destined for Europe to […]

BEIJING — Forty years after the establishment of modern diplomatic ties between Italy and China, Rome has become one of Beijing’s most-trusted partners in Western Europe. Following recent high-level talks in both capitals, the two countries have enhanced cooperation in a range of areas. With China keen to increase its influence in the Eastern Mediterranean and Italy in desperate need of fresh economic impetus, the potential benefits to both sides could be significant. In contrast to China’s engagement with resource-rich and emerging nations, its interest in Italy is motivated by the Mediterranean country’s geographic advantages and advanced technological capabilities. Since […]

Judging from the accounts of virtually every pundit, the Chinese emerged as the foreign threat of choice in the just-concluded U.S. elections, with the breakthrough “Chinese Professor” ad being compared by the always-calm James Fallows to such incendiary hall-of-famers as “Daisy Girl” (1964) and “Willie Horton” (1988). I’m with Fallows: The exceedingly clever ad represents a crystallizing moment in our increasingly contentious relationship with China, elevating the Chinese far beyond Iran’s mullahs and Osama Bin Laden as the pre-eminent fear-driven threat dynamic motivating calls to get our house in order. The ad portrays a high-tech college lecture hall in Beijing, […]

At a summit in late-September 2010, the European Union and South Africa both expressed interest in concluding protracted negotiations over closer trade ties. In an e-mail interview, Stephen Hurt, senior lecturer in international relations at Oxford Brookes University, discusses relations between the EU and South Africa. WPR: What is the historic context of EU-South Africa relations, and where do they stand today? Stephen Hurt: Coordinated EU policy toward South Africa dates back to the mid-1970s, a time when foreign policy was usually seen as the preserve of EU member states. The two main initiatives during the apartheid era were a […]

It was all smiles and friendly talk of brotherhood and shared destiny at the presidential palace in Caracas yesterday, as the leaders of Colombia and Venezuela met to reaffirm their commitment to fully restore diplomatic ties and put recent bitter disputes behind them. The two neighboring Andean nations began work to restore broken relations shortly after Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos took office in August. “We are determined that no one or anything will derail us,” said Santos during his second meeting with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez since August. “We’ve gone from good-intentioned statements to concrete accords,” he added. The […]

In the aftermath of Tuesday’s midterm elections, President Barack Obama again sounded the theme of bipartisan cooperation, speaking of the need to find “common ground” and calling on both Democrats and Republicans to unite around solving the country’s pressing challenges. In theory, bipartisanship is a golden rule when it comes to foreign policy, where politics is supposed to stop at the water’s edge. That notion was first articulated by a Republican, Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, who at the outset of the Cold War, under the administration of Democratic President Harry Truman, argued that America’s position in the world would be weakened […]

It’s pretty rare that a politician does an about-face as flagrant and publicly documented as French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s stance on human rights in the conduct of foreign policy. Here he is back in the summer of 2007, just before his first meeting with Russia’s then-President Vladimir Putin: Mr. Sarkozy has promised to confront Mr. Putin about human rights violations in Chechnya and about the slaying last October of Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who wrote scathingly of the Russian president. Here he is yesterday before his meeting in Paris with Chinese President Hu Jintao: “China should not be seen as […]

On the same day that voters in the United States went to the polls to throw a punch into the gut of the political establishment, some 5,000 miles away, police in Greece had their hands full with a series of bombs mailed to foreign embassies. Greek investigators say the bombs, 11 of them in all, were probably the work of militant activists who, in their own violent way and to a much greater degree, also aimed to overturn the political and economic order. In recent months, angry efforts to take on the system have gained steam throughout the developed world […]

Burma’s border security is increasingly an issue of concern for its neighbors, with armed rebel groups reportedly mobilizing in Burmese border regions. In an e-mail interview, Nicholas Farrelly, an associate investigator in the Center of Excellence in Policing and Security at the Australian National University, explains the significance of border security in Burma’s relations with its neighbors. WPR: What are the main sources of insecurity along Burma’s borders? Nicholas Farrelly: Burma shares borders with five countries — Bangladesh, India, China, Laos and Thailand. Often the consideration of border issues focuses on the Burma-Thailand border, which is the most accessible and […]

The room came to order. The negotiators, some still exasperated by the day’s events, sat anxiously awaiting the final results. “Congratulations, delegates,” the moderator announced. “You have negotiated a comprehensive successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol.” The delegates erupted in deafening applause, screams of joy and relieved laughter. No, these were not real-life climate-change negotiators. In August, we designed and ran a daylong scenario to simulate the international climate-change negotiations that will launch in Cancun, Mexico, on Nov. 29. Our goals were to gain a sense of how events may play out in Cancun when the real international negotiators meet […]

To trace the deterioration of Côte d’Ivoire from 2002, when a civil war pitted north against south, through Oct. 31, 2010, when ballots were cast in a presidential election five years overdue, one only needs to look at the dance trends that came and went during that time in the nightclubs, living rooms and village squares around the nation. First there was 2002’s “Coupé-Décalé,” which roughly translates to “Cut and Run.” Then in 2004, the theme was “Abidjan Est Gâté” (“Abidjan Is Ruined”), a lament about the fate of the economic capital, Abidjan. In 2006, people flapped and squawked their […]

It would be easy to dismiss the French-U.K. defense pact signed yesterday as a shotgun wedding between two second-tier military powers. But it still represents a sea change in military relations between the world’s only two expeditionary militaries outside of the U.S., NATO and perhaps Russia. The areas of cooperation are also significant, because they go to the heart of both countries’ historical military identity — nuclear deterrence and the ability to project force — as well as in the areas that will dominate future security postures, such as satellite and UAV drone development, and cyber security. What’s also striking […]

Expeditionary warfare is built into the DNA of the British military establishment. Historically, Great Britain conducted war not by creating a great continental army, but rather by using the Royal Navy to deliver the relatively small British army to its enemies’ weak points. Wellington’s expedition to the Iberian Peninsula helped defeat Napoleon, and even the great formations sent to France in 1914 and 1939 were called the British Expeditionary Force. The idea that wars should be fought at a distance has informed British military policy for centuries. To this end, the United Kingdom has historically structured its military forces with […]