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On Jan. 5, Turkey’s Defense Industry Executive Committee, chaired by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, authorized the Undersecretariat for Defense Industries to open negotiations with Lockheed Martin for the purchase of two F-35 multi-role combat fighters by 2015. Though Turkey’s defense minister today clarified that Turkey still intends to follow through with its intention to acquire 100 F-35s, the small initial purchase represents yet another setback for the troubled program.* It was followed by Britain’s declaration in February that it will postpone making any formal commitment to the F-35 until 2015. Australia, too, is currently reconsidering plans to buy 12 […]

Representatives from more than 50 countries, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Somali President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, have gathered in London for an international conference on Somalia, chaired by British Prime Minister David Cameron. In the words of Philip Barton, deputy head of mission at the British Embassy in Washington, the conference will focus on “the underlying causes of instability and its symptoms, such as famine, piracy and terrorism.” With piracy increasingly threatening international shipping, and the militant Islamist group al-Shabab developing closer ties to al-Qaida, problems that have plagued Somalia for two decades are posing a growing […]

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces rained rockets and bombs down on opposition-held neighborhoods of the city of Homs Wednesday. World News Videos by NewsLook

Australia’s Kevin Rudd says he is “shocked and disappointed” by the tone and content of the personal attacks that he has come under since resigning as the nation’s foreign secretary. World News Videos by NewsLook

In late-January an influential member of the European Parliament urged the European Union to reject a deal with the U.S. on sharing information about air travellers for anti-terror programs. In an email interview, Rocco Bellanova, a researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis, and Paul De Hert, a professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Tilburg University, discussed the EU-U.S. passenger data-sharing agreement. WPR: What is the background of the U.S.-EU passenger data-transfer deal? Rocco Bellanova and Paul De Hert: The 2011 iteration of the so-called passenger name record (PNR) agreement currently under discussion at the European Parliament […]

Over the past decade, the western Indian Ocean unexpectedly emerged as a hotbed for maritime crime as pirates — safe-havened in Somalia — menaced seafarers as far east as the Maldives. Shipping companies have been hit hard, with one estimate placing the direct costs of Somali piracy at $5.5 billion in 2011. Despite a multinational naval flotilla deployed to counter the pirates, attacks continued to grow last year. The discussion of Somali piracy predominately characterizes it as an aberration — a situation made possible by a failed Somali state that abuts a major shipping route. Viewed through such a prism, […]

Sometime in the next few months, Israel may very well go to war against Iran, and it could draw the United States into the conflict. The global strategy firm Wikistrat, at which I am a senior analyst, recently laid out 10 scenarios for such a war breaking out, each plausible in its own way. Thomas P.M. Barnett wrote in a recent WPR column that he believes that war is inevitable, and even war opponents such as Peter Beinart and Bernard Finel believe that the “Iran hawks” have taken control of the debate. The case for attacking Iran relies overwhelmingly on […]

Six people have been named as suspects in an alleged Iranian bomb plot targeting Israeli diplomats in Bangkok, Thailand, last week. Though the suspects mistakenly set off the explosives while inside their house, the homemade, improvised bombs matched those used in twin attacks the day before in New Delhi, India, and Tbilisi, Georgia. The device in New Delhi, planted on a car door, left four people wounded; the device in Georgia was defused. Israel has accused Iran of being behind the attacks, which Tehran denies. But the method used in Thailand, India and Georgia looked a lot like that used […]

Iran is engaged in a four-day military exercise aimed at protecting its nuclear sites from an attack. The exercise, which comes amid speculation that Israel may attack one or several sites as tensions mount between Tehran and the West, has involved the deployment of missiles, anti-aircraft artillery, radars and warplanes, according to Iranian state media.

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping commends Ireland for achieving moderate growth after its debt crisis. Ireland is the only stop Xi will make in Europe during his world tour. World News Videos by NewsLook

Growing awareness of how development outcomes are dependent on our variable and changing climate is focusing increasing attention on the role of climate information in agricultural development. Much of this attention is driven by the growing acceptance that human activity is altering the Earth’s climate, and that the major greenhouse gas emitters have an obligation to help the most vulnerable to adapt. Independently of the climate change agenda, however, most of the international development banks have recognized that their investments are vulnerable to climate shifts and fluctuations, and now have strategies for screening projects for climate vulnerability and for making […]

Discussions of sharing knowledge for global health initiatives typically conjure images of children afflicted with neglected tropical diseases. Knowledge sharing seems like an important but comfortably distant concern for those in industrialized countries. In fact, far from being localized to diseases endemic to developing countries, the concerns — and challenges — of sharing health knowledge are truly global. Take genomic science, a field with deep relevance to residents of industrialized countries, to whom it promises a future of increasingly personalized medicine. Yet that future of tailored therapy depends on the ability to access the collective building blocks of the human […]

Russia has disappointingly blocked for now a U.S. State Department initiative to build a network of U.S.-supported counternarcotics centers in Central Asia. In public, Russian officials denigrate the effectiveness of programs to interdict drug transportation through Eurasia and instead have favored concentrating international resources on fighting opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan itself. But some Russian officials’ opposition to the initiative is driven by their desire to minimize the U.S. presence in Central Asia. Formally launched in June 2011 as a $4.1 million State Department program, the Central Asian Counternarcotics Initiative (CACI) aims to establish counternarcotics task forces in all five […]

The United States’ relationship with Singapore has been and continues to be one of its most important and successful in the Asia-Pacific. Despite its small size, Singapore has transformed itself into a major player in Southeast Asia and the broader global economy, and has been a consistent supporter of a strong U.S. presence in Asia. Today, the city-state is America’s 13th-largest trading partner, hosts U.S. naval ships in its waters, serves as a model for Washington on issues such as education and offers valuable strategic advice to the United States on a variety of policy questions. These past few weeks […]

Over the past 30 years, the process of globalization has revolutionized international affairs. The amount of trade has tripled, and the ease with which goods, money, services and people now circulate globally has resulted in soaring economic growth and development that has benefitted almost all countries. Perhaps the most significant change has taken place in the Global South. Developing countries’ share of world trade has risen from around 10 percent in the mid-1990s to around 20 percent today. Even amid the recent global economic downturn, developing countries have still managed to significantly increase their share of global trade (.pdf). Partly […]

Pakistan’s activist judiciary is once again at war with the country’s executive branch. Last week, the Supreme Court indicted Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on contempt charges for failing to comply with a 2009 court order requiring him to petition the Swiss government to reopen corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari, who leads Gilani’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). By month’s end, Gilani could be convicted and removed from office. Nonetheless, in a best-case and entirely plausible scenario, the PPP could still continue to govern till midyear and again win a plurality in National Assembly elections in the fall. The […]

While America has begun an economic recovery of uncertain strength and staying power, we Americans nonetheless face a far longer-term and more substantial national rebuilding project. This daunting task has placed us in a contemplative space, in which we nervously toggle between bouts of renewed self-confidence and crippling self-doubt. But the same thread runs through both cycles of this national bipolar disorder: the assumption that we must bear this burden alone. That assumption is our greatest weakness right now, for it blinds us to the economic opportunities at hand, while encouraging us to adopt an unwise defensiveness in our national […]