Latest Archive

When President Barack Obama addressed the world’s Muslims from Cairo in 2009, his message, to put it bluntly, added up to, “Please love America — or at least stop hating it.” Two years later, when Obama took the podium once again to address the restive Middle East, his message was much different, but just as stark. This time he seemed to be saying, “Please believe that America still matters.” Obama’s May 19 speech from the State Department in Washington represented a desperate attempt at relevance. The president was essentially trying to demonstrate that during this transformative phase in the region, […]

VIENNA — Last week was an eventful one for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. With popular uprisings across Syria showing no sign of abating, international condemnation of the Syrian government’s violent repression of the demonstrations intensified. On the eve of his highly anticipated speech on the Middle East, U.S. President Barack Obama announced sanctions against Damascus. And in an unprecedented move, the U.S. Treasury Department added Assad himself to its list of individuals under targeted financial sanctions. On Monday, the European Union, too, imposed its own set of sanctions. Yet amid the domestic political earthquake that is shaking Assad’s rule, another […]

Civil war looms in Yemen as violent blasts rock the capital of Sana’a where heavy fighting near ministries has left the airport closed.

Soon after U.S. special operation forces killed Osama bin Laden in a raid deep into Pakistani territory, a journalist asked India’s army chief, Gen. V.K. Singh, whether his nation’s armed forces had the capability to carry out a similar operation. The military man gave a straightforward answer. “If such a chance comes,” he said, “then all the three arms [of the armed forces] are competent to do this.” The domestic and international reactions to his statement exemplify the paradox of proximity: Having a fragile state in the neighborhood makes the capability to intervene important, but puts structural constraints on a […]

Last week, the U.S. appointed its first ambassador to Turkmenistan in five years. In an email interview, Luca Anceschi, an expert in Turkmenistan’s foreign policy at La Trobe University, discussed U.S.-Turkmenistan relations. WPR: What is the recent background for U.S.-Turkmenistan ties? Luca Anceschi: The recent appointment of a new U.S. ambassador to Turkmenistan represents a further step in the timid process of U.S.-Turkmen rapprochement that was initiated by the Obama administration in 2009. In the George W. Bush years, Turkmenistan went off the radar of U.S. policy in Central Asia, as Washington’s attention was almost entirely devoted to military and […]

Honduran President Porfirio Lobo signed a deal Sunday in Cartagena, Colombia, with the country’s ex-President Manuel Zelaya, clearing the way for Zelaya’s return to Honduras from exile. That the agreement was brokered by the governments of Colombia and Venezuela — two countries from opposite ends of Latin America’s political spectrum — and apparently without any involvement by the United States is raising some eyebrows. “A deeper reading of this has to do with the fact that Latin America has become more autonomous from the United States,” says Kevin Casas-Zamora, a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution in […]

Seventy years ago yesterday, the Royal Navy battlecruiser the HMS Hood was destroyed by the German battleship the Bismarck, striking the British national security apparatus with panic. Although the Hood was 20 years old when it faced off against the Bismarck, it was still one of the largest, fastest and most powerful warships in the world. It was also the most visible symbol of British naval power, having conducted many “show the flag” cruises during the interwar period. The loss of the Hood inspired an intense, emotional desire for vengeance on the part of the Royal Navy, as well as […]

The debate over whether President Barack Obama violated the 1973 War Powers Resolution by committing U.S. forces to Operation Odyssey Dawn, including the drama of outraged legislators condemning yet another president for disregarding this curious law, was predictable. This most recent effort, like others before it, will probably come to nothing. But the legislation itself is dangerous, and the attempts to invoke it should stop. Republicans and Democrats now have an opportunity to remove the War Powers Resolution from our national life, and they should seize it. There is an unavoidable tension in the Constitution between the president’s role as […]

Ministers from 118 countries of the group Non-Aligned Movement gather in Indonesia for a three day conference. The group was founded in the 1950s during the Cold War, by countries that did not want to side with Russia or the United States.

BEIJING — The global financial crisis catapulted China into a position of international economic leadership a decade earlier than Beijing’s strategists had intended. That significantly increased the urgency of rebalancing the Chinese economy away from the low-quality, export model toward higher-value, domestically driven growth. One consequence has been new and accelerated patterns of Chinese trade and investment abroad. For the United States, China’s largest economic partner, the implications of this new multidirectionalism are significant. But with recent figures showing that bilateral investment between the two countries is contracting, the U.S. must adapt its approach to this issue to ensure it […]

In their heaviest airstrikes to date in Libya, Nato warplanes have launched more than 20 airstrikes against targets in Tripoli.

Since even before the controversy surrounding the killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. special forces in Pakistani territory, analysts have been assessing whether China would exploit the growing tensions between Islamabad and Washington to expand its own influence in Pakistan. The results of Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s four-day official visit to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) suggest that Chinese officials are pondering one potential option, a naval base in Pakistan, even if they do not seem eager to displace U.S. influence in Pakistan entirely. Upon Gilani’s return, Pakistan’s Defense Minister Chaudhary Ahmed Mukhtar told the press […]

Just more than a week ago at the United Nations saw the close of the Meeting of Governmental Experts on the Implementation of the Program of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects — an elaborate name for an initiative whose progress has been marred by bureaucratic chaos, slow implementation and unequal state capacities. The Program of Action, created in 2001, is a series of recommendations on small arms and light weapons, ranging from destruction of surplus arms to changing national laws to regulate the arms trade. The […]

Israel’s minister of industry, trade and labor recently led a business delegation to Brazil, seeking to boost economic ties. In an email interview, Sean Goforth, a teacher of international political economy at Coastal Carolina University and a Latin American blogger for the Foreign Policy Association, discussed Brazil-Israel relations. WPR: What is the extent of the economic and political relationship between Israel and Brazil? Sean Goforth: The two countries have a history of friendly but rarely robust relations. Ambassadors have been regularly exchanged since the 1950s, while trade flows have been low. Bilateral trade totaled less than a billion dollars in […]

In recent months, news outlets in Japan and the U.S. have reported that Mongolia is negotiating with those two countries to serve as a regional depository for spent nuclear fuel. The proposed plan would permit geographically constrained countries in the region, such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, to dispose of their spent fuel in the spacious Central Asian state. The veracity of the reporting on the negotiations is still unknown. When the story first broke in March, the Mongolian Foreign Ministry was quick to dismiss the notion that Mongolia would host Asia’s nuclear waste. The statement went on to […]

The International Monetary Fund is in an unexpected state of flux. The shocking sexual assault charges, arrest and subsequent resignation of former Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn have turned the institution’s leadership on its ear. As the surprise of last week’s events dissipates, the focus now becomes selecting Strauss-Kahn’s replacement. In the coming weeks, a highly political process will unfold behind the scenes as the Europeans wrangle with a group of emboldened emerging-market countries for the fund’s top slot. In the middle lie the Americans, who hold the key to the success of either group. If the U.S. is shrewd, it […]

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari visited Russia earlier this month for broad-ranging strategic talks. In an email interview, Rouben Azizian, a professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, discussed Russia-Pakistan relations. WPR: What is the recent history of Pakistan-Russia relations? Rouben Azizian: For decades, Moscow and Islamabad viewed each other as adversaries because of the Cold War’s impact on South Asia, Russia’s special relations with India and the U.S.-Pakistan alliance. The withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan briefly opened the door for improved bilateral relations, but Pakistan’s support for the Taliban government in Afghanistan and the presence of Chechen […]