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Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s Cabinet has undergone enormous change during her first year in office, with seven ministers sacked, all but one under a cloud of corruption, and at least two more teetering under corruption allegations. Many in the commentariat have been quick to laud these firings as proof of Rousseff’s diligence in fighting sleaze, and her personal approval rating is now higher than that of her two immediate predecessors at the same stage in their first terms. A complete Cabinet overhaul is rumored for the new year, when Rousseff may reorganize the coalition she inherited from her predecessor, the […]

In supporting her proposal to reverse the Australian ban on uranium exports to India at the Australian Labour Party’s conference in early December, Prime Minister Julia Gillard argued that, “We should take a decision that is in our nation’s interest, a decision about strengthening our strategic partnership with India in this, the Asian century.” The proposal, which was successfully passed at the conference, comes at a time when U.S. President Barack Obama is orchestrating Washington’s strategic pivot to Asia and signals that further space is being negotiated for India in the existing regional order. Washington seems to be using its […]

Although extended periods of one-party dominance may be endorsed by voters in free and fair elections, they can also prove detrimental to the health of democratic government in various ways. Corruption — in particular, the misappropriation of public resources for private gain — is a pronounced feature of dominant-party systems and one of the more obvious means by which those systems can pose a threat to clean, transparent and efficient government. As South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) celebrates its 100th anniversary and enters its 18th year in power, its experience in government is largely serving to confirm this familiar, […]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy meet today for the first time in 2012, as they seek to craft a master plan for rescuing the euro over the next three months. Finance News Videos by NewsLook

Analysts of Russian politics have always faced a conundrum when assessing developments like December’s mass protests in Moscow. Russia has a history of authoritarianism and cultural fatalism that has always discouraged reform. From Peter the Great to Leonid Brezhnev, Russian rulers have shown a near-endless capacity for tricking, co-opting or simply suppressing pro-reform movements. For centuries, developments that in any other nondemocratic regime would signal imminent and inevitable change have routinely failed to breach the Kremlin walls. But in the few historical instances where change has occurred, it has traditionally been rapid and unpredictable. The Bolsheviks took power just months […]

Faced with irreversible long-term fiscal pressures to reduce the U.S. defense budget, late last week the Obama administration began unveiling its supremely focused rationale behind future cuts. The result is an elegantly slim strategic statement (.pdf) that indirectly names its deepest fear in its title: “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense.” According to the document, over the past decade the U.S. military force structure has been “by necessity” dangerously skewed by “today’s wars.” Now America must start “preparing for future challenges” arising from a frightening and apparently imminent “inflection point” in East Asia’s military balance of power. […]

News arrived this week that the second-largest oil company in China has agreed to pay $900 million, and contribute as much as $1.6 billion to future drilling costs, for a one-third stake in five American exploratory oil projects. The foray into American energy investment, the first by China Petrochemical Corp., known as Sinopec, comes in the form of a partnership with Oklahoma-based Devon Energy Corp. to develop shale reserves. “It’s a marriage of convenience and opportunity,” said Clayton Dube, associate director of the University of Southern California’s U.S.-China Institute. “This is further evidence of Chinese firms and the Chinese state […]

According to an unnamed administration official cited by the Atlantic’s Steve Clemons this week, Vice President Joe Biden has been tasked by the White House with overseeing U.S.-China relations. As such, Biden will work directly with his Chinese counterpart, Vice President Xi Jinping, who is currently responsible for the Chinese side of the strategic dialogue between Beijing and Washington, but is widely expected to succeed to the Chinese presidency later this year. As Clemons concluded, the move reflects the Obama administration’s assessment that the “management of U.S.-China policy has become so central to a vast array of other policy challenges […]

Several people are reported to have been killed and dozens hurt by a bomb blast that went off in a central neighborhood of Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Friday.

The prospect of $500 billion in cuts to the U.S. defense budget from 2013-2021 has Washington in a panic. In unveiling a barely updated military strategy yesterday, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta repeated his warning that such cuts would lead to a “demoralized and hollow force.” One of his deputies has called the cuts the equivalent of “self-castration.” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina recently warned that the cuts will “destroy” the Department of Defense. We should not allow those claims to scare us into letting the Pentagon off the hook. The cuts, which come courtesy of the deficit deal […]

In his first official trip abroad since his radical Palestinian group came to power in 2007, Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, is on a tour of the Middle East, with stops that have so far included Egypt, Sudan and earlier this week, Turkey. The visits aim to strengthen ties in the region in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings, which have so seen the rise to prominence of Islamist parties in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. “Islamist political victories in Egypt and beyond have created a more conducive regional political environment, which Hamas seeks to […]

The ongoing transformation of the Middle East has affected every government and every political organization in the region. In some cases, the changes have led to a clearly visible victory; in others, an obvious defeat. In the case of Hamas, the radical Palestinian group that rules Gaza, the Arab Spring has brought a disorienting combination of extremely good and extremely bad news. Hamas now faces a starkly different world with conflicting forces at play. More importantly for the Hamas leadership, it must urgently make some very difficult decisions. On the surface, the Arab uprisings look like a cause for jubilation […]

On Dec. 25, 43-year-old Yevgeny Shevchuk was elected president of Transnistria by a landslide, winning nearly 80 percent of the vote in a runoff after outmaneuvering two powerful and seasoned opponents. It was a triumph for democracy in a remote corner of Southeastern Europe that few outside the neighborhood would have had any reason to notice. But it is worth taking note, not only because Shevchuk is a young reformer in a part of the world groaning under entrenched oligarchies, but also because his successful campaign offers a larger lesson at a time when popular democratic movements are shaking the […]

A wave of bombs struck two Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad, Thursday, officials said, killing at least 27 people. The blasts intensified fears of a renewed cycle of sectarian violence in Iraq. World News Videos by NewsLook

The Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), the oldest armed rebel group in Ethiopia, announced earlier this week that it plans to drop its long-held demands for secession and instead work within the political system. The OLF’s move from insurgent activity to electoral competition is both surprising and significant, explains John Harbeson, an African Studies lecturer at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and emeritus professor of political science at the City University of New York. “It is a complete 180 from what at least a faction of the OLF has always wanted to do,” he said, pointing to the […]

Iran’s exchange rate is experiencing unusual volatility, with the U.S. dollar and the euro both rising by more than 25 percent against the Iranian rial over the past three weeks, despite attempts by Iran’s central bank to stabilize its currency. This volatility has coincided with the approval by the United States and the United Kingdom of a new round of sanctions against Iran targeting the Iranian central bank (ICB). The sanctions will deny access to U.S. markets to any firm that engages in financial transactions with the ICB. Since Iran’s commercial banks have already been targeted by similar sanctions, the […]

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s military-industrial complex sustained the massive Soviet military institution, which regularly gobbled up 15-25 percent of the nation’s GDP. In an odd and unexpected twist to the end of the Cold War, the Russian arms industry has turned to sustaining itself by arming a pair of Asian giants: Arms exports to China and India have proven lucrative for Russia — and have even had a synergistic and competitive quality. The unease each country has felt due to the other increasing its military capability has led to higher revenues for Rosoboronexport, the Russian state-owned arms […]