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At the start of the Arab revolutions, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) tentatively placed Turkey on the side of the pro-democracy movements, starting with Tunisia and then Egypt. In contrast to 2009, when Ankara backed the Ahmadinejad administration following Iran’s disputed elections, Turkey was the first country to call for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to step down at a time when other leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, were hedging their bets. In doing so, Erdogan positioned himself and Turkey as regional leaders in encouraging democracy in other Muslim countries, based on […]

In the lead-up to next week’s U.S. China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke has vowed to oppose trade barriers imposed by the Chinese regime on US companies, if he is confirmed as the next ambassador to China.

The clash between Coptic Christians and Salafi Muslims that left 12 people dead in Cairo over the weekend prompted a swift response from the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that has run Egypt since February’s ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak. The violence represents a serious uptick in sectarian tensions within Egyptian society, and some are questioning the extent to which sinister elements from Mubarak’s fallen regime may be playing a role in it. “There is some concern, and there have been claims even that some of the things we’ve been seeing with regard to the sectarian clashes have […]

India and Pakistan recently renewed their dialogue over the countries’ moribund trade relations, with Pakistan indicating it is considering extending most favored nation status to India. In an email interview, Mohsin S. Khan, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former director of the Middle East and Central Asia department at the International Monetary Fund, discussed India-Pakistan trade relations. WPR: What is the status quo of trade relations between India and Pakistan? Mohsin S. Khan: Trade between India and Pakistan is negligible, amounting to only $1 billion to $2 billion a year, reflecting very poor […]

America’s successful assassination of Osama bin Laden, long overdue, naturally renews talk across the country about ending the nation’s military involvement in Afghanistan-Pakistan. Coupled with the ongoing tumult unleashed by the Arab Spring, Washington is once again being encouraged to reconsider its strategic relationship with the troubled Middle East. The underlying current to this debate has always been the widely held perception that America’s “oil addiction” tethers it to the unstable region. Achieve “energy independence,” we are told, and America would free itself of this terrible burden. The simplicity of that argument belies globalization’s crosscutting interdependencies, which only grow more […]

The Libyan debacle has been a major wakeup call for those thinking that Europe has a grip on its neighborhood or that the European Union might one day become a serious geopolitical actor. The point is now so moot, it’s barely worth making. What’s less obvious is that the fallout from the Libyan intervention will have a serious impact on the upstream energy landscape around Europe. That’s not just because the EU has lost around 1 million barrels per day of sweet oil production and around 16 percent of its gas supplies for the “EU 15,” but also because the […]

Egypt’s military caretaker government played an important role in the new reconciliation deal between Hamas and Fatah, brokering secret talks that led to a breakthrough announced in Cairo. In an email interview, David Schenker, Aufzien Fellow and director of the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as well as author of “Egypt’s Enduring Challenges: Shaping the Post-Mubarak Environment,” discussed relations between Egypt and Hamas and Fatah. WPR: What is the recent history of relations between Egypt and the Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah? David Schenker: Egypt has maintained strong ties with the Palestinian Authority […]

There’s an emerging consensus that, after a promising start, Turkey has had a bad Arab Spring. Anthony Shadid suggested yesterday in the New York Times that the unrest threatens Turkey’s newfound regional influence, while Steven Cook argued in Foreign Policy that the Arab uprisings represent a kind of “emperor has no clothes” moment for Ankara, exposing the hollowness underlying Turkey’s much-vaunted rise. I’d like to weigh in on this, especially since I recently flagged the Turkish Model as a promising foreign policy approach for Egypt, the Palestinians and the region in general. Clearly, Turkey miscalculated on Libya, as Cook makes […]

If the death of Osama bin Laden marks the beginning of the end of the “global war on terrorism,” as Michael Cohen argued in a WPR briefing this week, it will have profound consequences for U.S. national security policy. For the last decade, the fight against international terrorism, as personified by bin Laden, was one of the central organizing principles of American foreign and defense policies. Preventing another Sept. 11 was the rationale for the military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as for a whole host of programs in dozens of countries around the world, ranging from security […]

The recent events in the Arab world and Iran have led many in the West to urge President Barack Obama to take a stronger stance against human right abuses in Iran. The Obama administration should resist this temptation, as doing so would only serve to weaken Iran’s domestic opposition. As the popular uprisings in the Middle East have demonstrated, revolutions are most successful when they are organic. The voices calling on the Obama administration to give greater attention to human rights abuses in Iran have been forceful and diverse. A Washington Post editorial from last month, for instance, told the […]

DENPASAR, Indonesia — With Indonesia experiencing an escalation of terrorist violence, local analysts have focused on trying to determine who is behind each of the recent attacks. Assessing the nature and affiliation of the groups responsible is certainly important. But the current situation may be the result of several converging trends that suggest Indonesia must confront some of its persistent demons if it wants to contain terrorism. In its latest report, entitled “Indonesian Jihadism: Small Groups, Big Plans,” the International Crisis Group (ICG) outlined how homegrown terrorism in Indonesia has lately taken on a new form, with small cells operating […]

A new regional cooperation bloc to include every country in the Americas except Canada and the United Sates has received almost no coverage in the English-language media. Some observers, however, believe the Community of Latin American and Carribean States — CELAC for its Spanish acronym — represents the first step in a historic geopolitical shift away from an era dominated by pro-U.S. policies. “It’s a regional grouping for a new era really, which is no longer about free trade and neoliberalism,” says Alexander Main at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. Foreign ministers from several of CELAC’s […]

An unmanned aerial combat drone developed by Boeing has successfully completed its first flight at Edwards Air Force Base, California. Called the Boeing Phantom Ray, the aircraft is designed to support several potential missions including surveillance and attack.

India and Kazakhstan recently signed a series of energy deals during a visit to the Central Asian country by India’s prime minister. In an email interview, Emilian Kavalski, a lecturer at the University of Western Sydney, discussed relations between India and Central Asia. WPR: What is the recent history of India’s relations with Central Asia? Emilian Kavalski: In a nutshell, India’s recent relations with Central Asia have been motivated by a search for influence in what New Delhi considers to be its strategic neighborhood. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, India has pursued strategic depth not only to secure […]

With the debate raging over whether the Obama administration should release Osama bin Laden’s long-form death certificate, it seems like a good moment to point out that from an intelligence standpoint, we already know way too much about the operation that led to bin Laden’s death. The administration, which so successfully managed to maintain operational secrecy leading up to the mission, seems to have given no thought to the value of secrecy in its aftermath. The most obvious example is the revelation that, in addition to killing bin Laden, U.S. forces also made off with loads of valuable hard drives […]

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas must have winced when he heard Hamas’ reaction to the killing of Osama bin Laden. For years the PA has worked to clean up its image, from that of the fatigue-clad, pistol-packing Yasser Arafat to one of a mainstream, diplomatically palatable would-be country ready to join the international community. But just days after Abbas’ Fatah reached a reconciliation agreement with its rival Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ top man in Gaza, praised bin Laden as a “martyr” and an “Arab holy warrior.” Making matters worse, Haniyeh condemned the United States for killing the head of al-Qaida […]

Even for a man who was no stranger to government shackles, Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye’s arrest last Thursday was particularly vicious. Though it was Besigye’s fourth arrest since April 11, when he and his supporters began holding “walk to work” protests against rising fuel and commodity prices, this one was met with disbelief across this East African nation of 33 million. A day after being released on bail following his previous arrest, Besigye was intercepted in his vehicle at a Kampala roundabout by plainclothes officers, who smashed the car’s windows with a hammer and a pistol, and doused Besigye’s […]