Latest Archive

Over the weekend, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) seized Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu, the three major cities of northern Mali that lie within the region the Tuareg rebel group refers to as “Azawad.” This development highlights the inability of the military-led junta currently ruling the country, the National Committee for the Restoration of Democracy and State (CNRDR), to stem the MNLA’s advance, despite having deposed Malian President Amadou Toumani Touré for his anemic response to this latest round of Tuareg rebellion. Before his overthrow, Touré had also come under fire from regional and international critics for […]

With just six weeks left until Egyptians go to the polls, the race for the presidency has entered a new level of acrimony, intrigue and speculation. The biggest shock came Sunday, when the country’s most powerful political organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, blatantly broke its promise not to seek the presidency. Its newly announced candidate, Khairat el-Shater, automatically took the lead in the campaign for the top job. El-Shater, the Brotherhood’s main financier, top strategist and deputy supreme leader, announced he was giving up his position in order to start campaigning for president. With that, he became the front-runner in a […]

African Union countries are currently deadlocked over whether to keep or replace the current African Union chairman, Jean Ping, whose term has been temporarily extended. In an email interview, Solomon Dersso, a senior researcher in the Peace and Security Council Report Program at the Institute for Security Studies, discussed the African Union’s leadership contest. WPR: What are the main functions, both institutional and symbolic, of the African Union commission chairmanship? Solomon Dersso: The African Union Commission is the administrative branch of the continental body. The commission implements AU policies, prepares its strategic plans and coordinates the body’s activities and meetings. […]

Bo Xilai, the dismissed Communist Party chief of the western municipality of Chongqing, began his long fall from grace in February, when his police chief, Wang Lijun, sought refuge in the United States Consulate in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in Southwest China. Wang’s short-lived “defection” lifted the lid off a corruption scandal that is likely to complicate the once-in-a-decade transfer of power to new party leaders in the fall, drawing international attention to internal politics that party officials prefer to keep far from public view. The charges currently being brought against Bo, which include disturbing details about his […]

NATO’s upcoming Chicago summit in May offers an opportunity for deliberation about the current state of the military alliance, including operations outside its core strategic area. In this context, the recent military intervention in Libya will likely be hailed as a successful and hopefully replicable model (.pdf). Swift and precise action followed by rapid withdrawal represent a welcome change from the alliance’s drawn-out mission in Afghanistan. In contrast to the Afghan quagmire, the Libyan model, with its prompt termination of military operations and deliberate lack of involvement in the subsequent political transition, looks like a promising alternative. Yet the assumption […]

The civil war in Syria is now more than a year old, with estimates putting the civilian death toll at the hands of the Syrian army at 9,000 people in the past 13 months. As the slaughter continues, President Barack Obama has offered little more than promises of nonlethal aid to the Syrian opposition and intonations about establishing “a process” to transition to a “legitimate government.” Inaction in the face of such butchery is easy to criticize, of course, and America cannot intervene everywhere. Nonetheless, Obama’s inaction in the face of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s brutality is especially glaring in […]

Since at least 2003, Americans have overestimated our influence in Iraq. Although the U.S. invasion and overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime paved the way for both a bloody civil war and a new form of government, the key actors in Iraq were and remain the Iraqi people themselves. Most recently, GOP critics of the Obama administration have been quick to fault the White House for withdrawing U.S. troops at the end of 2011. But the incessant, myopic focus of many Republicans on America’s military means is wrong-headed and ignores where the administration has actually fallen short in Iraq. The […]

Chinese automaker Great Wall Motors opened its first European factory in Bulgaria in February. In an email interview, L. Jeremy Clegg, director of the Center for International Business at the University of Leeds, and Hinrich Voss, a research fellow at the center, discussed the prospect of Chinese firms relocating to Europe. WPR: To what extent have Chinese companies relocated production to the eurozone, and what other projects are in the works? Hinrich Voss: The evidence speaks against relocation of production by Chinese companies to Europe at this stage. While companies such as TCL, Haier, Hisense and Geely have opened or […]

Monday marked the 30th anniversary of the bloody 74-day war between Argentina and Great Britain over the Falkland Islands, known in Argentina as the Malvinas, in the South Atlantic. It was an anniversary that did not go unnoticed in either country, with the islands’ offshore oil reserves largely driving the renewed attention. Exploratory oil drilling commenced in early 2010 in the waters off the string of islands where sheep have long outnumbered people. Several British oil concerns have spent the past two years drilling to assess the potential in the waters surrounding the islands, with increasing success. Though relevant for […]

One issue left unresolved by last week’s Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul is how to integrate the summits with several similar initiatives. Like the summits, these other mechanisms have emerged to respond to a new threat not anticipated by the architects of the original nuclear nonproliferation regime, that of nuclear terrorism. The unprecedented geopolitical and technological developments of the past two decades have enabled terrorist groups and other violent nonstate actors, sometimes supported by state sponsors, to exploit illicit trafficking networks to acquire dangerous nuclear technologies and materials. The process of globalization has also meant that countries lacking adequate nuclear […]

Kadima, the main opposition party in Israel, elected former Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz as its chairman in primary elections last week. Tzipi Livni, the incumbent, lost by a wide margin, stepping down at the end of what was widely regarded as an ineffective term. Though Kadima is the largest party in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, it is losing popular support. And analysts say its future will depend on whether Mofaz can accomplish what Livni could not: unifying the party, expanding its political base and ensuring that it provides a real alternative to the governing party, Likud. Daniel C. Kurtzer, the […]

Historical antagonisms are again preventing Japan and South Korea from cooperating on important issues. Despite being neighbors with a range of shared economic and security interests, unsettled grievances continue to damage relations between two of Asia’s largest military and economic powers. Two hot-button historical issues have popped up recently, both of which have their origins in the colonial era and its hasty conclusion. South Korea was a Japanese colony from 1910-1945 and gained independence in the wake of Japan’s defeat in World War II. The first is the two countries’ long-simmering feud over the Dokdo islets, a series of rocks […]

Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra visited Japan last month in an effort to boost international confidence following Thailand’s devastating floods. In an email interview, John J. Brandon, the director of the Asia Foundation’s international relations program, discussed Thai-Japanese relations. WPR: What is the current state of relations between Japan and Thailand? John J. Brandon: This year marks the 125th anniversary of formal diplomatic relations between Japan and Thailand. Bilateral ties, particularly in the economic sphere, have strengthened considerably over the past decade. With 49 percent of foreign direct investment to Thailand coming from Japan, exports up 8.3 percent and the […]

Given this administration’s resurging plans for regional missile defense schemes in both Europe and Asia, President Barack Obama’s recent open-mike admission to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he will have more freedom in his national security decision-making once he wins re-election is not a comforting thought. For a guy who promises “a world without nuclear weapons,” Obama seems awfully intent on incentivizing both Russia and China to field some more. With regard to Europe, America’s case for even limited missile defense is weak. We are told it is all about Iran and has nothing to do with Russia. But if […]