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Looking down from the hilltops of Bogotá’s southern rim, a sea of shingled rooftops and cinderblock huts stretches toward the horizon. These ever-expanding slums are home to tens of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs), Colombians who have fled their homes elsewhere in the country to escape the country’s long-running armed conflict. Here, Lady Carabali, a mother of five, lives in a damp, ramshackle home made from pieces of wood and scrap metal, with no running water or electricity. She was driven from her small farm on the Pacific coast by paramilitary violence more than a decade ago. Each day, […]

While there remains a ton of things that can go wrong with the unfolding revolution in Egypt, there’s a strong case to be made that America, despite its low popular standing there, has been handed a gift horse whose mouth, as the axiom puts it, is best left unexamined. Because most of America’s concerns center on security issues, I’ll frame the argument for why this is the case in tactical, operational and strategic terms, and then finish on the most relevant grand strategic note — namely, the new Axis of Good that may result. Concerning President Hosni Mubarak’s conditional offer […]

Over the course of the two-week-old protests in Egypt, the American media has been consumed with debate over how the U.S. government should react. An emerging consensus across the political spectrum argues that President Barack Obama should support the protesters’ demand that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resign immediately. This view was prominently expressed in an open letter to Obama by dozens of well-known scholars of Middle East politics, who advised him to essentially abandon 30 years of strong support for the Mubarak regime by throwing in America’s lot with the protest movement. Such a step would not clearly serve American […]

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series on the fall of Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen’s government. Part I examines the domestic factors leading to the government’s collapse. Part II will examine the impact of the EU/IMF bailout on Ireland and the European Union. DUBLIN — After months of lurching from crisis to crisis, the government of Ireland’s lame-duck Prime Minister Brian Cowen finally came to an end Tuesday, with new elections to be held Feb. 25. Whatever happens Cowen will not be returning as prime minister — he will not contest the election after having been […]

I don’t want to belabor the point I made in a recent post about a global crisis of legitimacy, and I should clarify that I don’t think the West and the world in general is dozing indolently on a bed of potential revolution. But a couple of seemingly unrelated news items here in France draw out the inchoate dynamic I was trying to put my finger on. France’s Foreign Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie already got into hot water during the initial round of protests in Tunisia when she suggested in testimony to a parliamentary committee that French gendarmes could help train […]

There’s no way to predict what will unfold in Egypt in the days and weeks ahead. Will protests continue until President Hosni Mubarak is overthrown? Will the military and security services initiate a full-scale crackdown in the name of restoring law and order? What will instability in the largest country in the Arab world portend for the Middle East as a whole? The U.S. national security establishment, of necessity, is in reactive mode right now as it assesses these questions. However, to the extent that Washington can shape the situation, what are some of the lessons from other “regime changes” […]

Not since the 1960s has the idea of a common Arab identity seemed more real. The Tunisian and Egyptian revolts were quickly defined as Arab uprisings; sure enough, these historic events have already reverberated in Yemen, Jordan, Syria, and even Saudi Arabia. But Tunisia and Egypt can also be described as African countries, and not just because of their geographic location. The nations of North Africa have been imagined as African by some of the region’s political and intellectual luminaries. Even Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s leader from 1956 to 1970 and an eloquent paladin of pan-Arabism, invoked the African element […]

Who cares about the United Nations Security Council? Over the past year, major powers have certainly been taking the council increasingly seriously. U.N. experts who argue that the council’s credibility rests on its appeal to big players in the global system were comforted by Germany, India and South Africa’s successful campaigns for two-year seats on the council last year. But some poor, weak governments have decided to defy it, with a series of African leaders, in particular, showing contempt for the council’s authority. In January 2010, President Idriss Déby of Chad insisted that the U.N. withdraw peacekeepers charged with protecting […]

The uprising in Egypt has framed a dilemma in the starkest of terms: Does the West want true democracy in the Middle East, even if it brings the possibility of some rather frightening scenarios? A democratic Egypt could blossom into an open, pluralistic society, with equality for all religions and between men and women, continuing good relations with the West and enduring peace with Israel. But it could also follow a path similar to Iran’s after the overthrow of the shah, with the popular movement hijacked by a well-organized militant religious movement, leading to decades of oppression and strife — […]

As the recession recedes, fuel prices have begun to soar across Latin America, confronting governments with the dilemma of how to balance fiscal demands with energy subsidies that are increasingly wreaking budgetary havoc, especially in the Andean nations. The Bolivian and Chilean governments’ recent efforts to confront that dilemma led to dramatic images of unrest, with protesters in both nations burning tires, throwing rocks and building barricades in response to announced policy changes. At the end of December, major cities across Bolivia erupted when President Evo Morales’ government decided to remove price controls that were artificially depressing fuel prices. The […]

In April 2009, Moldova, a former Soviet republic sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, earned short-lived attention for post-election street riots that some dubbed a Twitter revolution. This brief eruption of popular discontent led some to expect another “color revolution” along the lines of those in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004, both of which ushered in unwaveringly pro-Western governments and attracted immediate support from Washington and Brussels. While the riots in Moldova did not lead to an immediate change of government — and had little to do with Twitter — they did mark the beginning of the end for […]

James F. Jeffrey, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, testified before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Feb. 1, about the challenges ahead as the United States withdraws its military and pursues the transition to a civilian-led presence in Iraq.

China and Argentina recently signed a round of agricultural trade agreements. In an e-mail interview, R. Evan Ellis, an assistant professor at the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies of the National Defense University and author of “China in Latin America: The Whats and Wherefores,” discussed China-Argentina trade relations. WPR: What is the current state of trade relations between Argentina and China? R. Evan Ellis: Argentina is running a trade surplus with China, driven by the export of soy products. Yet Argentine manufacturing interests are being undercut by Chinese companies that sell ever-more goods in the country, beginning with toys, footwear […]

The political situation in Egypt remains uncertain, with the still-in-question loyalty of the Egyptian army all that will determine whether or not President Hosni Mubarak survives as the country’s leader. However, even if Mubarak manages to hold onto power, change is increasingly likely, and Egypt’s potential political transformation over the upcoming months could have a large impact not only on the Egyptian military itself, but also on the military balance in the region. For the first time since the 1970s, Israeli military planners may have to take Egyptian military potential seriously, while other states in the region will also take […]

I’ve been having trouble wrapping my head around the implications of what’s already taken place in Egypt, and clearly there’s still a lot more on tap. The U.S. and Europe are now calling for an orderly transition to begin immediately, and while that makes for sound policy, the sheer impossibility of that demand underscores what I think is the most alarming dynamic here: a crisis of legitimacy, on three levels. The first level is clearly within Egypt itself, because while it’s easy to say that President Hosni Mubarak must go, there’s no objective standard for determining the legitimacy of what […]

It’s time to think the unthinkable: Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Persian Gulf states may be next in line to confront widespread popular discontent. As a wave of mass protests sweeps the Arab world, shaking the regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to the core, rumblings of popular restlessness are bubbling to the surface in the Gulf. Shiite opposition groups in Bahrain, a strategic island kingdom that hosts the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, have called for protests on Feb. 14 to demand greater political freedom, an end to human rights abuses, improved economic opportunities. To quell rising anger, Arab leaders […]

The massive, exhilarating protests in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen mark a sea change for the better in the Arab world. But the implications of the uprisings for women in these countries have not yet been fully analyzed. All of the countries currently experiencing upheaval have made significant progress for women — progress that could be swept away very easily, as it was in Iran in 1979, never to be regained. Tunisia promulgated one of the most-enlightened personal-status codes for women in the Arab world in 1956, under Habib Bourguiba. Polygyny, the taking of multiple wives, was outlawed; men could no […]